[speedybird]

If you think wildfire smoke makes a region unlivable, then consider that before deciding where to live. Wildfires are a natural part of the ecological cycle in some parts of the world. You can fault California for botching their forest management by suppressing fires and consequently causing larger fires later on, but either way you will have to cope with the smoke.

(Also, the sky turning red is actually somewhat pretty. The real harm is what it does to your lungs. Better air filtration indoors is the answer to this, and happily, also a good way to mitigate the risk of respiratory diseases..)

[plorg]

Sure, but when the smoke is bad enough to create bad air quality over half a continent away I think it's more than a "you chose to live in the wrong place" problem.

[speedybird]

> bad air quality over half a continent away

If you mean that Californian fires are smoking out states like Nebraska, that's something I haven't heard of. But if you mean smoking out Seattle, the example used above by DisjointedHunt, that's not right. All of the west coast burns; from California all the way to Alaska. The smoke in Seattle mostly comes from fires in Washington and British Columbia.

And it really is a "you live in the wrong place" problem because there isn't a solution to that other than humans completely re-engineering the ecology of the west coast, which simply is not going to happen for a myriad of reasons. So either you learn to cope with it (as I and many others have) or you move further East. The fires won't stop.