Health Care and Global Warming

As I mentioned in a previous post, global warming is already helping to spread tripical diseases into new areas. Even where the diseases are already present, the type of dust storms that plague Australia right now will come to California and the Southwest and spread disease.

Consider Valley Fever, which I had to read about in a UK paper.

Higher temperatures and more intense storms are also linked to "valley fever", a disease contracted from a fungus in the soil of the central valley of California. The American Academy of Microbiology estimates that about 200,000 Americans go down with valley fever each year, 200 of whom die. The number of cases in Arizona and California almost quadrupled in the decade to 2006.

You can not lower the cost of health care if you don't begin to address global warming.

We are running out of time and the face of disaster is not the polar bear, even though that is what change.org and the NRDC thinks will make you open your wallet. Well, here is the human face of climate change and it is happening now.