Climate change will cause more pandemics

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Climate change is increasing the odds of another pandemic and rates of malaria and other diseases.

“The risk of another pandemic in our lifetime is over 50%,” said Raj Panjabi, the senior director for global health security and biodefense on President Biden’s National Security Council.

Panjabi laid out the interconnectivity between health and climate change during a panel at the Milken Institute global conference taking place in Los Angeles this week.

Deforestation and slash and burn agriculture is pushing animals out of their habitats and into closer contact with humans, leading to further opportunities for zoonotic infections where a virus passes from animals into humans, much like the coronavirus spread from bats to humans.

A lack of public health facilities available in remote areas further aggravates the problem, limiting officials’ ability to quickly identify and contain an outbreak.

It’s not just pandemics that are becoming more likely because of climate change. Diseases like malaria are spreading into regions that were previously unaffected as warming temperatures push mosquitoes to cooler areas and at higher elevations. In North America, Lyme disease is spreading farther north into Canada.?

A recent study explored the relationship between malaria and climate change and found a definitive link between the two.

“There is no doubt that we are going to see more of these occurrences as sea temperature gets hotter than ever and that translates into extreme weather events,” Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said on the panel. “From those, we are going to see an upsurge in malaria, cholera and other water-borne diseases.”

What can be done to slow these occurrences? The panelists uniformly recommended a bill similar to the CHIPS and Science Act passed last year to increase domestic manufacturing of semiconductors. Just as that act spurred private investment and research into the industry, a bill laying out biosecurity as national security would allocate funds for global infrastructure, vaccines and new technologies to help predict an outbreak before one occurs.

“Covid is like a trial run. A 7.0 earthquake, not a 9.0,” said Robert Nelson, managing director of Arch Venture Partners. “The only way to be effective is to make it a national security argument. Otherwise we have zero chance of getting the money to do stuff we want to do.”

Other stories I’m watching

• Facebook’s former chief technology officer is launching a climate-focused investment firm.
• It’s not just gas-powered stoves that are getting a second glance. Regulators are now looking to curb emissions from lawn mowers and leaf blowers.
• Non-profit workers, including environmental activists, are looking to unionize, following in the footsteps of employees at large corporations like Starbucks.
• The New Yorker has a package of stories focusing on climate change solutions and new innovations. It’s worth a read.
• The Horn of Africa has been in a devastating drought for the past five years. New research reveals it is caused by climate change.
• New Environmental Protection Agency rules are expected that would limit power plant emissions, but any reduction would hinge on operators investing in carbon capture technology. The technology has been around for decades but is not widely used by power plants because of its costs and the high electricity rates needed to power the tech.
• Oil jobs pay well but workers are uninterested in living in Midland, Texas, making it difficult for companies to find employees.

Conversations I’m interested in

• Boston Consulting Group partner Tim Mohin breaks down new EU legislation that would require large companies, including US firms operating in the bloc, to mitigate the environmental impact of their supply chains.
• Daniela V. Fernandez Fernandez, CEO of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, launched a newsletter focused on ocean-climate news and investments.