Mr. Chairman, Senator Enzi, distinguished Members of the Committee, we are pleased to be able to share with you this morning what we believe are our well-considered views, grounded in considerable experience with issues of public health, development, and resource access in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, as well as intensive research into the incidence and mechanisms of vector-borne diseases. For the record, please note that while Dr. Bate is testifying in his capacity as Resident Fellow at AEI, he also serves as Director of Africa Fighting Malaria, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the pursuit of "best practices" in preventing and treating malaria and reducing its incidence among affected populations.

Mr. Chairman, many of today’s witnesses will speak of the specific implications of climate change that they perceive as most important for human health. Doubtless malaria will top the menu, but we fear ignorance and disinformation may as well.

Dr. Jonathan Patz, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison the lead witness listed for today, has suggested that U.S. energy policy may be "indirectly exporting diseases to other parts of the world." Dr. Patz, and even official bodies such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), claim that global warming is already causing increases in disease (160,000 deaths per year), particularly those, such as malaria transmitted by insects.
 
In 2007, for example, WHO implicated rising temperatures as the "cause" of an outbreak of a mosquito-borne virus, Chikungunya, in an Italian town. Yet WHO totally missed the point: it was modern transportation systems, not climate change that caused the outbreak. . . .

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Roger Bate is a resident fellow at AEI. Paul Reiter is the director of the Insects and Infectious Diseases Unit of the Institut Pasteur, Paris.