Year 2, Month 6, Day 24: Nice Polite Republicans.

June 10 – NPR’s Morning Edition ran a story on an outbreak of Dengue Fever in Florida. Guess what they didn’t mention?

Sent June 10:

Your June 10th story on Dengue fever is a piece of medical reporting that manages to omit a single mention of one of the most important factors in the spread of tropical diseases in the United States. Global climate change is a hugely significant contributor to disease vectors — warmer temperatures make it easier for insect carriers to breed, while simultaneously stressing local and regional ecosystems that might otherwise be able to resist invasive species. The arrival of Dengue fever in Florida is just one example of this, and should be discussed alongside similar insect-borne conditions such as the destruction of countless acres of forest by the Pine Borer beetle. A failure to discuss climate change in this context is like discussing cholera without mentioning sanitation or plague without mentioning rats. Given that global climate change is arguably the most significant threat humanity has faced in many thousands of years, it behooves NPR to address the crisis both directly and by highlighting one of its consequences: Floridians getting sick with a disease that hadn’t been seen since the Hoover administration.

Warren Senders