Heat, diseases, air quality, mental health and migration.
The Florida Climate Conference hosted by the Climate Adaptation Center covered these topics this past week at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus.
Climate change training isn’t part of most medical school curriculums, said Dr. Ankush Bansal, co-founder of the organization Florida Clinicians for Climate Action. And he argued that it should be.
“We’re not taught about climate change, even to this day, in medical schools. There are a few medical schools around the country, Harvard is a prime example, where they do integrate climate change into the curriculum,” he said. “But it’s few and far between. And the only reason it happened is because the students demanded it.”
Rwanda ranks No. 1 in the world for integrating climate change and medical education, and that’s with having only one medical school in the African country.
Bansal said the U.S. needs to catch up, as 2024 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record.
“The climate crisis is both a health crisis and a human rights crisis,” he said.
Heat
The year is expected to be 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than in the preindustrial era, surpassing the previous record in 2023 at 2.45 degrees warmer than the 1850-1900 baseline.
And the center predicts 50 more extreme global heat days due to climate warming.
“Believe it or not, heat is the deadliest weather phenomena in the United States. It’s not floods, it’s not hurricanes,” said Bob Bunting, CEO and chairman of the center.
He said there should be a real-time monitoring system in the medical community that keeps track of heat deaths, just like for hurricanes.
“Heat deaths occur on death certificates a year later, and then we compile them. So, when we have a heat wave, we have no real-time monitoring system to know for sure: How many people are having heat stroke? How many people died? How many are having cardiovascular events? How many people are there on certain drugs that are exacerbated by heat that creates medical issues for them?” he said.
Signs of heat stroke include high body temperature, vomiting, confusion and disorientation, muscle cramps and aches, absence of sweating, headache and dizziness.
Bansal, the physician, said urban planning can help to alleviate the heat, prevent more greenhouse gases from being emitted into the atmosphere and benefit communities in other ways — things like green spaces: parks accessible to everyone, green roofs and community gardens.
“A lot of cities are building parks, but they’re building it in certain parts of the city, so everybody can’t use it, especially those most vulnerable,” Bansal said.
“You can also redesign ventilation, which … reduces the use of air conditioning. And why do you want to reduce the use of air conditioning? Yep, because it, well, it blows off heat. But how do you power the air conditioning? With the fossil fuels causing the heat.”
Diseases
A 2022 review published in Nature Climate Change showed 58% of infectious diseases studied were aggravated by warming climate.
Global warming and pandemics were linked together during a talk by David Kotok, chief investment officer for Cumberland Advisors.
He wrote a book that focused on pandemics and the economy.
According to Kotok, the Roman Empire in 27 B.C. experienced three pandemics, two of which occurred after volcanic eruptions that dropped the temperature by more than 2 degrees Celsius. That led to a surge in rat fleas carrying deadly bacteria.
“This flea is very sensitive to temperature change, and when the temperature cooled for the planet by 2 degrees, the flea flourished,” Kotok said.
But these days, there’s another culprit for temperature change.
“We are the volcanoes, whether the temperature goes up 2 degrees or down 2 degrees,” said Kotok.
Burning fossil fuels for energy releases heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, and the COVID-19 pandemic has come as the global climate continues to warm.
Warmer climate also means the spread of vector-borne diseases. Cases of dengue fever in the U.S. are three times higher than this time last year. And there were seven cases of malaria in Florida last year — all in Sarasota County — which triggered a statewide alert.
“Typically, in Florida, the mosquito season runs around March through October. Mosquitoes are most active when temperatures are in the 70s to the 90s … but it is increasing. And it’s increasing everywhere across the world,” said Ric Kearbey, a meteorologist with the CAC.
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