According to research, more than half of infectious diseases have been exacerbated by the various hazards associated with environmental breakdown, posing a significant threat to life on Earth. As a result, medical schools in Europe will give more training on illnesses linked to higher temperatures.
Polio has returned, monkeypox isn’t slowing down, and COVID-19 still lingers in the shadows – basically, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have noticed that alongside the steady deterioration of our environment, the threat to human health has been growing.
But if you’ve seen Bill Gates’ famous Ted Talk from before any of us even understood the realities of a lockdown, you’ll know this was a possibility. As he warned, a global pandemic is one of the likeliest things to cause a massive social disturbance and, ultimately, end the world.
Well, according to research, this may be on the horizon, because 58% of infectious diseases (218 of the 375 we know of) have been exacerbated by the various hazards associated with climate change.
The exhaustive study, which was conducted by scientists at the University of Hawaii, discovered that outcomes of our ceaseless greenhouse gas emissions are both aggravating pathogens and weakening our immune systems.
The triggers are droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, extreme precipitation, and rising sea levels, to name just a few.
Analysing over 70,000 existing papers – some of it evidence stretching back 700 years before the advent of the man-made climate emergency – on the direct links between environmental breakdown and infectious diseases, they concluded that these events are bringing pathogens closer to people.
‘We became distressed by the overwhelming number of available case studies that already show how vulnerable we are becoming to our ongoing growing emissions of greenhouse gases,’ says the study’s co-author, Kira Webster.
‘If there are pathogens that cause us harm, climate change is trying to get to every single one of them. For me it’s shocking we don’t take this more seriously.’
In short, there are now more than 1,000 different pathways to worsen the spread of zika, malaria, and dengue (among others), a ‘cavalcade of risks too numerous for comprehensive societal adaptations.’
From warming and changed rainfall patterns expanding the range of vectors like mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas, to storms and flooding displacing people and relocating them in the heart of outbreaks, the situation is rather dire indeed.