Well, here we are: week 1 of the new normal. It's going great so far.

Given that the U.S. is now withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), it feels like a relevant time to talk about how climate change can (and will) fuel pandemics.

Infectious diseases are always there, waiting in the wings for an opportunity to seek a broader audience. Many of them tend to be in wild animal populations that were once living quite comfortably in remote areas. But those areas and animals aren't as remote as they once were.

There is encroachment by civilization. Humans have been pushing deeper into the wilderness than ever before. This includes everything from Amazon rainforest clear-cutting to those new developments of McMansions that keep pushing further out from our cities. And when we do this, we find ourselves interacting with the local wildlife more often than we used to. Proximity breeds opportunity for cross-species mutations that can cause the next wave of disease.

A changing planet causes animal migration. Vector-borne diseases — malaria, Zika, Lyme, West Nile — are carried by mosquitos and ticks that are now living happily and abundantly at latitudes previously unknown. But other animals' habitats are also shifting in search of new food or water sources as we lose biodiversity in a changing ecosystem.

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic is unearthing pathogens that haven't been seen in millennia. Best not to read about that, honestly. (Has anyone else watched Fortitude?)

The question of the next pandemic isn't if, it's when. And when we sever connections with the WHO — the global body for sharing monitoring data and managing risks — the U.S. is putting the entire world at a disadvantage.

​New York City's lawsuit against fossil fuel companies was dismissed. I expect to see more of that in the coming years.

​New Orleans, Louisiana is being crippled by a blizzard. For those unfamiliar, this isn't an area that gets snow, so they don't have plows and shovels. They're basically going to have to wait it out until it gets warm enough to melt.

Meanwhile, they can't go ice fishing in the U.S. Midwest because the ice isn't freezing thick enough to support outdoor recreation.

There's a lot of online skepticism about how multiple fires could have started in Los Angeles at the same time. Must be a conspiracy! No. Anyone who's spent time in the West during fire season knows that combining a whole lot of dry underbrush with hurricane-force winds is a dangerous and fast-moving situation. UCLA gives an explainer about climate and wildfires.

Wildfires are not just about a wall of flames. Blown embers can travel for miles, igniting additional fires. While in "normal" winds, embers may carry for as little as 2 km (about a mile, give or take), they could travel as much as 17 km (about 10 miles) in the Santa Ana gales. So when you're thinking about wildfires, imagine what kind of vegetation and structures exist within that radius around your home. It's a lot more than you'd think.

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Alisa Bonsignore

Founder, Strategist, and Author