Pandemic to Kill Half the World's Population?
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 3:04PM 
No, I am not obsessed with death, dying, disease or fear-mongering. And yes, at first blush this may appear to be completely off-topic for a blog that targets sustainable development professionals and academics. Let me explain why it is precisely on topic.
Epidemiologists are very concerned about the potential for global pandemics from two (2) different threats. There are others, but just for now. . .
1. Infectious diseases such as the West Nile virus and Dengue fever spreading and surviving because of warming global temperatures, increasing populations which put humans and both wild and domestic animals in close proximity, and the worldwide trade in exotic pets (which cause transgenetic diseases - passing from animals to humans). Researchers considering the threat of an avian influenza pandemic recently estimated the mortality at up to 81 million people. Seasonal influenza affects about 10% of the population annually, killing up to one million persons worldwide. Pandemic viruses have even greater potential for mortality. The pandemics notable for the largest death tolls include: (a) the first recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague that eliminated a quarter to half of the world's population between 550 and 700; (b) the Black Death that started in the 1300s and killed 20 to 30 million Europeans in six years; (c) the first cholera pandemic that lasted from roughly 1816 to 1917 killing roughly 39 million; (d) the Spanish flu, from 1918-1919, spread globally within six months and estimates of the dead are between 50 and 100 million; (e) HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is the current pandemic with an estimated death toll by 2025 of 100 million.
2. Possibly much worse are the potential implications of approximately 10 new species of living and fully viable bacteria that have survived more than 120,000 years in extreme cold and pressure in an oxygen-reduced atmosphere with limited food supply within a Greenland glacier. These bacteria have not evolved alongside our world's current species and we have not developed any immunity to them. With the melting of polar ice/glaciers, and thawing permafrost, many scientists anticipate the emergence and spread of any number of bacteria that have the potential to wipe out a species.
One of these newfound bacteria, Chryseobacterium greenlandensis is a variety of Chryseobacterium that has been implicated in current conditions such as hepatitis, acute sepsis, infective endocarditis, septic arthritis, and chronic sclerosing osteomyelitis. Chryseobacterium is a primary disease agent in nosocomial infections in hospitals and nursing homes, as well as among children with cystic fibrosis and people with chronic lung conditions like asthma, emphysema and COPD. They also cause meningitis in newborns and sepsis in burn vicitms. While at the same time that our known bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, we will be adding new bacteria that has evolved separately from man, and additionally, a bacteria that has the capability of evolving through mutation, transduction or conjugation to create a new bacteria with altered DNA. Based upon the death toll in prior pandemics, half the world's population or about 1.7 billion humans could be vulnerable - the numbers could be much higher because of global travel and much of the world's population residing in urban centers.
So what? At this point you have read about the diseases that could kill us, maybe even wipe out more than half of the human population, but not a word about how this is relevant to today's sustainable development professionals and academics?
The answer is that "sustainable development" is not just about built environment design or achieving some level of building certification - this is the micro level at which we earn a living, but there is another level that is also impacted by our actions. The built environment can help to improve health, equity, scarcity and amenity. Achieving sustainability (by any definition) is a complex and multidimensional challenge that requires changes in the root causes at the neighborhood, region and global levels.
All right, still too theoretical, or are you deafened by the the sucking sound of our government's money going out to buy Gucci shoes for the leaders of developing nations? I don't want to 'cop out' by saying this topic is too much for this venue. In her latest book, Janis Birkeland, Hon. FIGP has said that achieving sustainability is all about reversing detrimental resource transfers through "positive development." Again, you think that I am off-topic in some theoretical fog that has no applicability to your professional practice in architecture, land-use planning, engineering, landscape architecture, appraisal, accounting or law, but I am not. I am now going to list eight (8) issues of "positive development" that can be applied at the level of your professional practice, your community, the nation or the globe. For starters, pick a level of applicability for you. Perhaps the easiest is at your community level, and then read each item as it relates to what you can do at the community level. Professor Birkeland's eight (8) issues that can begin to reverse detrimental resources through "positive development" are:
- Improving human ecological health, resilience and viability
- Increase natural capital, biodiversity, and ecosystem goods and services
- Increase secure access to food and water
- Enhance urban space for both people and natural processes
- Transform our infrastructure from fossil fuel-driven to solar-powered
- Help correct imbalances in power and wealth
- Conserve open space, wilderness and natural resources
- Increase life quality and substantive life choices for present and future generations
Will any of these actions stop a pandemic? Some may lessen its impact, we cannot know for sure, but they move us towards positive development. What do you suggest? Even if you came to this site via Linkedin, please post your comments here - thank you.
That is it for today . . . . and I highly recommend Professor Birkeland's book entitled Positive Development: From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles Through Built Environment Design. This book is a required text for IGP's course on "Sustainable Architecture" that is a partial prerequisite for the Member (MIGP) or Fellow (FIGP) designations. An additional recommendation is the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
Reader Comments (38)
This article was insightful... but mostly scary. You hear about these theories... how the world's population will be wiped out, however this is the first that I've heard related to sustainability. There are so many things as humans that we can do to prevent and reverse the way we operate and carry on with our daily activities but no one enforces "healthy habits." The U.S. government is a not a role model even though there are those politicians that say they are for a more sustainable environment. America pushes their ways of life onto other countries, they want our luxuries and so forth but can you imagine an entire world that acts like the U.S. does? The human race would become extinct from wasting resources. We need to learn and teach those around us how to conserve and still live our comfortable lives so that we can in turn teach other countries how to do the same. I didn't know people were importing dogs?! There are so many here that need adoption, most people don't even know how to raise a dog properly anyways, no need to spend thousands of dollars on dogs that are going to destroy your house as well as contaminate your home! The theories in this article are not far fetched and I think that if people could be exposed to this kind of thinking that they may begin to recycle at a bare minimum, or at least pass the word on.
"Between the ozone hole, clouroflurocarbons, pollution, a coming ice age, manmade global warming, worldwide disease and pestilence, nuclear holocaust, global terrorism, urban violence, wayward comets and meteors, etc., etc., there's no doubt that man's fertile imagination on predicting new ways to commit mass suicide knows no bounds."
"Nature abhors an imbalance and given enough time, she will make the necessary changes to insure there is a proper balance. It is most likely not what people want to hear and it is not a pretty thought to try and wrap your mind around but inevitably one in which we as a people will be confronted."
"As a for-certain, one has to make innumerable very pessimistic assumptions to get to that point. As a possibility, along with innumerable other disasters, certainly. Statistically significant possibility? Maybe, but probably not. The public health system is surprisingly robust. But, of course, the price being so cavalier about all this is constant vigilance and extensive expenditures on medical R&D."
"Go to TED.com. There are a number of TED Talks on pandemics and at least one "early warning" initiative initiated by a scientist & member of TED ... Blanking on the fellows name but his talk was quite compelling."
"What is suggested on this to reduce and the potential of what kind?"
Agreed. I will do my best to take care of the planet and it's resources, but If there is going to be a global pandemic I can't stop it.
How is an average size office building that would normally use 500,000 BTU's/hr and through sustainable design use 250,000 BTU's/hr able to somehow stop anything? If our number is up, we would most likely only slow it down for a few weeks. Doing my part, at least I could sleep at night those final days.
Good post. Yes, scary and we need to face it in order to be sustainable. I agree. Two recommendations: 1/ A sub to New Scientist Magazine. They often have features relating to this and other sustainability issues. 2/ have you read Christopher Wills' Yellow Fever, Black Goddess: The Coevolution of People and Plagues? Both entertaining and highly educational. Thanks for posting!
"Ummm...no. I love to stay informed, but a teaser like 'kill half the world's population', whether founded on fact or not, is a little too tabloid-esque. I totally think this is well-intentioned, but I'll have to see something that touches on anything a bit less fear-instilling to click through to a blog -- a very bad lead in."
Interesting article, but don't you think the post's title is rather dramatic?
I am in agreement that sustainablility factors into all levels of civilization and sound green practices provides us the means to achieve healthier, cleaner living for all our planets inhabitants and any reduction in the risk of pandemics is a great step.
Do we really need this reason to embrace Sustainable Design? Although it is indeed thought provoking, I fear that you have just set yourself up for additional derision by the naysayers of Global Warming, etc.
Are you kidding me; With all of the bad news that people face in the world today, can't we talk about something positive? I didn't even check the link, maybe it is a joke and if so, I apologize! I think we all have enough to worry about w/o having to come to a professional networking site and talk about possible pandemics... Come on!
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Of course we should be concerned about pandemic diseases, and that is why we should also support fact based science and modern medicine. However, screeching predictions of several billion deaths come across to me as alarmist. Why not a pandemic that kills 37% of the worlds population? Or one that kills 62%? Or one that kills 11%? Any would be a catastrophe, but those percentages don't lend themselves to alarmist headlines. However, life goes on. If it wasn't for the great flu pandemic of 1918-1919, I would not be alive. Why? That pandemic killed my grandfather's first wife, leaving him a widower with three young kids. He hired a farm girl to help him, later married her and had three more kids. The last was my mother, born when my grandfather, a true survivor, was 49 years old. The people I've mentioned, except for me, are all now dead. Life goes on. Let's discuss these critical issues without resorting to headlines that might be found on the cover of the Weekly World News. I always told my sons that if that particular tabloid printed anything true, it was by accident.
Very interesting. This article does make you wonder. For example, there was a mention of bacteria that has been living in an iceberg and will soon melt free. I also wonder if there could be any "cures" living in the iceberg. What if everything on earth has a polar opposite or a cure. Maybe cancer and HIV have cures that are also frozen within the iceberg. I'm not promoting that we let it melt to see if I'm correct, I'm simply saying that the article makes you think but still makes great points. Worth the time spent reading it.
"Hi Grant - A pandemic is imminent. We're long overdue. Some time ago I posted some thoughts about this on my blog: [http://www.cityplanner.ca/nucleus/index.php?itemid=77|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3www%2Ecityplanner%2Eca*3nucleus*3index%2Ephp%3Fitemid%3D77/csWR?_t=tracking_disc] Especially in North America, the design of our cities is leaving citizens with compromised immune systems (i.e. not getting enough exercise, increased stress, not enough time, etc.), and when a big virus hits, it could nail us good. I don't know about half the world's population though. Based on the kill rates of past pandemics, that high a number is pretty unlikely, although when you consider how much and how widely people are traveling nowadays, I suppose you never know..."
"There are somethings that I as an architect can do, and some that I cannot.I cannot end global climate change, I can design an energy efficient building for my client, best that I can do. I cannot end racism, I cannot end poverty, I can design a building that meets my clients needs, I cannot re-make his business. I can design buildings that support our social structures, I cannot re-engineer our social structures. I certainly cannot prevent a viral pandemic. That is the work of micro-biologists and public health officials."
"Hey, it could be worse. I think."
"The rate of spread of pandemics are related to the speed of commerce (North America was devastated by the indigenous trade, long before the whites managed to 'discover' the entire continent); Spanish flue became a major threat after the movement of troops in 1918-20; bubonic plague and other diseases were spread along trade routes, not by animals. Answer: trade locally. The current capital model fails on two major points 1) National economies become unsustainable (can't make bread, shoes, clothes); 2) create the conditions for the rapid and unchecked spread of disease (BSE, Foot and Mouth, etc). Exchange of goods remains part of human life but it is not possible with only one planet to maintain the massive expansion that we have at the moment. What planning is there for a disaster? Way move effort went into Katrina but one reason is that there are too many variables and other than isolating groups (one use for ID cards and the growth of the panopticon, both of which are otherwise useless). regards"
To those who believe in Global Warming or Climate Change as the new propaganda likes to call it I have a few questions: What is the ideal temperature of the Earth? With less than 1,000 years of data for a planet that is 4.5 Billion years old how can you be so sure that the planet is warming? And that man has caused it and/or can fix it? How do you explain the fact that every planet in our solar system has experienced the same warming trend that has been recorded recently on Earth. How do you explain the fact that we have been in a cooling cycle the past 5 years?
Where to start? I never thought bacteria could live in SUCH an inhospitable environment for SO long! There is much we need to correct. We should also have our own emergency plans and kits.
"This is the kind of paranoia that makes it hard for the mainstream to buy into green building. If you tell your cleint that, "the $4,000 your spending on super insulating your house will stop a worldwide pandemic and save the human race". They are sure to tell you that they want the extra 4k in their pockets when the pandemic hits and/or "get out". Conversely, a real difference is made when you can explain to a banker that, "the 4k spent on insulation will have a return on investment of 10%". An extremist may not be able to convince the average cleint of their beliefs. But, pragmatic green building can accepted by anybody and that is how to make a difference. The best way to know if an artilce is fear mongering is when it starts off by saying,"i'm not fear mongering""
I like the discussion that is going on here. You all make good points. I have gotten to a similar position as Mr. Flesher and Mr. Doerr. It appears as though we may know what is currently happening to the Earth but we have no idea how to predict what may happen. And we can only have a limited effect. I think that as architects we should always be striving to make more efficient structures, no matter what. There is no best, only better. With the continuing development of better materials and use of resources, we can certainly make, whatever our next project is, better than our last one. From the position of man being part of his environment rather than an opponent to it, a more efficient building, that works with its surrounding environment rather than against it, makes a better environment overall. If for no other reason, we should at least work for efficiency in order to benefit our clients.