Climate change and vector-borne diseases of humans

1665 cover source

Theme issue ‘Climate change and vector-borne diseases of humans’ compiled and edited by Paul E. Parham, Joanna Waldock, George K. Christophides and Edwin Michael

05 April 2015; volume 370, issue 1665

PREFACE

• Introduction:
  

  Climate change and vector-borne diseases of humans

  Paul E. Parham, Joanna Waldock, George K. Christophides, Edwin Michael
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20140377; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0377. Published 16 February 2015

ARTICLES

• Review article:
  

  Climate, environmental and socio-economic change: weighing up the balance in vector-borne disease transmission

  Paul E. Parham, Joanna Waldock, George K. Christophides, Deborah Hemming, Folashade Agusto, Katherine J. Evans, Nina Fefferman, Holly Gaff, Abba Gumel, Shannon LaDeau, Suzanne Lenhart, Ronald E. Mickens, Elena N. Naumova, Richard S. Ostfeld, Paul D. Ready, Matthew B. Thomas, Jorge Velasco-Hernandez, Edwin Michael
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130551; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0551. Published 16 February 2015

• Review article:
  

  Climate change and vector-borne diseases: what are the implications for public health research and policy?

  Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Lucien Manga, Magaran Bagayoko, Johannes Sommerfeld
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130552; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0552. Published 16 February 2015

• Review article:
  

  Evolution in action: climate change, biodiversity dynamics and emerging infectious disease

  Eric P. Hoberg, Daniel R. Brooks
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130553; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0553. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  Evidence that implicit assumptions of ‘no evolution’ of disease vectors in changing environments can be violated on a rapid timescale

  Andrea Egizi, Nina H. Fefferman, Dina M. Fonseca
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20140136; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0136. Published 16 February 2015

• Review article:
  

  Climate change and Ixodes tick-borne diseases of humans
  

  Richard S. Ostfeld, Jesse L. Brunner
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20140051; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0051. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  Accelerated phenology of blacklegged ticks under climate warming

  Taal Levi, Felicia Keesing, Kelly Oggenfuss, Richard S. Ostfeld
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130556; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0556. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  Climate influences on the cost-effectiveness of vector-based interventions against malaria in elimination scenarios

  Paul E. Parham, Dyfrig A. Hughes
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130557; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0557. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  Climate change influences on global distributions of dengue and chikungunya virus vectors

  Lindsay P. Campbell, Caylor Luther, David Moo-Llanes, Janine M. Ramsey, Rogelio Danis-Lozano, A. Townsend Peterson
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20140135; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0135. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  Present and future projections of habitat suitability of the Asian tiger mosquito, a vector of viral pathogens, from global climate simulation

  Y. Proestos, G. K. Christophides, K. Ergüler, M. Tanarhte, J. Waldock, J. Lelieveld
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130554; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0554. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  The impact of climate change on the geographical distribution of two vectors of Chagas disease: implications for the force of infection

  Paula Medone, Soledad Ceccarelli, Paul E. Parham, Andreína Figuera, Jorge E. Rabinovich
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130560; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0560. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  Potential effects of warmer worms and vectors on onchocerciasis transmission in West Africa

  Robert A. Cheke, Maria-Gloria Basáñez, Malorie Perry, Michael T. White, Rolf Garms, Emmanuel Obuobie, Poppy H. L. Lamberton, Stephen Young, Mike Y. Osei-Atweneboana, Joseph Intsiful, Mingwang Shen, Daniel A. Boakye, Michael D. Wilson
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130559; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0559. Published 16 February 2015

• Review article:
  

  Climate change impacts on West Nile virus transmission in a global context

  Shlomit Paz
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130561; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0561. Published 16 February 2015

• Research article:
  

  Dengue: recent past and future threats

  David J. Rogers
  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B: 2015 370 20130562; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0562. Published 16 February 2015

Previous

This issue

• Table of Contents
• Table of Contents (PDF)
• About the Cover
• Index by author
• Back Matter (PDF)
• Ed Board (PDF)
• Front Matter (PDF)

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Public Health Issues

Beware America…the Megadroughts Are Coming

The Big Picture RT

Published on Feb 17, 2015

If you think the drought that California has been enduring for the past few years is bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. That’s according to a new study from scientists at NASA

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Food-Matters

Look out – GMO Mosquitoes To Be Let Loose in America

The Big Picture RT

Published on Feb 17, 2015

Alexis Baden Mayer, Organic Consumers Association joins Thom Hartmann. A British company plans to release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Why is the company doing this – and could genetically modified mosquitoes be an even bigger nuisance than regular ones?

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Food-Matters

BP: huge rise in energy demand at odds with climate change fight

Annual outlook forecasts unsustainable rise in carbon emissions, fuelled by 40% rise in energy demand that it says can only be met by fossil fuels

BP’s annual energy outlook says renewables sources will not be able to cope with its forecast 40% growth in energy demand. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

Larry Elliott, economics editor

Tuesday 17 February 2015 10.00 EST Last modified on Tuesday 17 February 2015 19.06 EST

Rising global demand for energy over the next two decades is at odds with the fight against climate change, the head of BP said on Tuesday, as he outlined the oil giant’s forecasts showing unsustainable increases in carbon emissions.

BP’s annual energy outlook predicted that the world economy would double in size in the next 20 years, resulting in demand for energy rising by almost 40%. The company said two-thirds of this demand would be met from fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – and that this would lead to a 25% increase in carbon emissions.

BP said slower growth in China and India coupled with greater energy efficiency would mean that demand would rise by 1.5% a year over the next two decades, rather than the 2.5% a year recorded during the past decade.

Even so, the company said carbon emissions would be growing by 1% a year – “well above” the path recommended by scientists to keep emissions below the ceiling of 450 parts per million that would provide a 50% chance of stabilising global temperatures at 2% above pre-industrial levels.

The most likely path for carbon emissions, despite current government policies, does not appear sustainable.

BP chief executive Bob Dudley

Dudl added that the environmental risks put pressure on politicians to come up with a deal at this year’s climate conference in Paris. “The projections highlight the scale of the challenge facing policy makers at this year’s UN-led discussions in Paris. No single change or policy is likely to be sufficient on its own.

“And identifying in advance which changes are likely to be most effective is fraught with difficulty. This underpins the importance of policymakers taking steps that lead to a global price for carbon, which provides the right incentives for everyone to play their part.”

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

President Drew Faust on Harvard’s cosmopolitan community and connections. (…”Consider climate change…”).

Drew Faust
March-April 2015

I write to you from snowy Harvard, having just returned from a week in London, Cambridge, Zurich, and Davos—a trip that combined delivering the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University and meeting with alumni from five continents at the annual World Economic Forum. As this reaches you, I will be about to depart for China, where I will be visiting with some of the more than 1,700 alumni living and working there, meeting with University leaders from the country’s burgeoning higher education sector, and delivering an address on the role that research universities can play in combating climate change.

(….)
Harvard is one of the few places in the world capable of bringing together talented individuals to develop solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Consider climate change. Any concern for the future of the planet must be based, in part, on an understanding of the outsized role the built environment plays in consuming—and wasting—energy. The Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, launched just last year, convenes scholars and practitioners of design; of business, engineering, law, public health, and public policy; of the arts and the sciences to lead change in how people think about the buildings they inhabit and the buildings they construct—knowledge that can be used in Cambridge or Mexico City or Mumbai.

…(read more).

See: Harvard Center for Green Building and Cities

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Noam Chomsky answers questions from 6 personalities

duffer2205

Uploaded on Apr 1, 2011

Frank Barat asks Prof Noam Chomsky 6 questions that were sent by Alice Walker, John Berger, Ken Loach, Paul Laverty, Amira Hass and Chris Hedges.

Filmed in London in March 2011 by Martin Ginestie.

Frank Barat is coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, an initiative endorsed by Noam Chomsky.
russelltribunalonpalestine.com/​en/​

“Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians” a book by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe (edited by Frank Barat) is out now.
gazaincrisis.org/

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Big Oil is desperate for your love. Watch their silly plea in this insane video

http://grist.org/climate-energy/big-oil-is-desperate-for-your-love-watch-their-silly-plea-in-this-insane-video/
By Sam Bliss on 11 Feb 2015 37 comments

Big Oil would like you to know: Bill McKibben is evil and your punk friends want you to break up with your coal-fired girlfriend.

With the fossil fuel divestment movement gaining momentum and Global Divestment Day(s) coming up this Friday and Saturday, dirty energy’s devoted spin doctors are throwing desperation punches. This misinformational video, from the conservative Environmental Policy Alliance, wants you to believe that breaking up with the fossil fuel industry this Valentine’s Day will leave you in a cold, dark cave with no clothes or gadgets.

The video does make a good point: Basically everything we do and have relies on fossil fuels. All the more reason to show we don’t support dirty energy companies — because, you know, climate change — by divesting!

The point of the divestment movement is obviously not to quit using fossil fuels cold turkey, as the video suggests. As Naomi Klein explained in a recent interview, it’s about making it clear that the oil and natural gas industry is “a rogue sector, that their business plan is at odds with life on earth.” In short, these companies plan to sell enough fuel to emit five times more carbon than the atmosphere can handle without warming more than 2 degrees C.

This bizarre short isn’t the only frantic move in the fossil fuel industry’s last-ditch offensive against divestment. Just this week, the American Energy Alliance released a report called, “Coal: Bedrock of modern life,” and another study, commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, suggests that U.S. universities could lose money by divesting, based on the really stupid assumption that the future of the stock market will look like the past 50 years.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

How Does America Make Money Off War? Financial Interests, Military-Industrial Complex (2000)

The Film Archives

Published on Feb 17, 2015

The military–industrial complex, or military–industrial–congressional complex, comprises the policy and monetary relationships which exist between legislators, national armed forces, and the arms industry that supports them. These relationships include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry. It is a type of iron triangle. The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the military of the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure.

The term is sometimes used more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as corporations and institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, the Congress and executive branch.[5] A parallel system is that of the military–industrial–media complex, along with the more distant politico-media complex and prison–industrial complex.

A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. It can be defined as, “an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs.”[6] An exhibit of the trend was made in Franz Leopold Neumann’s book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
EE Film Festival
EJ Film Festival
Climate Film Festival

So can we really feed the world? Yes — and here’s how

By Nathanael Johnson on 10 Feb 2015 152 comments

Over the past six months I’ve been trying to figure out how we can feed ourselves sustainably and equitably without wrecking the planet. I’ve been reading, interviewing experts, and blogging as I learn. This, the final post of the series, is a synthesis of what I’ve found out.

If the world goes on with business as usual, there’s not going to be enough food to feed everyone by 2050. A lot of things would have to change.

And a lot of things should change! Currently, the daily effort to satisfy the collective appetite of humanity is causing deforestation, erosion, extinction, and massive release of greenhouse gases. In changing how it feeds itself, humankind can drive down poverty, sequester greenhouse gas, conserve wild environments, and put organic matter back into the soil. All of that is plausibly within reach.

Let’s start with population. If we can’t get a handle on our swelling numbers, everything else is moot. So what would make human population level off, or even fall? There are always political measures — like China’s one-child policy — but laws like that are hard to pass and even harder to enforce. They restrict freedom while producing terrible unintended consequences — like families getting rid of girls.

There’s another option that actually works better: Improve the lives of poor women and children.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Rick Berman on 60 Minutes

Rick Berman

Uploaded on Aug 4, 2009

Highlights of an interview with Rick Berman, who was profiled on 60 minutes in the spring of 2007. Rick Berman runs a public affairs firm in Washington, DC named Berman and Company.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice