Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jack Mayer, MD, MPH, of Middlebury, a Vermont primary care pediatrician and the author of “Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project” and “Before the Court of Heaven.”
[I]t was 1983, ticks were exotic creatures in Enosburg Falls on the Canadian border where I practiced pediatrics. My 8-year-old patient presented with a flu-like illness and a bizarre rash. I had seen photos in medical journals of this unique, giant bulls-eye rash that could only be Lyme disease. But there was no Lyme disease in Vermont.
That boy was the canary in the coal mine. By 1991 the Vermont Department of Health identified seven cases of Lyme statewide – in 2017 the number was 1,092 – the highest rate of Lyme in the nation. The cause: climate change.
A warming New England has enlarged the habitats of animals spreading diseases never seen in Vermont. Ticks, fleas and mosquitoes have brought us anaplasmosis (a potentially fatal disease spread by ticks) – three cases in 2008; 201 cases in 2017. Eastern equine encephalitis, mosquito-borne, was first detected in Vermont in 2012. Vermonters are now contracting babesiosis, Powassan virus, and West Nile encephalitis.
Health effects go beyond infectious diseases.
The 2018 National Climate Assessment – the product of 13 federal agencies – warns of record wildfires, crop failures in the Midwest, crumbling infrastructure in the South, floods in the upper Midwest and Northeast, drought with water and food scarcity, heat waves and heat-related deaths, sea level rise, and disease outbreaks.
The U.N.’s 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges a global commitment to move away from fossil fuels and remove carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere (not just reduction of future emissions) to prevent irreversible effects that would have devastating consequences across the globe.
I’m a physician, a scientist. I am evidence based. There is virtually unanimous scientific agreement about the human contribution to climate change.
The science is settled. Our Earth is experiencing a global climate emergency. We are like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled alive. Because the heating happens slowly, we don’t perceive the danger, until we are finally cooked to death.
We must reverse this global boiling, and we can by acting locally. It has been said that if the people lead, the leaders will follow. I’ve joined with a citizen group, 350Vermont, and worked with Middlebury’s Town Energy Committee and Selectboard to see what we can do locally about climate change.
This Town Meeting Day the citizens of Middlebury will vote on a climate solutions resolution from 350Vermont that has been passed by 38 other Vermont towns. This nonbinding resolution encourages local elected leaders to adhere to the state of Vermont’s Comprehensive Energy Plan to achieve 90 percent renewable energy by 2050 and town efforts to implement renewable energy strategies and conservation.
This is doable. We dare not delay.
I certainly don’t want to diagnose any more strange diseases in Vermont.
