Can’t stand mosquitoes and dream of a vacation in a place frosty enough to keep them away? Resign yourself: the cold available on this planet is no longer enough to satisfy your desires. For the first time, the buzzing of mosquitoes has come to break the icy silence of Iceland’s fjords.
Certainly the ascertained presence for now is limited to a few specimens. But they are vanguards, scouts of an army destined to win because it has a formidable ally: homo sapiens sapiens. So sapiens that they are bringing back to the sky the enormous amounts of carbon that, as long as they were underground, kept the climate stable. Two centuries of burning fossil fuels-as well as increasing droughts, floods and hurricanes-have given the green light to an army of mosquitoes that continues to expand ever more rapidly.
The climate crisis is a highway for mosquitoes. According to an analysis by Carbon Brief, by 2080 nearly a billion people could find themselves exposed to mosquito-borne diseases for the first time if the world follows the worst-case scenario of warming, the one ensured by the denialism that has taken over the White House and besieged Europe.
After all, the WHO, the World Health Organization, sounded the alarm many years ago, explaining the mechanism that is leading to the expansion of the areas where mosquito-borne diseases grow. More heat means fewer frosts that reduce insect populations; more heavy rains on soils made compacted by months of drought mean more stagnant water accumulation that favors larvae. Mosquitoes are perfect for seizing the opportunity: accelerated reproduction, more bites, increased virus circulation.
So territories that were not on risk maps yesterday are becoming so today. And the problem is not a ruined vacation. The World Health Organization pits data on the spread of diseases such as malaria, dengue, chikungunya, Zika, with their corollary of suffering, deaths, and rising health care costs. One can help the WHO in its risk reduction campaigns. Or one can decide not to listen to it. Perhaps by cutting off its funding to shut it up, as the president of the United States has done.
