The deputy leader of the Ontario Green Party posted a video last week blaming Premier Doug Ford and the oil and gas sector for wildfire smoke choking the skies. "Shame on those politicians that are building new pipelines right now," Aislinn Clancy said. "I blame the oil and gas sector for burying the evidence."

David Menzies, Tamara Lich, and National Post columnist Tristin Hopper reacted on Friday's Rebel Roundtable — and Hopper had some historical context to offer.

"This is actually a return to the norm," Hopper said. The post-war policy of suppressing every fire has simply been stacking fuel for decades, meaning when fires do come, they burn larger. Pre-industrial accounts, he noted, show smoky summers as standard. 

In colonial New England, one particularly intense smoke event was so baffling to settlers, who had no idea it was wildfires, that they assumed it was volcanic activity or divine judgment.

"They're like, 'This is the devil. We don't know what this is,'" he said. "So everybody's going to church in midday waiting for the horsemen of the apocalypse."

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Menzies noted that forest fires predate humanity entirely and pointed out that the Green deputy leader would have reason to be grateful for oil and gas in about four months when the humidex gives way to windchill. 

Hopper added that her Toronto air conditioner was almost certainly running on nuclear power, which the Greens also oppose.

Tamara said she spent most of her adult career in the oil and gas sector and has always been baffled that Canadian leaders weren't out selling its virtues to the world.

"It is one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly energy industries in the whole world," she said. Menzies suggested anyone wanting a fuller picture read Ezra Levant's book Ethical Oil.

The panel also noted the irony of the medium.

The video was filmed on a smartphone, a device whose components depend heavily on petrochemicals. "Everything in her video is a result of a petroleum product," Tamara said. "She can't hate oil and gas that much, or otherwise she'd be living in a tent."

The Rebel Roundtable airs Fridays at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.