The War on Global Warming

Commentary on the LA Times story on epidemiological effects of global warming

I stopped by where my husband was watching the Oscars on Sunday night, to see Al Gore start to say --or was it just my wishful thinking?-- that he was going to run for president. I don't know because he didn't say it, it just seemed like he might. I thought I saw him overcome with emotion, or was Gore just joking, as he walked away with someone, whose arm was around Gore. I don't know, it was a brief moment, but I felt so absurd as my eyes filled with tears and I began crying. My husband looked at me strangely, I must have been making this scenario up, but I kept crying. The take-home message to me is that I am perhaps most concerned, involved, passionate about our need to save the planet and save it fast.

Watching Destruction
I have been watching the destruction of our air in the Bay Area since 1966. I wrote some songs about it, I said that we were living with "a big brown smog belt caused by male supremacy" by which I meant our constant need for expansion, to go yet another mile "forward." I am myself an expansionist, I always want to do something new, something different, I fail at strength in the area of simple ordinary "life maintenance." I watched with horror as the air over the S.F.Bay grew darker. In 1967, I could go to the top of Mount Diablo on a clear winter day, and see across the state all the way to the Sierras, and I could even see the far away snowly peaks of Mount Lasses and Mount Shasta. In 1967, when the smog belt over the city was already present, when flying across the country, I could look down from an airplane, and for the most part, our country was not entirely covered with that "big brown smog belt,” it still seemed somewhat local.

Population 1971: The Behavioral Sink
In 1971 I published an article in the SF State Gator, "Population 1971: The Behavioral Sink" discussing the stories of overpopulation in non-human animal species, causing destruction of their local environment, social disruption, failure at reproduction, and species extinction. I was sophomoric in my writing, and highly idealistic in my vision of the difference that women in high political positions might make. But I predicted that as the earth became more heavily populated by our own species, we would be faced with an onslaught of viral epidemics for which we had no developed defenses. When Europe became overpopulated given the technology of the middle ages, they were over run with Plague, a natural way to cut back on population. Disease is a natural mechanism to enforce control of the size of a population. Ten years later we witnessed the emergence of the AIDs epidemic, and I pulled out that old article, shrugged because it was so prophetic and yet I had had no way to do anything about it.

Canaries in the CoalMines
I have lived with a deep belief that our need for growth and expansion was leading directly to conditions that would, in the end, mean species extinction. "Overly dramatic thinking" I would tell myself. "Stop being so pessimistic, stop exaggerating everything.” But I never altered in my "exaggerated" vision of what lay before us. The planet is an ecosystem, a non-linear complex adaptive system that has sensitivity as great as any sensitive human psyche. The near hysterical feelings that inflicted many of us 40 years ago just indicated that we were canaries in the coalmines. The people who have already died in the wake of climate changes and the incredible number of species that have already become extinct are perhaps even more the canaries in the coalmines. The psychological impact of living with the specter of species extinction is unknown, and I'm not ready to go public with the difficulties I had myself, adapting to a vision that was so defeatist. I eventually emerged somewhat stronger and ready to be an environmental warrior, if only I knew where to put my efforts. But I could not throw in with the green agencies springing up everywhere; they seemed to imply there were private solutions. "If only" we would stop driving to the jobs we had to drive to, if we were going to keep the jobs that fed our families. "If only we would stop using paper, that was a necessary piece of our knowledge worker, working tools. "If only" we would personally stop doing anything that added to pollution in our small local environment. "If only" we would stop using foods that grew in the agro-industrial system of food production, and switch to organic foodstuffs.

There are No Private Solutions
It made no sense to me, given the image of the global eco-system, where everything thing is deeply connected. Yes, I could eat "organic" vegetables, but what about the water table, and the farms right next to the organic farms, where pesticides were used copiously, sinking down to the water table, and making the easy trip to the neighboring farms ostensibly free of pesticides. I knew the chemicals used so massively would end up everywhere, from the water table to the rainfall, to the air, and into every one of us, from our local environment to the poles of our planet. And sure enough, the bears in Alaska carry within them the pesticides and toxins that we sought to avoid in that personal local manner. "NO," I knew there were no private solutions. Our largest industries to our smallest organizational units were connected, and until we were able to effect the activities of those larger industrial complexes, until everyone was compelled to do the same things, because they were endorsed by our governing agencies, including our private, commercial and "for profit," organizational entities, we were in grave danger as a species. I followed our demise; we all have followed the signs of global warming as it raced forward through the years, always quietly thinking "there are no private solutions."

Killing Mentation and Global Warming
I thought about trying to vote for women in public office, thinking they might do better. I thought of the work of David Buss from U.Texas. He studied "killing mentation" and found that men think about killing many times, every day. I think women are socialized differently, they don't think about killing all the time, it is not socially sanctioned. We think what we are socialized to think, we are not born thinking about killing, it is not hardwired into our species-specific, psychological mechanisms. The capacity to think of killing, to day-dream of killing, is present and hard wired, however, the fact of killing mentation has to be the byproduct of learning and special environmental conditions. Buss uncovered something urgently important. Men who were socialized to think about killing constantly, were running all those agencies I mention, the governments of the world to most of the Fortune 500, and even many of our non-profit agencies including those devoted to the conservation of the planet. At the lead are people who constantly think of killing.

Modern Warfare and Global Warming
Modern warfare rests entirely on the oil economy. You all know how much oil based energy it take to fly those planes we use to bomb, --over and over, night after night-- the people in the Middle East. The victims of the bombing are not just other men, the warriors of nations. The victims are also the women and children, hiding in their homes in absolute terror. If there is such a thing as unusual trauma, it defines the life of the people who live with nightly bombings over which they are entirely powerless. PTSD takes new meaning in those circumstances and one is reminded of living with the Nazi's in WWII, never knowing when the Gestapo would bang on your door and carry you and your loved ones away to an almost certain death under inhuman conditions. All this contemporary fear-ridden "war against terror" where the opponents of terror may in fact be terrorists, this is all dependent on the oil economy and ever growing global warming and the march to species extinction.

Our Soldiers are also Victims
Our soldiers are also victims, we send our least advantaged young men and women to fight our wars, to live in countries where they are not wanted, to commit acts that are not normal and therefore only feasible when one believes that one is acting for the benefit of one's social group, one's family and one’s nation. Fighting in a war is an act of altruism; it is self-sacrifice for the benefit of your group. Even suicidal acts of "terrorism" are self-sacrificial altruistic actions, with personal death and "the good of the nation" as the only reward. And the net result for everyone is yet another step forward in our march towards species extinction.

The War on Global Warming is the War on Species Extinction
The war on terrorism has to transform to the war on species extinction, and this is the war on global warming. In this, Al Gore is our leader. We voted for him once before, and the trickery built into our constitution made room for our vote to make no difference. I have never before seen a politician who I believed was inherently honest and not out for his own aggrandizement. But I think Al Gore is honest, and ready to lead our war on global warming. We will all sacrifice when the changes that have to occur in our daily lives take place. However, it will not feel like sacrifice when making those changes are mirrored everywhere, and we are all doing it together, not as a private solution, but as a unified nation joined to fight the same “external” enemy, global warming. (See the comments passed on in Seah’s blog, reporting on how we tend to form and solidify friendships based on common enemies or people and things we “don’t like.” http://davidseah.com/?s=my+friend+is+the+enemy+of+the+enemy&submit=search+site

We Need our Leaders
We need the buy-in of our leaders, and we need our leaders to see this battle as the only battle that matters. Fighting global warming will bring ethical changes to our lives, and therefore whatever the difficulties, we will all feel better. Everything is affected by the smallest change in a non-linear complex adaptive system. The biggest change and one that might have a chance of reversing the march to species extinction is to put at the head of our nation, the greatest and bravest warrior that has yet to step forward, in the fight against global warming. I think I cried when I felt that moment that Al Gore might announce to all of us that he is going to run for president, because I thought there might be hope in the future, for me and for my family, my small personal community as well as for my global community. It was perhaps a perfect example of crying at the happy ending. Lets all work for Al Gore as he might lead us away from the pending disaster we are facing.

The following article from the LA Times describes in vivid detail the changes in diseases, the sudden development of new bacterial growth in Alaskan oysters, the appearance of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, malaria and encephalitis on the slopes and valleys rising up to Mount Kenya. If you didn't believe in global warming before, reading this article might change you. If you already knew what we are facing across the planet, you might find this article calming, as it demonstrates the work being done by scientists who are devoting their lives to research that could help Gore and the rest of us, in this war on global warming, destruction of the environment across our planet, and the pending species extinction. To calm myself all those years ago, when recognizing the emerging patterns, I would tell myself “well cockroaches will survive, they might have the right DNA to make it through the climate changes, so life itself will continue on, despite whatever happens to us homo sapiens.” But frankly, that isn’t enough for me, I have higher hopes for our capacities for self-correction.

To see the article from the LA Times, by Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer, follow the link below. However for those of you who don’t want to follow the link, I think its important enough to include the entire article, reprinted beneath the link below.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-sci-disease25feb25,1,3847467,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true

LA Times

Global warming: enough to make you sick
Rising temperatures are redistributing bacteria, insects and plants, exposing people to diseases they'd never encountered before.

By Jia-Rui ChongLA Times
Times Staff Writer

February 25, 2007

CORDOVA, ALASKA - Oysterman Jim Aguiar had never had to deal with the bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus in his 25 years working the frigid waters of Prince William Sound.

The dangerous microbe infected seafood in warmer waters, like the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska was way too cold.

But the sound was gradually warming. By summer 2004, the temperature had risen just enough to poke above the crucial 59-degree mark. Cruise ship passengers who had eaten local oysters were soon coming down with diarrhea, cramping and vomiting - the first cases of Vibrio food poisoning in Alaska that anyone could remember.

"We were slapped from left field," said Aguiar, who shut down his oyster farm that year along with a few others.

As scientists later determined, the culprit was not just the bacterium, but the warming that allowed it to proliferate.

"This was probably the best example to date of how global climate change is changing the importation of infectious diseases," said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, acting chief of epidemiology at the Alaska Division of Public Health, who published a study on the outbreak.

The spread of human disease has become one of the most worrisome subplots in the story of global warming. Incremental temperature changes have begun to redraw the distribution of bacteria, insects and plants, exposing new populations to diseases that they have never seen before.

A report from the World Health Organization estimated that in 2000 about 154,000 deaths around the world could be attributed to disease outbreaks and other conditions sparked by climate change.

The temperature change has been small, about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 150 years, but it has been enough to alter disease patterns across the globe.

In Sweden, fewer winter days below 10 degrees and more summer days above 50 degrees have encouraged the northward movement of ticks, which has coincided with an increase in cases of tick-borne encephalitis since the 1980s.

Researchers have found that poison ivy has grown more potent and lush because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In Africa, mosquitoes have been slowly inching up the slopes around Mt. Kenya, bringing malaria to high villages that had never been exposed before.

"It's going to get very warm," said Andrew Githeko, a vector biologist who heads the Climate and Human Health Research Unit at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kisumu. "That's going to mean a huge difference to malaria."

Githeko, 49, grew up in the central highlands in a tiny village near the town of Karatina, about 5,700 feet above sea level.

His home was different from most of Africa. The air was damp and chilly. On clear days, he could see the glaciers on Mt. Kenya, the second-highest peak in Africa at 17,058 feet.

When he was a child, lowland diseases like malaria were unknown in Karatina. But perhaps 10 years ago, a smattering of cases began to appear.

He had long ago left his home to study the great plagues of Africa - Rift Valley fever, malaria, cholera and others. The appearance of malaria in the highlands, however, was a mystery worth returning home for.

Githeko dispatched a colleague to collect mosquito larvae in puddles and streams around Mt. Kenya, some as high as 6,300 feet. Tests later identified some of the mosquitoes as Anopheles arabiensis, one of the species that carry malaria.

Githeko's findings, published in 2006, marked the highest A. arabiensis breeding site ever recorded in Kenya and was the first published report of malaria infections in the central highlands, he said.

He knew by watching Mt. Kenya's gradually disappearing glaciers that his world was warming, and that lowland diseases would eventually work their way higher. "But we did not expect this to happen so soon," he said.

Githeko's work has been echoed in a small number of studies around the world.

In 1996, health authorities reported a human case of tick-borne encephalitis in the Czech village of Borova Lada, elevation 3,000 feet. Until then, the Ixodes rinicus tick, which carries the disease, had never been seen above 2,600 feet.

The case caught the attention of Milan Daniel, a parasitologist the Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education in Prague who has been studying the movement of ticks in the Czech Republic for half a century.

He scoured the Sumava and Krkonose mountains and found that the ticks had migrated as high as 4,100 feet largely because of milder autumns over the last two decades, according to a series of studies published over the last four years.

>From 1961 to 2005, the mean temperature in the Krkonose Mountains had increased about 2 1/2 degrees.

"This shift of the ticks," Daniel said, "is clearly connected with climate changes."

According to a landmark United Nations report released this month, global warming has reached a point where even if greenhouse gas emissions could be held stable, the trend would continue for centuries.

The report painted a grim picture of the future - rising sea levels, more intense storms, widespread drought.

Predicting the future of disease, however, has proven difficult because of myriad factors - many of which have little to do with global warming. Diseases move with people, they follow trade routes, they thrive in places with poor sanitation, they develop resistance to medicines, they can blossom during war or economic breakdowns.

"No one's saying global warming is the whole picture here," said Dr. Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. "But it is playing a role. As climate changes, it's projected to play an even greater role."

In a Beltsville, Md., laboratory filled with bathroom-sized aluminum chambers, U.S. Department of Agriculture weed physiologist Lewis Ziska is peering into the future of one of the key components of global warming - rising carbon dioxide levels.

CO2 levels have been on the rise since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution more than 200 years ago. Today, they are at their highest point in more than 650,000 years.

In the tightly sealed chambers, Ziska re-created pre-industrial conditions by turning down the concentration of carbon dioxide to 280 parts per million. In another box, he simulated the present with 370 parts per million. In a third box, he pumped up the carbon dioxide to 600 parts per million, the estimate for 2050.

Much of Ziska's work has centered on ragweed, a noxious plant that sets off allergy sufferers, such as Ziska himself. The weeds inside the tanks suck up carbon dioxide. "It's like feeding a hungry teenager," he said.

Collecting yellow pollen in plastic bags fitted around the plants, Ziska found that current conditions produced 131% more pollen than pre-industrial conditions. Future conditions produced 320% more.

"For us weed biologists, this is the worst of times and the best of times," he said.

The impact of global warming has not been all bad. Researchers recently found that rising temperatures have helped reduce some diseases related to cold weather. One British study found that the number of children infected with a cold-like virus known as respiratory syncytial virus has been declining with warming temperatures.

Combining meteorological data and emergency room admission rates from 1981 to 2004, physiologist Gavin Donaldson at University College London found each increase of 1.8 degrees clipped three weeks off the end the virus' winter season.

"A small amount of warming can go a long way, as far as changing disease transmission dynamics," said Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of Global Environmental Health at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Given the gradual pace of warming, there are also some chances to adapt.

After Prince William Sound's Vibrio outbreak in 2004, the state required more oyster testing in some areas. In the last two years, there have been only four cases of Vibrio food poisoning.

Life in Aguiar's remote inlet has largely returned to the way it was before. This winter has been cold. Aguiar, a bear of a man with a riotous beard, huddled inside the houseboat for warmth recently as the temperature outside hovered around 20 degrees. The pale Northern Lights pulsed over the snow-laced Chugach Mountains, and skins of ice grew on the still water.

Come summer, Aguiar will start sending oyster samples to the state. When the temperature hits about 55 degrees, he'll drop his oyster baskets 60 or 100 feet in the water for about 10 days to clear out the bacteria.

It's a solution he can live with in a warming world.

"It's not all evil," he said. "I just don't like to see rapid change."
jia-rui.chong@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-sci-disease25feb25,1,3847467,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true