“I can’t wait to go back to normal.” You’ve probably heard your friends and family say it a million times, putting on their masks with a sigh, longing for this amorphous concept of “normal.” But not only was normal unsustainable for anyone besides a privileged few, it’s also unlikely to be attainable. 

The rapid proliferation of coronavirus variants, as well as alarmingly low vaccination rates, cast doubt on the prospect of an end date to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet it’s the climate crisis that could turn pandemics into the new normal.

Last summer, the Arctic circle reached temperatures of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest in recorded history. As temperatures like these cause more and more permafrost, or frozen soil in arctic regions, to thaw, it could release massive quantities of greenhouse gasses and methane that would contribute to devastating climate change. It could also unfreeze ancient viruses.

Experts tend to agree that RNA viruses, such as COVID-19, are unlikely to emerge from the ice. It’s been established that bacteria can survive for millennia, but RNA viruses are much more “fragile,” according to Jean Michel Claverie, a virologist at Aix-Marseille University. On the other hand, DNA viruses are more “chemically stable,” making them a greater threat. In recent years, however, the greatest threat posed by an Arctic virus was the anthrax outbreak. 

In summer 2016, Europe experienced a massive heatwave. In Siberia, this caused the permafrost to shift, revealing a reindeer carcass buried 75 years previously. Anthrax spores from the reindeer migrated to the surface of the soil and nearby water, where they were transmitted to over two thousand reindeer, who infected the nomadic Nenets peoples who rely on the reindeer for sustenance. A 12-year-old died, and 115 people were hospitalized. While this seems comparatively minor when juxtaposed with the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a dire warning of the diseases that could be unleashed if we fail to mitigate global warming.

However, despite the apocalyptic tenor of stories such as that of anthrax, scientists believe that because of the availability of vaccines and the ease of producing them, we don’t need to worry too much about “permafrost pandemics.” It’s human encroachment into animal environments that creates a much more significant threat.

Infamous viruses including ebola, SARS, AIDS, Zika virus, and Lyme disease all enter the human population from wild animals whose habitats we are systematically destroying. In fact, most new diseases are zoonotic, or come from wild animals. For example, the ebola virus, which boasts a death rate of 90%, ravaged the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Gabon. It made it to the human population when a gorilla infected a gorilla hunter, and devastated both human and gorilla populations in tandem. 

Deforestation, the growth of monocultures (cultivating a single crop in one area, which is known to deplete nutrients in the soil), and urbanization in animal habitats “increase the risk of spillover,” according to Catherine Machalaba, a researcher at EcoHealth Alliance. This puts wild animals – and their diseases – in closer proximity to humans. 

There’s a promising solution for possible future pandemics: the One Health approach. According to its leading proponents’ Berlin Principles, One Health postulates that “human, animal, plant, and environmental health and well-being are intrinsically connected.” In other words, protecting the planet protects us from future pandemics that could be even worse than COVID-19.

We have examples of the effectiveness of One Health. In 1998, the Nipah virus in Malaysia produced encephalitis, or enlarging of the brains of those infected. It killed 105 people of of the 260 who were infected. Nipah was prevalent on pig farms, where bats who carried the virus feasted on mangoes from trees nearby pig enclosures. While chewing the mangoes, bats dropped infected saliva dangerously close to the pigs, who then infected humans. In order to eradicate the virus, the Malaysian government kept pigs in enclosures far from fruit trees, granting bats more space to eat and live away from humans. Malaysia hasn’t seen another Nipah outbreak since.

The Nipah story demonstrates it’s possible to control perilous viruses. It requires aggressive federal action, like restoring prescient programs such as Predict, a federally funded program that was launched in 2009 to identify potential zoonotic viruses around the globe. Predict identified an ebola virus in Guinea, coronaviruses in China, and several other previously unknown threats before it was terminated by the Trump administration. 
Globally implementing the One Health approach also requires a much broader shift. Activities that exacerbate climate change, such as industrialized meat production and agriculture, fossil fuel production, and urban sprawl, also put humans and animals in dangerous proximity. We also need to combat Trumpism’s anti-science narrative, which is becoming alarmingly mainstream. For instance, 25% of Americans refuse to get a coronavirus vaccine, despite overwhelming evidence that they are safe and effective. By making the healthcare industry more equitable, combating misinformation on social media, and increasing transparency around processes like vaccine development, we can limit vaccine skepticism. And by nationally and internationally mobilizing to protect wildlife and taking rapid, far-reaching steps to end the climate crisis, incorporating an One Health approach, we might be able to prevent the next pandemic.