More wetlands means more mosquitoes, doesn't it?

We have a tendency around here to point out that planning the economy, planning the world, is a difficult thing to do. They’re both complex systems with many moving parts, it’s near impossible to account for all of them in that one plan.

Which brings us to this particular problem:

Mosquitoes plague Provence in ‘unprecedented’ home-grown dengue outbreak

As warmer temperatures boost mosquito populations across France, experts believe it’s only a matter of time before it reaches the UK

Let’s work with the assumptions being made. A warmer world will mean mosquito populations move north (and south). Mosquitos can carry diseases like dengue, yellow fever and malaria. Yes, it requires that those exist within the human population to be picked up and then spread.

So, climate change is going to expand the areas where those diseases are a significant risk. We cannot, of course, use chemicals like DDT to fix this. Tsk, no, absolutely not.

So, so goes the mantra, climate change will kill many.

Except that’s not quite all of it. As varied investigations put it malaria was endemic in Britain for at least many centuries. The Fens, the Somerset Levels and so on, entirely infested with the agues which result from those diseases. The solution to which was, long before DDT, quinine or any actual chemistry, to drain those swamps and wetlands.

For the presence of the mosquito as the bug carrying and spreading the diseases depends not just upon temperature, the presence of the diseases in the human population, but upon those swamps and wetlands for the bugs to breed in.

So, now we can restate the current mantra. Climate change is going to increase malaria, dengue, yellow fever risk. To which our response is to increase the number of wetlands in which the mosquitos can breed in order to…..well, in order to what? We stop pumping the Somerset Levels so that Bridgewater and Glastonbury become fever ridden? Ely and Norwich should - once again - become the loci of agues?

If the construction about climate change and the range of mostquitos is correct then our response should be to drain the remaining wetlands. But public policy is to increase them.

It’s also possible to recall that malaria was endemic before climate change - therefore even if we solve that but still expand the wetlands it will come back anyway. So solving climate change isn’t the solution, draining the wetlands is.

It actually is public policy to expand those mosquito breeding wetlands too. As we say, planning that whole economy, the world, is a difficult thing to do. For public policy is currently hell bent on killing more of us. Quite why we’re not sure - not unless the Optimum Population Trust has more power than we think it does - but the fact is still there. Given the existence of mostquitos and dengue, malaria and so on, expanding British wetlands will kill people. So, why are we doing it?