Mi­crobes Warm­ing Up to Cli­mate Change

by Me­chas Zam­brano

A week of un­usu­ally warm weather for No­vem­ber in Boston, MA, and an on­line pre­sen­ta­tion on the per­ils of cli­mate change have trig­gered my in­ner alarm in an­tic­i­pa­tion of trou­bles to come. We are well within the epoch rec­og­nized by some as the "An­thro­pocene," in which hu­mans have be­come the ma­jor force be­hind global change. Global warm­ing it­self may not be new, but the immi­nent threat to life on our planet is, es­pe­cially if we fail to meet the goal of no more than a 1.5°C rise in tem­per­a­ture above pre-in­dus­trial lev­els in the com­ing de­cades. Be­sides the men­ace of ex­treme weather con­di­tions, such as wild­fires, droughts, and floods, ris­ing tem­per­a­tures will also cause loss of bio­di­ver­sity. All to­gether these chan­ges will lead to in­creased ecosys­tem vul­ner­a­bil­ity that may tip the bal­ance to­wards ir­re­versible ad­verse im­pacts on health and sus­tain­abil­ity.

La Tuna fire and city light, Sep­tember 20­17. Source

The se­ri­ous risks re­sult­ing from in­creas­ing global tempera­tures, as re­ported by the Inter­govern­mental Panel on Cli­mate Change, re­quire ur­gent ac­tions on the part of policy­makers. Which is why world lead­ers once again met this month to dis­cuss cli­mate change at COP 27.

But other than mulling over what seems an in­evitable out­come of our suc­cess as a species, and de­spair­ing about the slow pace of change de­spite the ur­gency, what can we do, es­pe­cially as mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists? In line with these con­cerns, and given the cen­tral role of mi­croor­gan­isms in cli­mate change, the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Micro­biology or­ga­nized a col­lo­quium with ex­perts who made rec­om­men­da­tions for aca­d­e­mics, so­ci­ety, and poli­cy­mak­ers "to pro­mote inno­va­tion for mi­crobe-dri­ven cli­mate change so­lu­tions that sup­port hu­man well-be­ing." The full re­port is on­line, but be­low are some ideas:

Re­search should aim to un­der­stand mi­cro­bial al­ter­ations due to global cli­mate change, fol­low ex­perimental de­signs that pro­mote com­par­isons, in­cor­po­rate data into mod­els, and out­line cri­te­ria to eval­u­ate in­no­va­tions and so­ci­etal im­pacts. Sci­en­tists should com­mu­ni­cate their work and ad­dress po­tential mi­cro­bial risks, while pol­i­cy­mak­ers can in­crease fi­nanc­ing and sur­veil­lance of po­tential mi­cro­bial risks, en­hance col­lab­o­ra­tion, and in­cen­tivize in­no­va­tions based on mi­cro­bial pro­cesses.

It is there­fore re­as­sur­ing that much can still be done. We can work with mi­crobes and, more im­portantly, en­gage in both in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive ac­tions (much like mi­crobes them­selves) to learn, adapt and im­ple­ment strate­gies to mit­i­gate the ad­verse ef­fects of cli­mate change. I in­vite you all to be­come more in­volved, in small- or large-scale ini­tia­tives, and take part in this truly glo­bal chal­lenge.

 

Me­chas (María Mer­cedes) Zam­brano is a mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist and the Sci­en­tific Di­rec­tor of Cor­pogen In­sti­tute in Bo­gotá, Colom­bia.