Canadian wildfires affect US air quality, Chris Licht out at CNN: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: 100 million Americans affected by air quality alerts after Canada wildfires

100 million Americans have been affected by air quality alerts, as Canadian wildfires continue to burn. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise has the latest, and explains whether climate change is to blame. Plus, USA TODAY Health Reporter Adrianna Rodriguez looks at air pollution and your health, Chris Licht is out as CNN CEO, former Vice President Mike Pence is running for president, and President Joe Biden vetoes a bill that would gut student loan forgiveness.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 8th of June 2023. Today, we have the latest on Canada wildfires. Plus, how to stay safe with air pollution, and Mike Pence enters the presidential field.

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More than 400 wildfires continue to burn across Canada after displacing some 20,000 people north of the border. And smoke from the fires continues to drift into the United States. More than a hundred million Americans have been affected by air quality alerts according to the EPA. And at times this week, New York City's air quality has been the worst among the world's major cities. So why are there so many wildfires in Canada this summer? And is this the new norm? I spoke with USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise to find out more. Hello, Beth.

Elizabeth Weise:

Hey, how are you?

Taylor Wilson:

Good, thanks. Thanks for hopping back on the podcast. So Canada is burning. Can you just start by giving us an update on the wildfires north of the border?

Elizabeth Weise:

Well, I wish I could. I wish I could, but I have to tell you that the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre website, which is the federal center up in Canada that lists them all, has been so inundated by people trying to figure out how many fires are burning that it has been crashed all day long. I got it up early this morning. We were at over 400 fires burning, more than half of those out of control. But I haven't been able to update that number in the last couple of hours because their site is down because everybody in the world is looking, at least everybody on the East Coast. But it is a ton of fires.

Taylor Wilson:

Beth, why are there so many wildfires in Canada this summer?

Elizabeth Weise:

So Canada has this huge forest, the boreal forest. 38% of Canada is forest, mostly conifer forest. It has been really dry and really hot there. And the experts that we talked to said that kind... it's not just that they're in a drought, it's that it's hot. And so, the heat just sucks all the moisture out of the soil. It sucks it out of the plants, and they are just tinder-dry. And then when they get lightning strikes, which they normally do because it's a huge portion of their country, they just burn. And I mean this is really unprecedented. The Canadians are saying this is not normal. You always have forest fires in the summers and in the early spring, but this is way out of proportion to anything they've seen in the past.

Taylor Wilson:

Beth, you cover climate change as part of your beat. You've been here on the show. Often I ask you, is this issue caused by climate change? Is that issue caused by climate change? I'll pose the same question here. Fires like this, is climate change to blame, Beth?

Elizabeth Weise:

We can never say that any one individual incident or weather event is climate change. However, what we do know is that the planet is warming. Not only that, it is warming more at higher latitudes. So that's why the Arctic is melting and Canada's at higher latitudes. So it has gotten a lot hotter in Canada say than it's got in Mexico. And so, they have these forests which have spent millions of years evolving to be in kind of cool a little damp conditions, and suddenly it's multiple degrees hotter than it used to be, and they're also being hit with droughts. Can I say that this year is caused by climate change? Not definitively. Can I say that all of these patterns point to... these are the conditions on the ground that are changing. And the worrisome thing there is you start talking to people who are forestry experts because anybody who lives on the East Coast and is seeing all the smoke, they're like, "Wow, this is not normal. I don't remember this." Well, it's maybe something we're going to have to get used to.

Taylor Wilson:

Can we expect similar incidents like this going forward?

Elizabeth Weise:

Not every year, but the numbers all show us that, especially the higher northern latitudes, they're getting increasingly hot and they're more likely to have droughts. And one of the climate scientists I spoke with, he said, "It's a roll of the dice. You can have drought and you can have heat," and both of those things might contribute to fires, but if you have drought and heat at the same time, if you roll the dice and you get both of them, that can be when you get these mega fires. And we're going to see more of that dual combo with climate change.

Taylor Wilson:

And we're getting into the prime months for US fire season as well. Are these Canadian fires a preview of what's coming stateside later this year?

Elizabeth Weise:

Not as much. It's a big planet. We have different weather patterns. As you know, we had a very, very wet winter out here on the West Coast, especially in California. There's a lot of water and a lot of moisture still, especially up in the mountains. And so, experts are saying they're not expecting there to be the kind of mountainous fires that we've seen in past years. The concern, though, is when you get this much rain, you get a ton of brush and grass growth and that is going to dry out over the course of summer. Then you get these really fast wildfires. And I mean, we're hoping that isn't what we get this summer, but that would be the concern that we might have a bad fire season at lower elevations rather than at higher elevations. And of course, the bad part of that is that the lower elevations is where everybody lives.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Elizabeth Weise, thanks for your insight as always.

Elizabeth Weise:

So welcome.

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Taylor Wilson:

Poor air quality alerts have been issued in several places nationwide this week, including New York. To get a better sense of the health effects of air pollution, I spoke with USA TODAY Health Reporter Adrianna Rodriguez. Welcome back to the podcast, Adrianna.

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

There have been a number of poor air quality alerts issued for the United States due to these fires north of the border. Adrianna, for folks who live in places that aren't used to these types of warnings, what's the purpose of an air quality alert?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Yeah. So the purpose of an air quality alert is basically just to alert people that the air is unsafe to breathe for certain people. And this could be for a variety of things, but with the wildfires, it's usually because of sort of fine particle pollution known as PM 2.5.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, so let's get into some of the major health concerns when it comes to air pollution. You outlined a bunch of them here in this piece.

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Health experts tell me that air pollution, and especially fine particle matter, can really affect all organs. But it really does also affect breathing issues. Studies have shown that it could lead to premature death in people with heart or lung disease, non-fatal heart attacks, irregular heartbeats, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, and it can also increase respiratory symptoms like coughing or difficulty breathing.

Taylor Wilson:

What advice would you give to listeners, Adrianna, for how they can stay safe from air pollution this summer and beyond?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Yeah, so the number one advice that I hear from experts on how to stay protected from air pollution is really just to stay inside. Don't go outside and don't breathe that polluted air. But obviously, there are some people who can't not be outside, people who work outside in construction or other things. And so, what they recommend is to wear an N95 mask, which we're all familiar with, thanks to COVID-19. They also recommend to take it easy for the day, not to do so much strenuous activity. And also take frequent breaks, stay hydrated, and on top of that, also monitor symptoms. If you're having trouble breathing or you don't feel well, then seek refuge inside where there is air filtration. For people who are staying inside, agencies also recommend setting their air conditioning units to a recirculate mode to prevent bringing in air from the outdoors, and then also to avoid sort of adding to air pollution, right? When we have these alerts and these warnings, you don't want to be burning wood or outside mowing your lawn or leaf blowing, barbecuing, things like that.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, great advice. Adrianna Rodriguez covers health for USA TODAY. Thanks, Adrianna.

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

Chris Licht, the embattled CEO at CNN is out at the company, effective immediately. The news first reported by trade publication Puck, and confirmed by CNN's parent company Warner Brothers Discovery, comes less than a week after he was the subject of a devastating profile in The Atlantic. The piece portrayed him as an ineffective leader presiding over a meltdown at the news organization, including plummeting ratings and a widely criticized town hall with former President Donald Trump. Licht took over last year after the company's then parent company, Warner Media, merged with Discovery. The new company made major changes to the network, immediately shutting down the CNN Plus streaming service and laying off hundreds of workers. Licht arrived at the company with a mandate to make CNN more middle of the road in its coverage, which many interpreted as more conservative. CEO David Zaslav said it would take several months to install a new permanent leadership team.

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Former Vice President Mike Pence is running for president in 2024. On his first day as a presidential candidate yesterday, Pence used a CNN town hall event in Iowa to, in part, go after former President Donald Trump. On the January 6th insurrection, Pence said, "I said today that I felt he was asking me to choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution, and I always will." But Pence wavered on other Trump related issues on current investigations. He said he hopes the Justice Department does not indict Trump over classified documents, saying that would be divisive. And he lamented the March indictment of Trump in a hush money case. He punted on a question of whether he would pardon Trump if he's convicted in one or more of the investigations against him. On the issues, Pence said he would continue to fight for the end of abortion, and said Russian President Vladimir Putin should not be rewarded for aggression, while repeating his past criticism of Trump for once describing Putin as a genius. And on spending, Pence said the government cannot address its debt crisis without making changes to social security, Medicare, and other entitlement programs.

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President Joe Biden yesterday vetoed a bill that would repeal his plan to forgive student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans. It's the fifth veto of his presidency and comes after the debt ceiling deal approved by Congress this month cut the pause to student loan payments that's been in effect since the start of the pandemic. That began under former President Donald Trump but was extended repeatedly by Biden. Still, this bill and Biden's veto were largely symbolic. A pair of cases before the Supreme Court, which could be decided this month, halted the loan forgiveness program from moving forward months ago. Before that, some 16 million borrowers had been approved to have some or all of their remaining student loan balances forgiven. Student loan payments are set to resume within 60 days of the court's ruling.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at podcasts at usatoday.com. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Canadian wildfires and climate change, CNN ousts Licht: 5 Things podcast