They will bring their pathogens with them
Hoo boy – as if it weren’t terrifying enough already. Climate change–>more pandemics:
There will be at least 15,000 instances of viruses leaping between species over the next 50 years, with the climate crisis helping fuel a “potentially devastating” spread of disease that will imperil animals and people and risk further pandemics, researchers have warned.
As the planet heats up, many animal species will be forced to move into new areas to find suitable conditions. They will bring their parasites and pathogens with them, causing them to spread between species that haven’t interacted before. This will heighten the risk of what is called “zoonotic spillover”, where viruses transfer from animals to people, potentially triggering another pandemic of the magnitude of Covid-19.
And this will be in a world that’s already struggling with rising sea levels, failing crops, wildfires, mass migrations, lethal heatwaves, disappearing marine life…
“As the world changes, the face of disease will change too,” said Gregory Albery, an expert in disease ecology at Georgetown University and co-author of the paper, published in Nature. “This work provides more incontrovertible evidence that the coming decades will not only be hotter, but sicker.” …
Albery said that climate change is “shaking ecosystems to their core” and causing interactions between species that are already likely to be spreading viruses. He said that even drastic action to address global heating now won’t be enough to halt the risk of spillover events.
“This is happening, it’s not preventable even in the best case climate change scenarios and we need to put measures in place to build health infrastructure to protect animal and human populations,” he said.
We need to do so many things that we’re not doing.
H/t Mike Haubrich
One of the key factors of evolution is that life is opportunistic, and searching for new opportunities and niches. Viruses are no different than life in that regard, and of course it’s not conscious, but whenever they can catch a ride to new locales they will hop right on. The neat thing for them, is that when they go somewhere new and exciting there is less resistance in the form of antibodies that will recognize and kill them.
Research to develop vaccines will always be on a “hind leg,” but the continued developmet of mRNA vaccines will be a key in fighting them in human populations, but I don’t know how we can expect to prevent them from spreading among the beasts.
“We need to do so many things that we’re not doing.” How do you assess the chances that we will? My guess is “very small.”
So small. So very small. The column I wrote for Free Inquiry recently says that – I don’t see how it can happen. If governments force it they’ll be thrown out. Humans are going to go on driving and taking cruises and building condo towers and all the rest of it until there are only 6 or 7 left.