Climate Change will not mean you die from malaria
ONE of the things we’re often told about climate change is that the increasing heat will bring back malaria. As temperatures rise then the mozzies that carry it will be able to live further north and thus we’ll all die aiieeeee!
Sadly this idea is just total bullshit as this story shows:
Malaria has returned to Greece as financial cuts contribute to the re-emergence of a once extinct disease.
Eh? financial cuts? What’s that got to do with it?
Global health bodies have issued warnings to travellers to the worst hit region in the south of the country, with fears that Athens could soon be affected. Austerity budgets have resulted in drastic cutbacks in municipal spraying schemes to combat mosquito borne diseases.
In what is believed to be a first for Western Europe, Greece has experienced the first domestic cases of malaria since 1974. Other mosquito-borne diseases that have slipped back into Greece include West Nile virus.
These diseases are simply sod all to do with the temperature. Sure, we generally associate then with fly blown tropical hell holes but it’s the fly blown hell hole bit that’s important, not the tropical. Our very own Norfolk used to produce thousands of cases of malaria a year and it wasn’t until Mussolini drained the Pontine Marshes that Rome became malaria free.
It’s public health spending that keeps places free of these diseases, not changes (either up or down) in temperature.
Just another reason why we might not want to embrace that medieval lifestyle to deal with climate change. We need the money that capitalism produces to spray against disease, to drain the marshes. Something that is much more important than the temperature in killing people through things like malaria.
Posted: 23rd, October 2012 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
