University of Hawaii, Washington researchers link COVID-19 pandemic and climate change

On the surface, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic appear to be highly unpleasant but separate problems for the people who call planet Earth home.

On the contrary, according to a panel of scientists, they are linked more than many know.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii and the University of Washington warned Friday that complications associated with global warming, including the likely emergence of new global viral outbreaks, will only worsen unless action is taken to minimize human- induced climate change.

“We have a lot of work to do,” UH climate scientist Chip Fletcher told an online audience presented by Think Tech Hawaii. “And the work is accelerating with every year we do not make significant progress.”

Fletcher joined UH colleagues Camilo Mora and Angelicque White and Jim Thomson of the University of Washington for the panel discussion titled “Evolving Crisis: The Escalating Threat of COVID and Climate Change.”

Last year Think Tech Hawaii produced a documentary titled “Spiraling Crisis: The Alarming Convergence of Climate Change and Pandemics — A Postcard From the Future.”

The film, selected for the Colorado Environmental Film Festival next month, was written by Kenneth Howe, a former San Francisco Chronicle and South China Morning Post journalist who moderated Friday’s panel.

“The culprit when it comes to pandemics — and likely COVID-19 — all too frequently is climate change and the human actions that cause them,” Howe said at the beginning of the discussion. “They are not the only reasons, but the prime reasons why many diseases emerge and spread.”

Howe said the bubonic plague and the Spanish flu have been around a long time, but global virus outbreaks, which were once fairly rare, have become more common.

In just the past 60 years, the world has seen the Asian flu, the seventh cholera pandemic, HIV/AIDS, SARS, the swine flu, avian influenza, MERS, Ebola, Zika and COVID-19. Together they have caused more than 42 million deaths, according to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

These are all diseases that originated in wild animals and ended up infecting humans, Howe said.

“We’ve promoted their spread — that’s the whole point,” he said. “Our CO2 emissions have warmed the air, the land and the oceans, which have dramatically expanded the range of vectors that carry these diseases.”

Deforestation, meanwhile, has pushed disease-infect wildlife closer to population centers and people closer to these creatures.

Fletcher, chairman of the Honolulu Climate Change Commission, said that as climate zones and tropical areas expand under the force of climate change, exposure to disease is one of an array of negative impacts that go with it.

Fletcher and Mora said communities such as Hawaii need to begin building resilience in anticipation of climate change impacts — although it’s not going to be an inexpensive proposition.

“But it’s so much less than what the cost will be 10 years down the road if you don’t do it now,” Thomson said.

Fletcher added that it’s a difficult thing for elected officials to spend now in order to save money when they’re out of office. “It will take a courageous leader to do that,” he said.

Thomson, the University of Washington oceanographer, said climate change can be an abstract concept for many if they don’t see it in their day-to-day lives. But his research has taken him to Native Alaskan villages in the Arctic, where the people have been dealing with the problem for a long time.

They have been seeing dramatically less sea ice, which limits their mobility and reduces their ability to conduct subsistence hunting, among other things, he said.

White, the UH oceanographer, described the findings of the Hawaiian Ocean Time-Series (HOT) and the importance of Station ALOHA, a remote spot in waters north of Hawaii, where scientists conduct experiments and record changes in the ocean.

HOT measurements over 30 years, she said, have shown an ongoing rise in near-surface ocean carbon dioxide plus corresponding ocean acidification, the oceanic equivalent of the legendary Keeling Curve, which has recorded a consistent rise in carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory since 1958.

White said a study from late 2020 found a 17% drop in emissions due to pandemic restrictions on travel and other activities.

“It’s important because it does show that if we change our actions, we can reduce CO2 in the upper ocean as well as the atmosphere,” she said.

Mora, the UH professor of geography and environment, said people thought he was crazy when he launched a drive to plant 1 million trees to help pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

While the pandemic has put the brakes on the effort somewhat, Mora said he was gratified to see so many people volunteer to help plant the trees.

“I already passed the phase of thinking I was crazy, but I don’t think I am anymore,” he said. “It wasn’t until I saw the people were coming that I realized this is actually doable.”