Blogs
My topic is how climate change affects infectious diseases. Climate change is causing Canada to develop longer and warmer summers and increasing winter temperatures. As temperatures increase and summer becomes longer, the vectors that are spreading infectious diseases such as Lyme disease and West Nile Virus are expanding their ranges further into Canada and are able to survive longer which increases the risk that Canadians have of contracting these diseases. The Lyme vector is spreading into Canada at a rate of 35-55km per year. Human cases are increasing as well. In Canada there were approximately 30 cases of Lyme Disease in 2007 compared to 315 cases in 2012. The spread of black-legged tick populations and the risk of human exposure to these vector-borne infectious diseases are expected to continue increasing over the next several decades due to climate change.
As for a solution, before we tackle these problems we first need to reduce climate change. By reducing climate change, we can slow down or stop the warming and increasing length of summers which can slow down or stop the problematic vectors from making their way further and further into our country. There are many ways to help reduce climate change. One of them is having a program where people can rent a bike for anywhere from a few hours to a whole day and then drop it off somewhere else in the city where they stop. Many cities in Canada have these such as Toronto and Ottawa but where they are most popular and where I first saw it was in European cities such as Paris, London and Berlin. In Toronto, the program is supported by TD bank but imagine how much more effective it could be with more sponsors and even the government sponsoring it. Many people enjoy riding bikes but sometimes they aren’t able to afford it or don’t have space to store it so they are unable to purchase their own. By offering these ones for renting, it allows those people to still enjoy biking while helping the environment. By expanding them we can have them in multiple more cities and expanding their across the cities they are already in can help increase their effectiveness. To encourage people to use them, you can offer tax deductions to those who do use them. Another huge problem that causes climate change is air travel. They leave a huge carbon footprint so if we started encouraging people to use more greener transportation (trains, buses, etc) then we could eliminate the carbon waste from so many airplanes. To encourage people to use these options we could offer rebates to people who use the train a certain amount of times a year and the more you use the train or a bus then the more the rebate will add up. They could also make some sort of point system up that will add up to a rebate with the more points you have. To increase your points, you take the train or a bus.
