Anything that improves conditions for mosquitoes tips the scales for the diseases they carry as well: the West Nile virus that flattened Dallas, the dengue that returned to Florida in 2009 after 63 years and the newest arrival, Zika, which gained a toehold in the United States last year and is expected to surge this summer. “These aberrant years are becoming more common,” Haley told me. “Climate change is clearly altering the environment in ways that increase the potential for these diseases.”
Beginning in 2012 with the worst outbreak of West Nile Virus ever seen in the United States, and culminating last year with the incipient threat of Zika infection throughout parts of Texas and Florida, the connection between a dramatic upsurge in the spread of insect--borne pathogens and a warming global climate has become increasingly clear among the scientific and medical communities. The New York Times article quoted above, titled “Why The Menace of Mosquitoes Will Only Get Worse,” authored by Maryn McKenna, examines the implications of a unique but tragically predictable phenomenon, one that all of us will have to cope with in the years ahead.
As the Times article points out, the media’s traditional treatment of climate change—to the extent there is any focus at all—tends to dwell on the planet-wide effects of rising temperatures, the occasional “superstorm” occupying a few days’ worth of news cycles (always qualified by the statement that “no single weather event can necessarily be attributed directly to climatic change”), and the increasing occurrence of coastal flooding, all of which create practical, “newsworthy” headaches and varying degrees of inconvenience or hazard for tourists and local residents. The more tangential effects of climate change, such as expanding the potential breeding ground for insects, usually go unmentioned, possibly because discussing them represents a tacit acknowledgement of an unpleasant reality—an ”inconvenient truth”-- in fairly stark, even morbid terms.
Yes, warming means mosquitoes. Yes, mosquitoes mean disease. Yes, disease means death. Can we move on to something less real, please?
Even those of us who recognize a looming tragedy for what it is can find solace in the sheer unpredictability of climate change; many may even unconsciously sublimate the phony climate “debate,” because the true implications of what climate change will do to our world may simply be too much to bear. As long as there is a “debate” --or even a temporary distraction from the reality--there is no need to focus on the painful fact that our great-grandchildren may well be spending their lives in some type of hothouse, disease-prone world from which there will be no real escape. That our gift of time to them may only be a fairly hellish existence they did not ask for and do not deserve.
But there is no "debate" anymore. There is only a yellow fever epidemic in South America right now, whether or not Americans are mostly oblivious to it. Dengue virus is creeping through Central America right now, even if North Americans don’t know about it. What made the U.S. news last year, thankfully showing up on only a limited scale, was Zika. A virus that actually destroys brain tissue, causing fetal skulls to collapse resulting in terrible birth defects both physical and cognitive was bound to capture the media’s attention, even though the link of that mosquito-borne virus to climate change was seldom discussed. It was bad enough that such a horrific pathogen existed in the first place. The idea that we could be partly responsible for its spread is even more unsettling.
Like West Nile, Zika can cause high fevers and paralysis — but unlike West Nile, it can also trigger catastrophic birth defects in the children of women infected while they are pregnant. It appears to destroy brain tissue while a fetus is growing, causing the skull to collapse. It also seems to cause brain damage, and eye, ear and joint abnormalities later on — though what will happen to babies as they grow is uncertain, because all the children born to Zika-infected mothers are still toddlers. In the United States, the C.D.C. has identified that 1,311 women who were pregnant in the past year were possibly infected with Zika; 56 of their children were born with Zika-related birth defects.
As of today the CDC projects that one in ten pregnant women infected with the Zika virus—regardless of their symptomology-- will have babies with severe birth defects.
Despite its cameo appearance in the U.S. last summer, and despite the waning degree of media attention paid to it in the winter months, Zika isn’t going away. Its carrier, aedis aegypti, are present in half of the states of the U.S. and increasingly extending their stay here, regularly surviving winters as far north as Washington DC. Unlike other types of mosquitoes, aedis aegypti actually seek out proximity to people, because “we are their preferred diet:”
To get to us, they fly into houses and conceal themselves in closets and under beds and furniture. They have evolved to breed in the tiny pools of water we carelessly create around us: in an abandoned tire, the saucer under a houseplant, even an upturned bottle cap.
Because of its unique habits this particular breed of mosquito is not susceptible to spraying or more conventional types of pest control. The only thing that really controls its reproduction is eliminating the small pools of water it likes so much. But that requires collective, individual efforts, often among society’s poorest, least-equipped (and least motivated) to do it, in some of the most unsanitary enclaves of poorer urban landscapes, in piles of trash and debris, in cans filled with stagnant water after rainstorms, in places folks generally prefer to avoid.
The models traditionally used to predict mosquito breeding patterns are complex and locality-specific. As the article and other sources have pointed out, the effects of climate change on these patterns is equally difficult to model, as some of the effects (such as drought) will actually reduce the population, while increased precipitation in less customary habitat areas may increase it.
Peter Hotez, Founding Dean of the Tropical School of Medicine at Baylor University:
“We have no historical expertise in how to do Aedes aegypti control,” Hotez told me. “We’ve never done it, and now we’re playing catch-up in the middle of an epidemic.”
The impact of global warming has made such mosquito habitats increasingly viable all across the country:
Since 1980, the amount of time when conditions are ideal for mosquitoes — more warmth, more humidity — have increased by five days in 125 American cities, according to the news and research organization Climate Central. In 10 cities, the mosquito season has grown by a month. In 21 cities — on the Atlantic Coast below Norfolk, Va.; in much of Florida; in Mobile, New Orleans, Beaumont outside Houston and south to Corpus Christi — mosquitoes are active at least 190 days per year. “Climate change is certainly expanding the geographic range of mosquito species, and inevitably the diseases follow them,” says Nikos Vasilakis, an associate professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch and a member of its Zika research effort.
The incubation period for a mosquito to become infectious—from bite to deadly transmitter-- has also been shortened by magnitudes of 50% in many areas. Increased mobility --by choice or otherwise--of world populations has also heightened the risk of an epidemic, a problem made particularly acute as world populations begin to shift in the wake of climate-spawned catastrophes such as regular flooding in low-lying coastal areas. The Times article singles out Houston, with its non-existent zoning, its cosmopolitan population and “container port” status as an example of how difficult it would be to contain or even locate a major outbreak of mosquito-borne diseases like Zika. Last year a group of researchers mapped the global reach of Aedes mosquitoes, noting that they were now more widely distributed than at any time in history. And the World Health Organization has concluded that an increase in global temperature of just 2-3 degrees Celsius would put several hundred million of of the world’s population at risk of malaria, one of the most prevalent of mosquito-borne diseases.
Some extraordinary new technologies are being developed to combat this threat, but most are in their early stages and depend on significant outlays of research and funding. One of the most promising, CRISPR technology, proposes introducing genetically altered mosquitoes into the population, equipped with genes that “force” the wholesale sterilization of certain species. But these types of measures carry their own practical and even moral risks:
The technology creates risks that society has never before had to consider. Would removing mosquitoes upset ecosystems? Are we risking a genetic epidemic if the selfish DNA should jump the species barrier to affect other insects? Most perplexing: what country, agency, or individual has the right to change nature in ways that could affect the entire globe?
Just this week, mosquitoes deliberately infected with Wolbachia bacteria were released in 20 locations in the Florida Keys, for the purpose of mating with female aedis aegypti. Wolbachia is a naturally occurring bacteria that prevents the female mosquito’s eggs from hatching. Additional efforts are being considered to introduce mosquitoes with modified proteins that kill the offspring of their mates beore they reach adulthood, but these trials are still waiting FDA approval for safety reasons.
Against this backdrop, the United States under the Trump Administration has proposed drastic cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control, and cuts to the Health and Human Services Emergency Preparedness Programs, all of which are the first and in many cases the only line of defense to an onslaught of mosquito-borne illnesses. States are now bracing for a total cut-off of federal funding to fight Zika after July of this year, thanks to Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress, who had previously held such funding hostage to their mindless budget cuts.
But--although it scarcely needs to be said--mosquitoes don’t care which political party is in control. Nor do they recognize political boundaries. The Trump Administration’s “travel ban,” in addition to decimating foreign tourism in this country, has understandably cooled the willingness of other countries to cooperate with the U.S. on any health or science matters while its citizens are being treated with ignorant abuse and disdain at our borders. The Ebola vaccine, for example, was the product of Canadian research, tested through trials by West African and European governments. What is the likelihood of similar such cooperation against an international, cross-border pandemic in the face of a belligerent, thoughtless American xenophobia?
We’re all going to find out. It’s really just a matter of time.
So what can one person do in the face of such willful ignorance? Dave Leonhardt of the New York Times:
You can get involved politically and you should. Participate in efforts to persuade the administration and Congress to take a different tack. Strive to elect people who take climate change seriously.
***
In the meantime you can do something else as well: Look for ways to influence companies, communities, cities and states, all of which can have a big effect on the climate. In these realms there is reason for optimism—and room to do so much more.
As Professor James Hansen wrote in Storms Of My Grandchildren, "[W]e must be jolted into recognizing the remarkable world we inherited from our elders," whether that takes the form of political activism or simply explaining the truth, patiently, incessantly, to our friends, our neighbors, and our children, to make them understand how it impacts the future for all of us.
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Support the Daily Kos SciCli blogathon during the April 22-28 week of action promoting the April 29 People’s Climate March with stories on how science and climate change are affecting our lives and our planet.
For background on the SciCli Blogathon and the Week of action visit boatsie’s diary from 4/17, Besame’s from 4/20, and onomastic’s from 4/21.
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On April 29, let’s march for jobs, justice, and the climate
- Saturday, April 22 all times are PDT
2:30 pm: Cracks in Greenland ice-sheet may link up and break off DarkSyde
5:00 pm: Peoples Climate March just one piece of the resistance against lethal eco-policies. Meteor Blades
9:00 am: People's Climate March next Saturday. Run on Sunday. RLMiller
2:30 pm: SciCli Blogathon: "I can't believe we're marching for facts" Edition (#ScienceMarchSF Photo Essay) citisven
5:00 pm: Climate change: Be Positive. It’s Important. John Crapper
2:30 pm: I Resist in Miami Because We Provide the 1st Glimpse Into Future Climate Mayhem Pakalolo
5:00 pm: Resist,Rebel, and Revolt for Earth, Wind, Water: Climate March on Sat., 4/29 2thanks
10:45 am: Toosdai Critters Speak Out Samanthab
5:00 pm: Had We But World Enough And Time . . . Besame
2:30 pm: Dartagnan (Climate Change is Making the World Friendlier for Mosquitoes, Diseases, and Death)
5:00 pm: peregrine kate
2:30 pm: Bill McKibben
5:00 pm: WarrenS
2:30 pm: Tamar
5:00 pm: annieli
Climate Hawks Vote is hosting a training for leaders of the climate movement who are considering running for office on April 30, the day after the People’s Climate March. Read more about the training at People's Climate March next Saturday. Run on Sunday.