The Tropics Come to Europe

Maybe one of the most trying challenges in combatting global warming in getting people to take a hard look at their lifestyles is that the average person may not notice any substantial changes in their immediate day-to-day routine. Their own private world hasn't drastically changed, so the problem can be put off, the immediacy ignored. Climate change is something for the wackos of Greenpeace, etc. The average Joe, well, doesn't need to worry about something so, well, distant.

Today, on Christmas day 2007, many people reading the New York Times may start to think a little differently.

The title of the article: As Earth Warms Up, Tropic Virus Moves to Italy.

Simply put, the little town of CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy, earned the unhappy distinction of being host to the first outbreak of a tropical disease in modern Europe. This village of 2,000 fell prey to chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. About 100 people came down with a sickness whose sypmtoms ranged from acute bone pain, high fever, to exhaustion. And there were plenty of potential suspects. Including, unsurprisingly, immigrants. Most of the villagers blamed Africans for bringing the plights to their haven of peace and quiet. The reality was a little different.

As the Times put it, "But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe."

This is real, and present in people's lives today, As the article explains:

And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.

“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”