Anthrax.
The bogeyman of the early 2000s, a weapon of mass destruction, a soil bacterium gone rogue. Anthrax can kill within 10 days and spores survive outside a host up to 48 years.
But does it still matter, nearly two decades on?
Thirty-five infected people in Russia would say yes. The parents of the child who died from the 2016 anthrax outbreak would say yes.
The Northwest Passage.
A topic thrown around in 8th grade Social Studies classes, and then forgotten. It is the sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Does it still matter, either?
1,700 passengers aboard the Crystal Serenity would say yes. When it was first explored, it was deemed impassable due to year-round ice sheets. Now, cruise liners can travel through it in 28 days.
Both of these events are the direct result of one thing: the shrinking of the Arctic sea ice. Since 2014, the maximum area covered by Arctic sea ice has decreased by 5.5 hundred thousand square kilometres. In 1980, the ice sheet during its minimum, when the most had melted during the year, was 7.86 million square kilometres. Now, it is 4.17 million square kilometres, and the lowest it’s ever been was in 2012, at 2.91 million square kilometres.
These numbers seem almost mind-bogglingly large, but here’s the percentage breakdown: over five years, the maximum area covered during the coldest month has gone down roughly 4%. The minimum area covered during the warmest months, has gone down 46.9% since 1980, with the lowest drop at 63.0% in 2012. And to round things off, this averages out to a decrease of 12.8% per decade.
Percentages are a little less scary, right?
What’s still scary is how much the loss of ice has and can change the world. The opening of the Northwest Passage has the potential to make Canada a maritime power by opening new shipping lanes through Canadian territory. The major world powers right now are the United States, Russia, China, and to an extent the European Union, and they are the ones that drive international policy for good or for ill. China is currently trying to gain control of about 40% of the world’s trade, which passes through the South China Sea. If those shipping routes switch to new lanes, the balance of power is threatened, which increases international tensions and even conflicts.
Even scarier for the layperson, of course, is anthrax. The melting permafrost unearthed the corpse of a frozen reindeer that had been infected with anthrax in Salekhard, Russia, in a remote region of Siberia. The anthrax had been frozen and preserved by the ice, and reactivated when exposed to warmer air. It then infected over two 2,000 reindeer along with over thirty people. Scientists study the tundra and the permafrost already know that there are many dangerous microbes preserved under the ice, from smallpox to megaviruses the human immune system has never encountered.
So where does this danger come from, and how do we stop it?
Scientists have proven that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have warmed the land and sea temperature of the Arctic, leading to the melting of the Arctic ice sheets that cover the northernmost regions of nations like Russia and Canada. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane allow sunlight to pass through the atmosphere, but trap heat within their molecules. This, in turn, leads to downstream effects such as rising sea levels that threaten island nations, and coral bleaching that destroys marine biodiversity.
According to the most recent IPCC report, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Humans have been releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in increasingly rapid rates as we develop technology to make our lives easier. Fossil fuels such as coal and oil are used to power our cars and power plants, and scientists and environmentalists have lobbied hard for us to switch to alternative, cleaner sources of fuel.
In fact, a landmark international agreement in the past decade is the Paris Agreement of 2016, where 195 signatory nations agreed to work to limit the increase in global temperature to 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement in entirely voluntary, asking participatory nations to implement plans to decrease and even halt emissions at their own pace, reconvening every five years to set more ambitious goals.
Critics have argued that this is too lenient, as there is no enforcement mechanism for the Paris Agreement, allowing governments to ignore the long-term danger in favour of short-term gains – which leaves it in our hands. It is up to the people of the world to take their future into their own hands and urge their leaders to enact regulations decreasing and eradicating greenhouse emissions. It’s not too late to save the world.
Avani Sudhakar is the Policy Advisor for Ally Dalsimer of VA-11, the first environmental professional to ever run for Congress, bringing over 30 years and Department of Defense experience to the table. Reach out at @allyforcongress, www.allyforcongress.com, or policy@allyforcongress.com!