Going to the City
Via Yule comes this interesting article:
Sometime in 2008, if it hasn’t happened already, more than 50% of the will have left the country to live in the city. No more Homo sapiens instead Homo sapiens urbanis
Within ten years the world will have nearly 500 cities of more than 1m people. Most of the newcomers will be absorbed in a metropolis of up to 5m people. But some will live in a megacity, defined as home to 10m or more inhabitants. In 1950 only New York and Tokyo could claim to be as big, but by 2020, says the UN, nine cities—Delhi, Dhaka, Jakarta, Lagos, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, São Paulo and Tokyo—will have more than 20m inhabitants. Greater Tokyo already has 35m, more than the entire population of Canada.
As we all learned, or should have, in school the move from to was to increase safety against marauders and also to share the labour. However the safety of the walled city was at best a two edged sword. While it usually kept the invaders out it also left the inhabitants at the mercy of the establishment within and unusually susceptible to any passing , such as was seen with the bubonic plagues during the middle ages.
With the advent of we are seeing an increased penetration of such as malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever into heavily populated areas and just recently a new strain of Ebola arose (fortunately a weaker one this time.)
affects the occurrence and by impacting the population size and range of hosts and , the length of the transmission season, and the timing and intensity of outbreaks (McMichael, 1996; McMichael et al., 1996; Epstein et al., 1998; Epstein, 1999). In general, warmer temperatures and greater moisture will favor extensions of the geographical range and season for vector organisms such as insects, rodents, and snails. This in turn leads to an expansion of the zone of potential transmission for many vector-borne diseases, among them , , , and some forms of .
[snip]
Recent disease outbreaks are consistent with model projections that warmer, wetter conditions will lead to greater transmission potential at higher altitudes and elevations. Mosquito-borne diseases are now reported at higher elevations than in the past at sites in Asia, Central Africa, and Latin America (Epstein et al., 1998). This is coincident with growing evidence for significant warming at high altitude sites in tropical latitudes, as indicated for example by retreating glaciers (e.g., Fitzharris, 1996) and a 150 meter upward shift in the elevation of the freezing level (0° C isotherm) (Diaz and Graham, 1996). In New York City, an encephalitis outbreak in summer 1999 claimed three lives and prompted widespread pesticide spraying. The Centers for Disease Control have identified the West Nile virus as being responsible for this outbreak, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes that feed on infected birds (CDC, 1999a). The disease, which had not been previously documented in the Western Hemisphere, occurs primarily in the late summer or early fall in temperate regions, but can occur year round in milder climates (CDC, 1999b).
This is, of course, just the start. How far will, for example, Ebola and other spread as the climate warms up? What if they are “helped” along to spread by “suicide vectors” who deliberately transport the virus into new areas once those areas have the climate to support the virus? Given what we see with suicide bombers today who can doubt that this won’t occur?
In the future the cities will be come death traps, whether it is from the rapid spread of pathogens due to close contact cities breed, or from the inability of a societies to sustain themselves when when both social and commercial infrastructures starts to break down under the stress of climate change and other factors such as .
As just one, all too real possibility, if any of the current outbreaks of avian influenza successfully mutate, and there are indications that it has “attempted” to do so, such that it crosses over to humans and transmits from human to human effectively then it stands a good chance of becoming a with the possibility of wiping out up to about 1/3 of the human race. The more crowded we are in cities and the greater the ease of movement between cities by people the greater the exposure rate and the greater the death rate. The mortality rate will far exceed that of the (H1N1 virus) pandemic of 1918 -1920 that killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide due to the greater congestion and mobility today.
What the itself doesn’t kill the disruption to society will have a go at next. If over the course of a month or two 1/3rd of the population of North America were to die you would see massive collapsing of infrastructure, electrical grids, dams, garbage collection, hospitals, fuel delivery, food transportation and production, the list goes on and on. Those who live in rural areas have a chance to pick up the pieces and grow their own food, heat their homes with firewood, rediscover their inner pioneers. In the cities it will be another story and not a nice one.
Crowding into cities has never been an overly good idea, now it could be a fatal one.
Have a Happy New Year 
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