Warming Arctic Threatens To Spread Disease

I wrote a short piece last week suggesting that, although the bad consequences of climate change outweigh the good, there are, in fact, some positive results of a warming planet.  An example is longer growing seasons for Canadian farmers.

But here’s another bad one that we don’t read too much about – the spread of diseases in both human and animal populations, and in interactions between the two.Per the article linked here, permafrost conditions in the arctic that made it impossible for disease to spread are now gone in many places, and scientists are beginning to see the outbreak of tuberculosis, toxoplasma (a parasite common in European cat populations), erysipelas (a disease of domestic pigs), giardiasis (an intestinal parasite of humans), malaria, and anthrax.

Will the consequences be fairly minor and easily contained?  No one knows.

In case it needs to be said, it’s wrong for humankind to be so wanton in its abuse of the global environment, causing terrible effects we can predict with perfect accuracy, as well as thousands of others we can’t.