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Puerto Rico’s slow-motion medical disaster.
Hurricane Maria left a ruined island and 16 Puerto Rico residents dead. But public health experts worry that figure could climb higher in the coming weeks, as many on the island fail to get medicines or treatment they need for chronic diseases.
Hurricane Maria left a ruined island and 16 Puerto Rico residents dead. But public health experts worry that figure could climb higher in the coming weeks, as many on the island fail to get medicines or treatment they need for chronic diseases. Roads are blocked, supplies are stuck at the ports, and only 11 of Puerto Rico’s 69 hospitals are open. Doctors at one children’s hospital were forced to discharge 40 patients this week when their generator ran out of diesel fuel.
But the immediate need for treatment is only the beginning of the island's public health challenges. With the island’s entire power grid knocked out, Puerto Rico’s massive pharmaceutical manufacturing industry—which provides 30 percent of the island’s gross domestic product and 90,000 jobs—has been shut down. FDA administrator Scott Gottlieb announced this week that his agency is trying to shift production to the mainland US to prevent shortages of cancer drugs, immunosuppressants for transplant patients, and medical devices for diabetes patients. Bringing Puerto Rico back online will make a big difference for people living both on—and off—the island.
In the short term, energy is essential to keeping patients alive. Medicines like insulin to treat diabetes or tetanus vaccines need to be kept cool. That means either in a refrigerator at 45 degrees Fahrenheit (for seasonal flu or tetanus vaccines) or at room temperature, which is about 72 degrees (for insulin). But without air conditioning, Puerto Rico’s tropical climate is hitting the upper 80s this week. “Refrigeration and cold storage are really big issues, and will be for the forseeable future,” says one former federal emergency response official who asked not to be identified.
The patients most affected by the failing cold chain will be those with chronic conditions. One-fifth of Puerto Rico's population has some kind of disability, including half of those above age 65. Its 3.5 million residents have the highest prevalence of diabetes in the United States—nearly 13 percent compared to 8.7 percent on the US mainland. That helps make Puerto Rico the most vulnerable US territory to a natural disaster like Hurricane Maria, according to a recent study by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers .
Federal health officials say they are already seeing patients come into emergency clinics with chronic disease related problems. “People with the most dire need are dialysis patients,” says Lt. Cmdr. Garrett Martin-Yeboah of the US Public Health Service and the national clinical pharmacist to the Department of Health and Human Service’s assistant secretary for emergency preparedness and response. “They are on a good number of prescription medications. Because of the volume of medications and tenuousness of their condition, those are some of the patients we are concerned about.”
The immediate refrigeration problem is solvable. Martin-Yeboah said a squad of federal emergency care doctors who were stationed on the island before Maria struck brought battery-powered mini-fridges that can run four days without power. They also brought their own diesel generators—though a week after the storm left, there is still not enough fuel to run them. “There are some challenges in Puerto Rico with fuel and things like that,” says Martin-Yeboah, who coordinates medicines and supplies for HHS doctors. “We’ve had to go to the airport to retrieve medical supplies,” she says. “Our suppliers can get them to Puerto Rico, but can’t get it to the site.”
The Navy hospital ship Comfort, which was finally dispatched this week, may also help in the short-term, especially for trauma patients. The converted supertanker will bring 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms, a CAT-scan, and radiology capabilities to Puerto Rico. Meanwhie, emergency responders are using ham radios to reach some communities and even considering air-dropping medicines into villages, according to Nicolette Louissaint, executive director of Healthcare Ready, a group that coordinates post-disaster medical supply chain between public agencies and private suppliers such as pharmacies and drug manufacturers.
“The most important part is how we support the patients,” Louissant says. “These disaster responses are massive logistical operations. We have to do unusual things. Folks are looking at how you can get up to the mountains, and what solutions to move medicines to people but also people to medicines.”
Louissant noted that less than 10 percent of the island’s pharmacies were open as of Wednesday. Overall, there is no panic over medicines, according to health officials working in Puerto Rico. But they are prepared for the situation to worsen if conditions don’t improve quickly. Chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease and diabetes are often not counted in the final toll of natural disasters like Hurricane Maria. “These people end up dying from things that are preventable under ordinary circumstances,” said the former federal emergency official. “That’s what is going to start happening.”
But long-term, the effects of Puerto Rico's collapse may ripple far beyond the island. Twelve of the top 20 global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have manufacturing facilities on the island, according to the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company. As a result, Puerto Rico manufactures seven of the top 10 drugs sold globally including AstraZeneca's cholesterol treatment Crestor, Abbvie arthritis drug Humira, and Johnson & Johnson-owned HIV drug Prezista, USA Today reported. Those three companies have said supplies of their drugs are in good shape and drugmakers are working to get production up and running. Still, Puerto Rico officials say it may be months before the island's power grid is fixed.
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Covering climate change, with urgency and creativity.
A look at news outlets bringing innovation, urgency and new audiences to stories on climate change.
A look at news outlets bringing innovation, urgency and new audiences to stories on climate change
ARTICLE BY
MICHAEL BLANDING@michaelblanding
A rescue helicopter hovers in the background as a woman and her poodle use an air mattress to float above flood waters from Hurricane Harvey while waiting to be rescued from Scarsdale Boulevard in Houston Adrees Latif/Reuters
The assignment was simple: find out what energy companies knew about climate change, and when they knew it. InsideClimate News (ICN) reporter Neela Banerjee was initially skeptical they’d find any significant evidence that fossil fuel companies knew about the dangers of global warming. “At first, we thought, this was ridiculous,” she says. “We are not going to find anything.” As the nonprofit news organization’s team began to work through congressional testimony and talk to climate scientists, however, they found mention that oil giant Exxon has not only been involved with climate change research, but had actually published studies in peer-reviewed journals in the 1980s.
One Exxon scientist, Henry Shaw, had even published studies as far back as the late 1970s. When Banerjee and her colleagues tracked down his research, they discovered Exxon had fitted out one of its supertankers with sophisticated equipment to monitor carbon dioxide in the ocean and the atmosphere at a time when few scientists were studying global warming at all. Though Shaw had passed away, the reporters discovered document after document showing how Exxon’s scientists had agreed that emissions from fossil fuel companies were warming the planet, putting humans at risk. “It was astounding,” Banerjee says.
InsideClimate News published its findings in a nine-part series, “Exxon: The Road Not Taken,” in fall 2015, detailing the extent of Exxon’s scientific research, as well as how the company covered it up after it turned in the 1980s to suddenly denying climate change existed. The story earned ICN a nomination for a Pulitzer in Public Service and it was a winner or a finalist for practically every other environmental and investigative award last year.
Despite the urgency of climate change as an issue, in-depth stories like the one produced by ICN are a rarity. A veteran of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, Banerjee joined ICN out of frustration at not being able to pursue in-depth investigations on the topic. “Top management in the newsroom don’t give a hoot about climate change: ‘It’s depressing. It’s boring. It’s not sexy,’” she says. “They’ll tell you it’s the most important beat on the planet, but unless it’s wrapped up in politics and who’s up who’s down, they don’t care.”
Coverage of climate change overall is still just a small fraction of the overall news budget
Statistics bear her out, in part. Aside from PBS, network broadcast news has virtually stopped covering the topic. A study published by Media Matters for America in March found evening newscasts and Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox devoted only 50 minutes combined on climate change last year—despite such important climate-related stories as the signing of the Paris climate agreement, several extreme weather events, and the presidential campaign—during which there were no debate questions about climate change.
“Coverage is nowhere near where it should be for something that is so central to understanding how we can live, work, play, relax in a 21st-century society,” says Maxwell Boykoff, author of the 2011 book “Who Speaks for the Climate?” and a University of Colorado professor who has been tracking news coverage of climate change for 15 years. “Television has very much shirked its responsibility, and that is very worrisome.”
Major newspapers, while better, have been uneven over the past decade. According to research by Boykoff and others, coverage in the five largest U.S. newspapers decreased from an average of nearly 400 stories a month by 2007 to less than half that five years later. While coverage has rebounded to about 300 a month over the past two years, coverage of climate change overall is still just a small fraction of the overall news budget, says Boykoff, mostly spiking around political events such as President Trump’s recent decision to pull out of the Paris accord, rather than in-depth coverage of how countries around the world are adapting to changes in climate, or how it is affecting the world’s poorest citizens.
“The coverage since Trump has taken office is as high as it’s been, but it’s stunning how much of it is pegged to his activities, worries, and threats,” says Boykoff. “It hasn’t enhanced productive discussion on these issues. Instead, it’s been filled with fear and woe and worry.” Case in point: a 7,000-word cover story in New York magazine in July called “The Uninhabitable Earth,” which envisioned an apocalyptic worst-case scenario of what climate change could wreak in the next century, complete with mass extinctions, famine, disease, and war. The story was criticized as too alarmist even by climate scientists and those who work in climate politics, including one who fretfully called it “climate disaster porn.”
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It’s no wonder then that Americans are woefully undereducated on the topic. A 2016 study by the Yale Project on Climate Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, found only two-thirds of Americans even believe climate change is happening. Just over half believe it is caused by humans. And only 15 percent are aware that more than 9 out of 10 scientists agree on both points.
The dearth of coverage can be explained, at least in part, by the difficulty in covering an issue that defies most journalistic conventions, says Bud Ward, who has reported on the issue for more than 20 years and is editor of Yale Climate Connections, published by the Yale Project. Climate change is often perceived as an abstract concept, he says, lacking a timely news hook: “It affects only polar bears I’ll never see, or it will only take place in 2150 or beyond.” Just as crucially, since nearly all scientists are in agreement on the problem, the issue often lacks clearly defined sides. “The villain is us, or villains are everywhere.”
A Houston interstate is submerged in water after Hurricane Harvey brought widespread flooding to the area. The devastating impact strong and more frequent rainstorms are having on the city was detailed in The Texas Tribune/ProPublica's “Boomtown, Flood Town” months before Harvey hit Richard Carson/Reuters
The science behind the phenomenon, meanwhile, often lacks headline-grabbing revelations. “Science’s goal is to incrementally advance fundamental understanding on very basic questions,” says John Wihbey, an assistant professor of journalism and new media at Northeastern University who recently collaborated with Ward on a paper about climate change coverage for Oxford Research Encyclopedia. “If they [scientists] can collect data, test a hypothesis, and show something new … they’ve done their job.” By contrast, he says, journalists’ goal is to inform as many people as possible in as accessible a way as possible. “They are both dedicated to truth, but the importance of publicity and the scope of the audience is just very different.”
That discrepancy creates an inherent difficulty for science writers in making the topic feel fresh and newsworthy. “You can write that sea ice is at an all-time low, but a month later, it will still be at an all-time low,” says Seth Borenstein, a veteran beat reporter on climate change for the Associated Press. “The same goes for the monthly global temperature. At some point, you are reporting the same thing again and again.” Borenstein frequently looks for fresh angles in the data, going back to past studies to see if current reality matches predictions, or searching for significant anniversaries—such as the moment when more people alive have never felt a cooler than average month—to create news hooks.
When considering climate issues, Borenstein says, newer journalists will make the mistake of pitting scientists against political experts or think tanks. “That is like the doctor telling you you have cancer, so you go to the dentist for a second opinion,” Borenstein says.
The problem of false balance is one that has dogged climate change since global warming first started becoming an issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In part due to lack of data—and in part due to intentional obfuscation by fossil-fuel companies and right-wing think tanks—reporters have struggled to give fair representation to all perspectives. Says Wihbey, “How do we cover this as a political issue that seems to have two sides, but where there seems to be overwhelming scientific data accumulating on one side?” Oftentimes, they settled for a “he said, she said” story, giving equal weight to both.
That started to change in the mid-2000s, especially after an influential paper Boykoff co-authored with his brother, Jules, a political scientist, entitled “Balance as Bias,” published in the journal Global Environmental Change in 2004. The Boykoffs analyzed more than 600 stories selected at random from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Despite the International Panel on Climate Change’s release of a scientific consensus that humans contributed to global warming, they found that more than half of the articles gave equal weight to human-caused and natural-caused explanations for the issue. “In other words,” the Boykoffs wrote, “through adherence to the norm of balance, the U.S. press systematically proliferated an informational bias.”
The dearth of coverage can be explained, at least in part, by the difficulty in covering an issue that defies most journalistic conventions
When the study was repeated a few years later, the problem of false balance had largely gone away—both as the evidence supporting man-made climate change grew stronger and as journalists grew savvier in their reporting.
That has made it all the more surprising that the issue of false balance has once again reared its head in the last six months, as the presence of climate change deniers in high positions in the current presidential administration has once again put journalists in a quandary. Recent statements by Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and President Trump himself questioning the science have been echoed by far-right media sites such as Breitbart, Infowars, and Daily Wire, and put new pressure on journalists to include dissenting views.
That has made it more crucial than ever that journalists are able to separate fact from opinion, says Emmanuel Vincent, a project scientist at the University of California, Merced, who launched the website Climate Feedback three years ago as a forum for scientists to weigh in on the accuracy of media coverage. “Rick Perry said that climate change is due to the oceans, and a journalist may just let it go and say that’s his opinion, but it contradicts reality,” he says. “It should be the job of the journalist to say that.”
One commonly held misconception about climate change science is that it can only predict trends in weather patterns and can’t be tied to specific events. That’s no longer true, says Heidi Cullen, chief scientist at Climate Central, a nonprofit partnership of scientists and journalists and a Columbia Ph.D. who was formerly The Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert. “The science has evolved and the models have gotten better,” Cullen says, “so we now have these peer-reviewed methodologies that can attribute individual extreme weather events to climate change.”
That development can help journalists in search of news hooks that bring the effects of climate change home to their readers. In 2012, Climate Central launched a program to train local meteorologists in how to accurately report on climate change and created Surging Seas Risk Finder, an interactive website at which users can enter their zip code to see the projected effects of rising sea levels in their area.
A more extensive recent multimedia project by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica brought the effects of climate change down to an even more local level. Published last December, “Boomtown, Flood Town” details the devastating impact that stronger and more frequent rainstorms are having on the city of Houston, months before the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey in August. The story used weather data and statistical analysis to show that in the past 28 years, the Houston area has been hit by eight storms. Five of those storms are thought to have a one in 100 chance to occur in a year, including spring storms in the past two years that together led to the deaths of 16 people and required thousands of high-water rescues.
“Work by scientists has shown that the frequency of these storms is clearly going to be worse because sea levels are rising,” says Texas Tribune and Reveal reporter Neena Satija, who wrote the story with fellow Tribune reporter Kiah Collier and ProPublica’s Al Shaw. As readers scroll through, a data visualization dynamically zooms in on a map of Houston, which gradually lights up with colored dots showing where flooding occurred in those two storms—more than a third of which are outside the city’s official flood zone, expected to be flooded only once every 100 years.
As the story continues, it weaves in personal stories of residents affected by the floods, showing readers where their homes are located on the map—such as the home of a woman whose two granddaughters were trapped atop tables as dark floodwaters swirled around them during the infamous “Tax Day” flood of 2016. At the same time, it demonstrates how policy decisions can exacerbate the effects of climate change. Runaway development in Harris County where Houston is located has replaced acres of prairie grass, formerly protected by switchgrass, which can have roots as deep as 15 feet, with impervious paved surfaces that impede drainage. By showing those areas of development on the map along with the areas affected by flooding, the visualization helps make apparent the political decisions behind the problem.
Despite those clear associations, the public officials the team interviewed are largely in denial about the effects. The former head of the flood-control district, according to the story, “flat-out disagrees with scientific evidence that shows development is making flooding worse,” and Houston still has no plans to take climate change into account. Since the story was published, residents of Memorial City, a neighborhood particularly hard hit by the flooding, have used it in their lobbying efforts to improve the city’s flood control infrastructure.
As Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on the Gulf Coast in late August, the reporters wrote a follow-up story, warning that the city wasn’t ready for the potential catastrophic consequences of the third superstorm in as many years. Unfortunately, meteorologists’ worst nightmares came true, as almost two feet of rain fell on the city overnight, stranding dozens of residents and causing at least five storm-related deaths in one of the worst natural disasters in Texas history.
A woman stands amidst the debris of her destroyed home in Agua Caliente, on the outskirts of Acapulco. In his story about climate change’s impact on Acapulco, Jason Margolis examined how tropical storm Manuel had little devastating impact on the city’s ritzy resorts, but destroyed entire communities just miles away TOP: David Butow/Corbis via Getty Images BOTTOM: Claudio Vargas/Reuters
Tying climate change to other issues, such as urban development, is one way to make the issue more accessible to a broader range of readers.
Stories by Indian journalist Stella Paul show just how far-reaching the impacts of climate change can be. While researching AIDS in India in 2012, she noticed two cities that had a significant jump in the number of women working in the sex trade in the southern city of Hyderabad. Investigating that rise, she discovered that many of the women had recently come to the city from agricultural areas decimated by drought, often after their husbands had committed suicide. Paul interviewed more than 50 women for the story she wrote about the issue for Reuters, shedding light on an unknown consequence of climate change that was hidden in plain sight. “The death of farmers from suicide had been covered very widely, but there was a story right next to it that wasn’t covered at all,” she says.
After that experience, Paul began searching for other stories at the intersection of climate change, gender, and human rights. Through an online network of women activists posting from Africa, South America, and other regions, she began to uncover more issues that had remained under the radar. One recent story details an increase in women being sexually assaulted in Guatemala because they are forced to walk farther to fetch water. Efforts by international NGOs to provide clean water to the villages took on an added urgency from the attacks. “It wasn’t just a health issue, it was a security issue,” she says.
By exploring such topics, Paul says, she is able to create new interest in both climate change and human rights issues. Finding stories like these sometimes just takes a shift of focus in applying a climate change lens to whatever beat a reporter is currently on. As one example, she remembers a journalist at a workshop in Bhutan, who was struggling to find a business journalism angle on the country. “But Bhutan is completely reliant on tourism, and if the glaciers melt, they won’t have enough hydroelectric power,” she says. “A lot times reporters aren’t even aware of the stories they have when they are sitting right on them.”
One organization that has recently put more effort into funding climate change stories is the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which has sponsored more than 50 projects looking in-depth at the effect of climate change on lives and livelihoods around the world. One project over the past year for publications including National Geographic looked at the way Bangladesh is adapting to rising sea levels—including “floating hospitals” in low-lying areas where permanent hospitals are no longer possible. In another story it funded this spring for The New York Times, reporter Kai Schultz looks at the island nation of the Maldives, where a green tax on resorts has fallen prey to government corruption, leaving guesthouse owners—and tourists—unprotected from rising seas. Despite the $3-a-night tax paid by tourists at guesthouses, residents on one island have been forced to construct their own makeshift seawall out of pieces of concrete and broken tiles to protect themselves from the surging waves.
In addition to funding articles, the Pulitzer Center’s efforts have focused on outreach to bring climate change stories to more diverse constituencies. To date, it has formed partnerships with 35 colleges and universities, ranging from liberal arts schools to large state colleges, as well as high schools and middle schools in St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and North Carolina to design curricula around climate change topics. “They are more or less neutral spaces where you can engage people who have maybe not made up their minds,” says Jon Sawyer, executive director of the Pulitzer Center.
For future grants, the center is working in a component that gives additional funding for efforts to reach new audiences with innovative techniques, such as data visualization or short videos for social media. “There is a lot of disinformation and distortion out there, with large segments of society being inundated with sources telling them climate change is not an issue,” Sawyer says. “Show us how a piece might end up on Fox or right-wing radio and have some credibility.”
Christopher Tin conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road for his album "The Drop That Contained The Sea", which aims to bring attention to climate-induced water shortages Christopher Tin
Sawyer is not the only journalist working to find unconventional ways to tell climate change stories in order to reach a broader audience. After writing about climate change for 15 years, radio journalist Jason Margolis was feeling frustrated that he was only reaching those who were already convinced by the science. “I wanted to try and hit that sweet spot where people could still be persuaded to listen,” he says. Through a yearlong Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, he developed new angles on the story, taking as his inspiration comedians like Jon Stewart and John Oliver, who are able to tell hard-hitting new stories in an entertaining way.
The stories he has produced in the past few years for Public Radio International address the topic of climate change with a breezy, even quirky sensibility. One features a climate activist and self-dubbed “eco-tainer” in Indianapolis, who emcees a monthly game show called “Ain’t Too Late Show” that has the audience in stitches at the same time it teaches them climate facts. Another follows the story of a composer who created a classical music concept album that follows a drop of water from snow pack to ocean to atmosphere as a way to draw attention to climate-induced water shortages. He’s clearly struck a nerve: The album, which includes lyrics from ancient texts in 10 different languages, debuted at number 1 on Billboard’s traditional classical album chart.
Several of Margolis’s recent stories are set in Mexico, where Margolis took an extended trip. Among his stops was the legendary, if faded, resort town of Acapulco, which was ravaged by tropical storm Manuel the previous fall. Many of the interviews he’d arranged with resort owners were lackluster—for them, the storm was a dramatic event from which they quickly recovered.
Walking down the beach with his fixer, however, he discovered a village where residents were still recovering from the damage. “When you go to one of these resort towns, you forget about the people who are washing your dishes and changing your sheets,” he says. “After the storm, this hotel was up and running five minutes later, and these people’s lives were destroyed. It’s a good reminder that if you have money, then even with the worst of climate change, you can pay your way out of it.” Despite the heaviness of the topic, Margolis still keeps the tone conversational as he talks to a community leader who has vowed to stick it out in his hometown, which dates back 400 years, despite the fact that many of its houses are now buried with silt that overflowed from the nearby river.
The problem of false balance is one that has dogged climate change since global warming first started becoming an issue
A similar balance between serious subject matter and engaging delivery has been the hallmark of “Years of Living Dangerously,” the television series on the National Geographic Channel (previously on Showtime). The show follows an unusual hybrid model, bringing in actors and other celebrities to investigate serious climate-related issues. In the inaugural episode, Harrison Ford travels to Indonesia to investigate deforestation from palm oil plantations. In later episodes, “Dawson’s Creek” alum Joshua Jackson explores coral bleaching, Jessica Alba talks with clean energy entrepreneurs, and—in one of his few appearances post-“Late Show”—David Letterman charmingly examines India’s transition to a solar-based economy.
“There is always a risk bringing in Hollywood actors that you will turn some people off,” says co-creator Joel Bach. But that’s outweighed, he says, by the huge amounts of additional attention they can draw. Still, Bach and co-creator David Gelber—both former producers of “60 Minutes”—are careful not to position the stars as experts on the subject matter. “They are really proxies for the viewer, and there to learn along with the audience,” Gelber says.
Bach and Gelber created the series after struggling to cover climate change at “60 Minutes.” “I had this sense that my God this really is the biggest story out there, and ‘60 Minutes’ wasn’t covering it the way we wanted to,” Gelber says. In addition to the star power, the producers focused on high production values, shooting episodes in a highly cinematic fashion. Despite the shiny surface, the show doesn’t sacrifice journalistic rigor, tackling complex scientific and economic concepts in naturalistic on-location interviews and trying to focus on solutions, rather than just fill the screen with doom and gloom. They hope their show can be an antidote to the almost total lack of coverage of the issue on network news. “I mean, God damn it,” Gelber says. “Twenty years from now, people will look back at NBC, CBS, and ABC and wonder what the bleep were they thinking.”
Whether the nightly news is covering it or the current presidential administration is supporting it, there are still plenty of stories out there on climate change for enterprising journalists to discover, says Yale’s Ward. In addition to exploring how individual communities are affected by and adapting to climate change, there are legitimate policy debates about the best solutions—whether to support technologies, such as natural gas and nuclear, and how to best support and incentivize a switch to renewable energy that can drive down the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
While climate change is perhaps the global issue, it is an intensely local one, with effects from climate change felt on agriculture and business from coastal cities to rural farms. The place to look for stories is close to home as well, says Northeastern’s Wihbey. “The more you bring scientists and journalists together it’s all to the good,” he says. “In any given city or region, there are going to be just a handful of climate scientists and just a handful of journalists who cover the environment. I would think any small organization can provide some event space and a lunch and just say, ‘Hey, we want to bring you guys together to talk on an informal basis.’”
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These infections are likely to get worse as the climate changes.
A European study recently took a broad look at what kind of microorganisms are most likely to be affected as climate change heats, cools, dries, and wets the world around us.
When the climate changes, so do all the things that rely on the climate, including people, plants, and pathogens. A European study recently took a broad look at what kind of microorganisms are most likely to be affected as climate change heats, cools, dries, and wets the world around us.
In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, a research team from the University of Liverpool performed a broad assessment of how factors of climate change impact pathogens that make humans and animals sick. By understanding which microorganisms are more sensitive to environmental change, we have a better idea of how infection rates might change as the environment grows progressively less stable.
What Are Climate Drivers?
In the study, the authors note there is evidence that climate shifts are already causing changes in the incidence of disease — allowing some to appear at higher or lower altitudes and latitudes. The authors note modeling is frequently used to predict which pathogens could advance, but this study uses climate variables, along with data on selected pathogens, to get an idea of which pathogens we should worry about the most.
Climate variables that affect these pathogens are an important part of this study. The research team refers to these variables as "climate drivers" that include:
Primary drivers: Extreme weather events, climate change, climate oscillations, moisture, rainfall, temperature, and wind fluctuations.
Secondary drivers: Altitude, salinity, particulate matter, and vegetation.
The team chose to analyze 101 pathogens considered "high impact" to humans and animals in Europe and categorized them by how sensitive they are to these factors. These pathogens included bacteria, fungi, helminths, protozoa, and viruses. Overall, there are 157 pathogens categorized because some pathogens are affected by both primary and secondary variables.
Which Pathogens Are Set to Be Destabilized by Climate Change?
Humans, animals, plants, and microorganisms rely on climate variables that are always in some local flux. When climate drivers swing far enough beyond the expected spectrum, larger change is bound to happen.
When comparing pathogens to climate drivers, the study team found that 99, or 63% of the pathogens were likely to respond to at least one climate driver. Fifty-eight, or 37%, of the pathogens, like HIV, did not show sensitivity to climate variables. That narrows the field of pathogens likely to go askew because of environmental change.
More than 90% of that initial group of 99 pathogens were sensitive to between one and five climate drivers. Other statistical findings on the numbers of pathogens likely to be affected by climate change include:
81 of 99 pathogens were affected by primary climate drivers
56 of the 99 pathogens also had secondary climate drivers
18 of the 99 agents had sensitivity to secondary, but not primary climate drivers
Overall, pathogens were found to be most sensitive to climate drivers (primary and secondary) that include rainfall, temperature, moisture, and particulate matter.
The pathogen with the highest sensitivity to climate factors was Vibrio cholera, the microbe that causes the serious, and often deadly, diarrheal disease, cholera. Cholera had nine climate drivers, indicating high volatility in the face of climate change.
First runner up was the helminth, a parasite known as the "liver fluke" found throughout the world where sheep and cattle are present. A "helminth," is the term for any parasitic nematode, worm, or fluke.
Next up is anthrax, Bacillus anthracis, a naturally occurring bacteria that can prove fatal depending on infection type, and available treatment.
Rounding out the top four is Borrelia burgdorferi, the tick-borne bacteria that causes Lyme disease. (We're already seeing increased incidence of Lyme-bearing ticks in the Northeast US.)
Don't Miss: What to Do if You Think Your Child Has Lyme Disease
Fungi are more sensitive to the wind, moisture, and salinity, while protozoa and helminths are the most sensitive to altitude.
For all of the selected pathogens, the methods of transmission, in order of frequency, include:
Non-sexual, direct contact
Food
Fomite (fomites are non-living objects that carry pathogens, like hospital surfaces)
Water
Sexual, direct contact
Vectors (a vector is an animal like a tick or mosquito, which spreads disease)
Soil
Game birds for sale at an outdoor food market.
Image by Cory Doctorow/Flicrk
The study found zoonotic pathogens are likely more sensitive to climate than others. "Zoonotic" microorganisms are those spread between animals and can jump to humans, like some types of influenza, gastrointestinal infections, and other diseases. Food and waterborne pathogens were more likely to be zoonotic, while infections spread through direct, non-sexual, contact are less likely to be zoonotic.
The study authors note that while "having more drivers does not directly indicate that pathogens are more climate sensitive" this study assumes "that being sensitive to a broader range of climate variables means that climate change is more likely to affect a disease" in complicated ways.
Two-thirds of the pathogens identified as being vulnerable to climate change have more than one driver — and that makes the way climate affects the pathogen, and its resulting infection, hard to predict.
The study also touches on the possible emergence of new pathogens, or adaptations of existing microorganisms in the face of climate drivers and other factors — like civil wars that occur in drought stricken areas, or where public healthcare breaks down, leading to infectious diseases along the lines of cholera. Many human practices may change — for the better, or for the worse — and those changes can drive contamination and disease transmission between animals and humans, and among humans themselves.
Study authors write: "As an estimated 75% of emerging diseases are zoonotic, emerging diseases may, therefore, be disproportionately sensitive to climate."
A wildfire at Florida Panther NWR.
Image by Josh O'Connor-USFWS/Flickr
Study researcher Marie McIntyre said in a press release:
Climate sensitivity of pathogens is a key indicator that diseases might respond to climate change, so assessing which pathogens are most climate-sensitive, and their characteristics, is vital information if we are to prepare for the future.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported earlier this year that temperatures in 2016 marked three consecutive years of record warmth on the planet. Regarding "climate drivers" that could modify and promote the infections we face? The future is already here.
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Trump’s first list of science priorities ignores climate—and departs from his own budget request.
President Donald Trump has translated his campaign promise to “make America great again” into his administration’s first blueprint for federal investment in science and technology.
Trump’s first list of science priorities ignores climate—and departs from his own budget request
By Jeffrey MervisAug. 17, 2017 , 1:40 PM
President Donald Trump has translated his campaign promise to “make America great again” into his administration’s first blueprint for federal investment in science and technology.
The White House today issued a four-page memo telling federal agencies that their research dollars should be focused on delivering short-term dividends in strengthening national defense and border security, the economy, and “energy dominance,” as well as improving public health. It says achieving those goals should not require additional spending, and that agencies should focus primarily on basic science, and then step aside as quickly as possible to let industry pursue any results that show commercial promise.
The memo, written jointly by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), is an annual reminder of the administration’s research priorities sent to agencies before they submit their next budget request. Those requests are due next month for the 2019 fiscal year that starts in October 2018. (Congress has yet to act on the budget for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins 1 October; most observers expect lawmakers to extend current spending levels well into the new fiscal year.)
The memos typically don’t change much from year to year. But this is the first one from the new Trump administration. And it comes even as the White House lacks a presidential science adviser and OSTP director. It’s co-signed by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney and Michael Kratsios, a deputy assistant to the president, who since March has also been acting as OSTP's head.
The memo lists five priority areas (in this order): military superiority, security, prosperity, energy dominance, and health. Each is prefaced by the word “American” in keeping with the administration’s approach to branding issues.
The phrase “basic research” appears only in connection with prosperity, the third target area. Agencies are told to “continue, and expand where necessary, efforts to focus on basic research” to promote “emerging technologies such as autonomous systems, biometrics, energy storage, gene editing, machine learning, and quantum computing.” Even then, however, agencies are directed to “reduce funding overlaps with industry in later-stage research, development, and deployment of [these] technologies.”
In the health arena, the memo says “agencies should prioritize research focused on solutions for an aging population, as well as on combating drug addiction and other public health crises.” It also lists research “that will lead to more efficient and effective healthcare.”
Beyond the obvious differences with Obama’s approach, this guidance also doesn’t have a lot of similarities with President Trump’s own 2018 budget request.
Matthew Hourihan, AAAS
The guidance on energy says the goal of federal research investments should be “a consistent, long-term supply of lower-cost American energy.” That goal, it asserts, can be achieved through “a clean energy portfolio composed of fossil, nuclear, and renewable energy sources.”
It should be no surprise that Trump’s list differs markedly from previous memos from the Barack Obama administration. Obama’s top five multiagency research priorities for his 2017 budget, for example, were global climate change, clean energy, Earth observations, advanced manufacturing, and innovation in the life sciences, biology, and neuroscience. Three items on that list—climate research, Earth observations, and advanced manufacturing—are completely absent from Trump’s priorities. So are biology-based initiatives pushed by Obama, including the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative and the Precision Medicine Initiative.
Reaction
The initial reaction from some veteran federal budget watchers is bemusement. “Beyond the obvious differences with Obama’s approach, this guidance also doesn’t have a lot of similarities with President Trump’s own 2018 budget request,” says Matthew Hourihan, who analyzes federal research spending for AAAS in Washington, D.C. (which publishes ScienceInsider). Hourihan contrasted the memo’s focus on support for breakthrough military technologies, technology to prevent terror attacks, and helping older Americans remain healthy with the large cuts for those same areas that Trump has proposed.
Hourihan says the budget guidance’s support for so-called “precommercial technology” in energy would suggest the administration would support for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, whose mission is to explore promising ideas too risky for industry. Yet Trump has asked Congress to shut down the $300 million agency, launched in 2009. (The Senate has balked at that idea.)
Kei Koizumi, who headed OSTP’s research analysis shop during the Obama administration and is now at AAAS, says the memo is consistent with Trump’s emphasis in his 2018 budget on “defense first, security second, with the economy, energy, and health after that.” But he notes that it is silent on many important activities, including support for international collaborations and for training the next generation of scientists apart from improving the technical skills of the overall U.S. workforce. “There’s also no mention of space,” he notes, despite the recent relaunching of the National Space Council. In his view, “the memo shows that the administration doesn't have science and technology priorities as such.”
Posted in: FundingScientific CommunityTrump administration
doi:10.1126/science.aao7094
Jeffrey Mervis
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Trump budget threatens Zimbabwe climate change resilience programs.
USAID has improved rural climate change resilience since 2013; now the U.S. may cut that lifeline, with dire results for Zimbabwe’s poorest.
A narrow dirt road snakes along the banks of a small river and leads to the remote village of Birirano. Marked by baobab trees and drought tolerent shrubs, this small community is sandwiched between desolate mountains in Zimbabwe’s eastern district of Chipinge. Far from the main highway, it is largely cut off from the rest of the country and the world.
With limited livelihood possibilities, villagers here have long been locked in an unending cycle of poverty. Over the past decade, their hard scrabble lives have grown even harder as lengthy and intensifying climate change-induced droughts have made rain-fed agriculture increasingly unsustainable, with crops repeatedly withering and dying.
Then, over the last few years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) stepped in and became synonymous with hope in Birirano, as the agency funded projects to build resilience against escalating global warming threats.
USAID’s ENSURE program (Enhancing Nutrition, Stepping UP Resilience and Enterprise), for example, funded the construction of a weir dam that feeds water to new irrigation infrastructure, bringing the promise of a healthy harvest to thousands of local residents. While USAID provides the capital, a variety of NGOs pitch in to manage the actual work. In the case of Birirano, World Vision, a humanitarian nonprofit, oversaw the project.
“The Chipinge Rural District Council constructed an access road leading to the [new Birirano irrigation] project [while] other technical arms of government worked alongside World Vision [ENSURE] to monitor the work,” Richard Ndou told Mongabay. The World Vision Zimbabwe deputy chief explained that the US $55 million ENSURE program, has significantly benefited six food insecure districts in the drought-prone Bikita, Chivi and Zaka districts in Masvingo province; and the Buhera, Chimanimani and Chipinge districts in Manicaland province. Thanks to the program, more than 220 hectares are now under irrigation in the six districts with more than 4,200 small scale farmers benefiting.
“The beneficiaries have had three crops under irrigation using a [new] drip irrigation system,” Ndou revealed. “This project is an example of what we can achieve when we work together with donors, in this case, USAID, communities and the government.”
Ndou noted how each new project seems to inspire the next. After former Manicaland Provincial Administrator Fungai Mbetsa visited the new irrigation project, the Birirano School was rehabilitated through the Schools Improvement Grant. Then the school was provided with electricity through the Rural Electrification Program.
The Birirano success story is just one of many USAID funded accomplishments. One villager, Amos Vhumbu, greatly troubled by his region’s recent recurrent droughts, is overjoyed by USAID’s contribution to his community: “This area is now very dry and this irrigation scheme is our only hope!” Vhumbu told Mongabay.
However, all of these new hopes have now been put into doubt by the election of President Donald Trump, and with the announcement that his administration plans to drastically slash funding to USAID as part of measures to reduce foreign aid spending.
The U.S. brings hope to Zimbabwe
The USAID program to reduce the impacts of climate change-induced drought in Zimbabwe was launched by the U.S. government in 2013 with US $175 million in long and short term funding under the Development Food Assistance and Feed the Future programs. According to a summary report from the USAID mission in Zimbabwe, $55 million was earmarked for emergency assistance and $120 million for other food security activities over five years.
Today, USAID funded projects aimed at curbing the worst impacts of climate change can be found across Zimbabwe, and those projects are currently benefiting more than a million people in food insecure rural areas.
The US $55 million ENSURE program alone is expected to benefit 300,000 people over a five years period, providing them with new and rehabilitated dams, plus a variety of irrigation projects in the six targeted food insecure districts of Masvingo and Manicaland provinces. A related program, dubbed Amalima, funded to the tune of US $44 million, is running in four food insecure districts in Matabeleland North and South, also over five years.
The dire need for U.S. foreign aid has been driven by two major factors: though Zimbabwe once had a vibrant agricultural sector, a double punch of bad government policies and worsening climate change intensified droughts have seen a deep decline in farm production.
The 2015 and 2016 agricultural seasons were especially hard hit by the onset of El Niño. That particular El Niño-driven African drought was driven by “one of the strongest El Nino events of the last 50 years” which left more than 4 million people in the country in need of emergency food assistance. Climate scientists agree that the harshness of El Niño conditions experienced in Zimbabwe recently were exacerbated by climate change.
What’s been achieved
“USAID helps rural Zimbabweans by addressing immediate food security needs, while gradually building resilience to climatic shocks,” reads part of the USAID Zimbabwe summary report.
In addition to its climate resilence work, USAID is also promoting agricultural recovery and livelihood development under the Feed the Future program — aimed at reducing poverty in rural areas, raising incomes and improving food security at the household level.
According to USAID, the $8 million Feed the Future crop development program is covering 15 districts in Matabeleland North, Mashonaland West, Manicaland, Masvingo and Midlands provinces, while the livestock program currently operates in 12 districts in Matabeleland North and South, Mashonaland East, Manicaland, Masvingo and Midlands provinces.
The crop development program, if not slashed by President Trump, is expected to benefit more than 50,000 farmers, while the livestock development project would benefit 5,000 dairy and beef farmers over five years. Through the livestock program, thousands of dairy and beef cattle were served by the program and saved from last year’s drought.
The USAID programs are builidng resilience to climate change shocks through more efficient water harvesting, and they have gained increasing support from Zambabwe’s government. The former administrator for Manicaland province, Fungai Mbetsa told journalists in the city of Mutare emphatically last year that projects to harness water for irrigation, such as those funded by USAID, are the solution to the lengthening droughts being experienced in the province.
“We need to harvest water by building dams for irrigation in the province,” declared Mbetsa. “We have plenty of perennial rivers flowing through the province and the water can be harvested for irrigation. The USAID funded projects have helped communities in drought prone areas.”
Trump brings great uncertainty to Africa
Many drought stricken rural communities were hoping that their turn for much needed help would arrive soon, with new USAID funded programs initiated in their regions. But those hopes were largely dashed with the release of Donald Trump’s appropriately nicknamed “skinny budget” this spring.
According to Foreign Policy, a U.S. publication, the Trump administration’s 16 March budget “proposal vowed to slash aid to developing countries by over one-third.”
The worried question now on the minds of Zimbabwe’s rural poor: Will the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress — which has final say over the 2018 budget — slash some or all funding for aid projects in Zimbabwe?
No one currently knows the answer. Some in the United States are strongly resisting Trump’s draconian budget proposals. U.S. Senator, Ben Cardin, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for example, was quoted by Reuters recently, saying he was deeply disappointed and dismayed at President Trump’s proposal to slash foreign aid spending. Unfortuantely for Zimbabwe, the Democratic Party minority in the U.S. legislature has little deciding power at the moment.
Shortly before Trump made his proposed cuts public last March, U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe Harry Thomas Jr. told local media that he would reach out to the administration, urging it not to slash aid to the nation: “We are very proud that the U.S. government is the largest donor to Zimbabwe,” he said, “that we are giving $150 million each year to combat HIV/Aids, another $150 million to feed 2.1 million food insecure people… $10 million for democracy and governance.…” The result of Ambassador Thomas’ plea is unknown.
While uncertainty rules for now, what it is clear is that the expansion of USAID projects to other affected areas in Zimbabwe is now gravely in doubt. The U.S. State Deoartment could not clarify the government position on USAID funding cuts or foreign affairs funding in general. Responding to a query from Mongabay, the State Department deferred: “Your query would be best answered by the Agency of International Development (AID),” it said.
The USAID mission and US embassy in Zimbabwe both responded by saying that there is no clarity on the issue as yet. The USAID spokesperson in Zimbabwe, Doreen Hove, told Mongabay that: “We appreciate such requests as well as your interest in our work. However, we do not have clarity yet, on the important issues you have raised. Hence we will get back to you once we have clarity.” Aleksandra Ristovic, an official from the USAID home office, replied: “unfortunately we cannot offer an interview [to Mongabay] at this time.”
U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson is more outspoken. He was recently quoted by Reuters defending the proposed cuts as a needed correction to a “historically high” State Department budget that had grown to address conflicts abroad in which the U.S. engages engage, along with disaster aid. Noting the massive contribution to disruptive climate change made by the United States, and by EXXON, Tillerson’s past employer, some critics characterize the U.S. threats to cut aid to developing nations, especially for climate change resilience, as hypocritical and cruel.
Zimbabwe lawyer and human rights expert, Passmore Nyakureba was blunt in his assessment of what drastic USAID cuts would mean to his country’s social and economic future: “We are mainly a donor-funded economy, and the slashing of funding to [USAID] programs in Zimbabwe, or Africa in general, will spell doom and crisis in the country. So we urge President Trump to reconsider that stance and take into account that the decision might leave a trail of disaster not only in Zimbabwe but other developing countries.”
The 2018 United States budget must be approved by Congress by the beginning of October. Until then doubt and confusion will likely reign in Zimbabwe and across the developing world.
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