Cover Essay: The Fearsome and the Fuzzy

Excerpt

Cute-looking polar bears drifting at sea on an ice cube and ugly mosquitoes poised to take over the world. At first glance, it seems that the two images have little in common, but popular press coverage of climate change has put both in the headlines frequently in recent years. The tone of this coverage, however, is deeply divergent. For example, both the loss of habitat driving the potential extinction of polar bears and the expansion of mosquito-habitat due to global warming are both presented as imminent catastrophes. The scientific community has also been subject to this dichotomy; conservation science and disease ecology are regarded as disparate disciplines. …