Just in time for the summer mosquito season, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report last week detailing the latest climate-based threat to human health.

The two mosquito species capable of carrying dengue fever are rapidly spreading across the southern United States, increasing the incidence of the disease. We already knew that “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century” – now, it seems, we’re reaching the point where “threat” turns into “harsh reality.”

The report tells it straight:

Global warming threatens to further exacerbate the spread of many infectious diseases because increases in heat, precipitation, and humidity can foster better conditions for tropical and subtropical insects to survive and thrive in places previously inhospitable to those diseases.

And, as the NRDC discusses in its report, dengue fever is top among those diseases. Also known as “breakbone,” dengue causes “fever, severe headache, backache, joint pains, nausea and vomiting, eye pain, and rash.” The Center for Disease Control (CDC) warns that, “if unrecognized and not properly treated,” dengue can develop into dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and possibly kill its host. Unpleasant, right?

Once considered exclusive to the tropics, dengue has experienced a 30-fold increase in incidence rates during the last 50 years and has since spread to more temperate climates, now including huge swaths of the United States.

Read more

Another one bites the dust:

Los Angeles’ ‘coal free’ vow scuttles Utah power-plant expansion

Plans for a new coal-fired power plant in central Utah were canceled after the city of Los Angeles — the plant’s biggest power purchaser — signaled its intention to be “coal free” by 2020.

The Intermountain Power Agency — a political subdivision of the state of Utah co-owned by municipal and rural electric cooperatives — has dropped plans to build a proposed third 900-megawatt coal-fired generating unit at the Intermountain Power Plant near Delta, Utah.

“The project has been abandoned,” IPA spokesman John Ward said yesterday.

The decision came after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced last week that the city — which purchases about 45 percent of the IPA’s power — wants to end its use of coal-fired power by 2020. Villaraigosa said that the city will replace its coal-fired electricity with energy from renewable sources, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power….

The Sierra Club hailed the decision to abandon the plant, saying it marked the 100th plant to be prevented or abandoned since 2001.

“At the beginning of the coal rush in 2001, it seemed inevitable that as many as 150 new proposed coal plants would get built,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the organization’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “Since then we’ve seen an incredible change in the way people, businesses and governments — like Los Angeles — are thinking about energy, figuring out how to generate and use it more cleanly and efficiently. Coal is no longer a smart or cost-effective option.”

Climate targets around the world

Read more