Health Care Infrastructure for Climate Change

WM:Preparing America’s Health Care Infrastructure for the Climate Crisis, September 15, 2022

There are many ways that climate change will and WILL NOT impact disease transmission. It won’t increase diseases like COVID. 

The pandemic, while coming from primitive practices, such as markets in Wuhan, was sourced in bat saliva. Bats are migratory. As such, their ability to transmit their diseases to humans will not be affected by Climate Change. Prohibiting their use as a commodity is the best way to prevent a recurrence of this class of illness.

Likewise, diseases like Monkey Pox and HIV came from Africa but likely not because of changes in climate, including deforestation. The exact method of transmission is unknown - but deforestation is certainly not part of it.

In summary, neither is from warming. Bats migratory, so exposure already there, regardless of warming.

Mosquitoes are already migratory and endemic to tropical climates. The best way to reverse diseases they would transmit to humans is to find a pesticide such as DDT (or reversing the ban upon it) to better control their population.

This is not to say that Climate Change will not have an impact on the provision of medical services or the spread of disease in the human population.

As climate worsens in the Sun Belt, both through rising sea levels and endemic drought, there will likely be movement over time from those states toward the Rust Belt and Midwest. Doctors will follow the population shift. They go where the people are or will not relocate to warmer climates. Medical services in underserved rural areas will improve as a result. This is not to say that we should encourage climate change, which is upon us, but this impact should be noted.

Climate change will impact the movement of climate refugees into the United States. Climate refugees will bring diseases endemic to their nations to the developed world. While a global economy already does this, mass movements will increase it, even if the United States limits the number of climate refugees it accepts. We will need to prepare to see new pandemics. Luckily, the recent pandemic has expanded our ability to respond quickly to such events.

 

Climate change will definitely impact the practice of medicine, but not in the way some witnesses present. The biggest drag on our ability to remediate and reverse climate change is political, with the political opposition funded by those with deep pockets and their comrades in the Minority party.

It is important that the wealthy who would fund climate denial be given skin in the game. In general, doctors are among that economic class. One would think that they would trust the science, however, some follow the party line when it comes to climate policy. An important consequence of climate change is the increase in the amount and severity of hurricanes. We currently provide flood insurance to beach homes. Capping the amount paid this insurance will provide an incentive to support efforts to fight warming.

In prior testimony to the Appropriations Committee, we have offered a solution to climate change. The biggest impactor is our addiction to gasoline powered cars and diesel powered trucks. Please see the attachment for a reasonable alternative and how to develop it: electric cars using overhead power transmission and central control.

Attachment: Energy Appropriation Video

Future of U.S.-Taiwan Trade

 WM: The Future of U.S.-Taiwan Trade, September 14, 2022 

To state the obvious, this hearing is the most effective statement to China on its recent reaction to the Speaker’s visit to Taiwan. I am sure it was noticed in Beijing. It is exactly the show of strength appropriate to the situation. Well played.

American doctrine on Taiwan is the One China Policy, which guarantees Taiwanese independence while recognizing that China still claims it as part of its territory. This allowed for the current economic relationship.

The United States should take China at its word and provide Taiwan, as a part of China, with the same trade advantages provided to China - from Most Favored Trading Status to supporting its membership in the World Trade Organization. There is one exception to that rule: membership in any regional compact having to do with regional trade.

In March’s hearing before the Committee on the 2022 Trade Policy Agenda, we commented on the need to resume regional trade negotiations. Taiwan could be a part of this process. This should also affect labor law in the United States. From those comments:

If the Belt Road and forced labor in China are still an issue, the answer is probably resurrecting some form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The right of businesses to short-circuit local law in special tribunals must be modified or  ended in any redux. This should be the case with all such trade agreements.

Agreements which try to modernize other nation’s labor arrangements need an awareness that America’s performance on issues of democracy, organized labor, wage & hour and safety enforcement are far from stellar. Perhaps any arrangements should include monitoring American employers and the government agencies that should be looking out for them.

At the very least, end right-to-work. Such laws are really right-to-exploit laws, including through the use of human trafficking. Migrant workers in the food industry, from harvesting to processing and packing face all sorts of bad treatment, sometimes with that treatment abetted by local law enforcement.

Overall, a basic element of trade policy is lacking in the United States. An analysis of how consumption taxes can improve our trade policy is found in a second attachment. The first attachment on tax reform is included to clarify the terms of the second. These are attachments because they have been provided before. I am available to explain these topics. There are many who can talk about how value added taxes relate to trade, but I am the only one who can walk the Committee and staff through how an employer-paid subtraction value added tax applies.

Attachment: Tax Reform Video links on the page

Attachment: Trade Policy Video