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