Abstract
Global climate change is the most complex and significant ethical issue of our time. The urgent discussion of how to bring about alterations in human energy usage and economic production in order to mitigate the social and ecosystemic harm done by climate change calls for a bioethics voice. But bioethics will not be able to make this contribution if it merely addresses climate change as one more in a series of problems or dilemmas. The nature of the climate change challenge is such that bioethics will have to alter fundamentally its discourse and broaden its moral horizons. This chapter argues that bioethics should become more discerning and insightful concerning matters of political power and economics. It will also do well to establish new ties and overlapping perspectives with the ecological sciences. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the structure and the logic of the encounter between bioethics—understood as a particular kind of discourse—and climate change—understood as a systemic challenge to human and ecological health. Extended consideration is given to what needs to be added to the conceptual range of bioethics in its engagement with climate change, with particular emphasis on the concepts of autonomy, membership, and solidarity.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Perhaps this moderation was fundamental to the success and subsequent influence of the field. Bioethics researchers and practitioners needed to gain entry into certain professional, governmental, and financial citadels; it was important that they retain academic respectability by not becoming too activist or radical; and it was important that they position themselves so as to make what was perceived by their patrons and clients as constructive contributions to problem solving (Fox and Swazey 2008; Evans 2012; Callahan 2012).
References
Barber, B.R. 2013. If mayors ruled the world: Dysfunctional nations, rising cities. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Baylis, F., N.P. Kenny, and S. Sherwin. 2008. A relational account of public health ethics. Public Health Ethics 1(3): 196–209.
Beauchamp, T.L., and J.F. Childress. 2012 [1979]. Principles of biomedical ethics, 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Benhabib, S. 1987. The generalized and the concrete other. In Feminism as critique, ed. S. Benhabib and D. Cornell, 77–95. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Benhabib, S. 1992. Situating the self. New York: Routledge.
Bernstein, R.J. 2010. The pragmatic turn. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brown, D.A. 2013. Climate change ethics: Navigating the perfect moral storm. New York: Routledge.
Brown, P.G., and G. Garver. 2009. Right relationship: Building a whole earth economy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Calhoun, C. 2002. Imagining solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, constitutional patriotism, and the public sphere. Public Culture 14(1): 147–171.
Calhoun, C. 2006. Constitutional patriotism and the public sphere: Interests, identity, and solidarity in the integration of Europe. International Journal of Political Culture and Society 18: 257–280.
Callahan, D. 2012. In search of the good: A life in bioethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Callenbach, E. 1975. Ecotopia. Berkeley: Banyan Tree Books.
Callicott, J.B. 2014. Thinking like a planet: The land ethic and the Earth ethic. New York: Oxford University Press.
Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School. 2005. Climate change futures: Health, ecological and economic dimensions. Cambridge, MA: Center for Health and the Global Environment.
Dawson, A., and B. Jennings. 2012. The place of solidarity in public health ethics. Public Health Reviews 34(1): 65–79.
Dean, J. 1995. Reflective solidarity. Constellations 2(1): 114–140.
Dean, J. 1996. Solidarity of strangers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
DeVries, R., and J. Subedi (eds.). 1998. Bioethics and society. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Diamond, C. 1988. Losing your concepts. Ethics 98(January): 255–277.
Evans, J.H. 2012. The history and future of bioethics: A sociological view. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fox, R.C., and J.P. Swazey. 2008. Observing bioethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fraser, N. 1986. Toward a discourse ethic of solidarity. Praxis International 5(4): 425–429.
Fraser, N., and A. Honneth. 2003. Redistribution or recognition? 36. London: Verso.
Frumkin, H. (ed.). 2010. Environmental health: From global to local, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Wiley.
Frumkin, H., and A.J. McMichael. 2008. Climate change and public health: Thinking, communicating, acting. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 35(5): 403–410.
Frumkin, H., L. Frank, and R.J. Jackson. 2004. Urban sprawl and public health: Designing, planning, and building for healthy communities. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Gardiner, S.M. 2013. A perfect moral storm: The ethical tragedy of climate change. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gaylin, W., and B. Jennings. 2003. The perversion of autonomy: Coercion and constraints in a liberal society, revised and expanded ed. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Gergen, K.J. 2009. Relational being: Beyond self and community. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goldman, G., D. Bailin, P. Rogerson, et al. 2013. Toward an evidence-based fracking debate: Science, democracy, and community right to know in unconventional oil and gas development. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists. www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/center-for-science-and-democracy/fracking-report-full.pdf.
Habermas, J. 2005. Equal treatment of cultures and the limits of postmodern liberalism. The Journal of Political Philosophy 13(1): 1–28.
Haines, A., and J. Patz. 2004. Health effects of climate change. JAMA 291(1): 99–103.
Haliburton, R. 2014. Autonomy and the situated self: A challenge to bioethics. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Hansen, J., P. Kharecha, M. Sato, V. Masson-Delmotte, F. Ackerman, et al. 2013. Assessing “Dangerous Climate Change”: Required reduction of carbon emissions to protect young people, future generations and nature. PLoS ONE 8(12), e81648. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081648.
Harré, R. 1998. The singular self. London: Sage.
Harvey, D. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoffmaster, B. (ed.). 2001. Bioethics in social context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Jennings, B. 1981. Tradition and the politics of remembering. Georgia Rev XXXVI(1): 167–182.
Jennings, B. 2007. Public health and civic republicanism. In Ethics, prevention, and public health, ed. Angus Dawson and Marcel Verweij, 30–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jennings, B. 2016. Ecological governance: Toward a new social contract with the Earth. Morgantown: University of West Virginia Press.
Joas, H., and W. Knöbl. 2009. Social theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jonas, H. 1985. The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kant, I. 1949 [1784]. What is enlightenment? In Immanuel Kant’s moral and political writings, ed. C.J. Friedrich, 132–139. New York: The Modern Library.
Kessel, A., and C. Stephens. 2011. Environment, ethics, and public health. In Public health ethics: Key concepts and issues in policy and practice, ed. A. Dawson, 154–173. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Klein, N. 2011. Capitalism versus the climate. The Nation, November 9. http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate
Klein, N. 2014. This changes everything: Capitalism versus the climate. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Lear, J. 2006. Radical hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Leopold, A. 1989 [1949]. A sand county almanac and sketches here and there. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lindemann, H., M. Verkerk, and M.U. Walker (eds.). 2008. Naturalized bioethics: Toward responsible knowing and practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ruskin, J. 1985. Unto this last and other writings. New York: Penguin.
Mackenzie, C., and N. Stoljar (eds.). 2000. Relational autonomy: Feminist perspectives on autonomy, agency, and the social self. New York: Oxford University Press.
Macpherson, C.C. 2013. Climate change is a bioethics problem. Bioethics 27(6): 305–308.
Marmot, M. 2004. The status syndrome: How social standing affects our health and longevity. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Mills, C.W. 1959. The sociological imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mulhall, S., and A. Swift. 1996. Liberals and communitarians, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Nedelsky, J. 2013. Law’s relations: A relational theory of self, autonomy, and law. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nordhaus, W. 2013. The climate casino: Risk, uncertainly, and economics for a warming world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Nussbaum, M.C. 2011. Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ophuls, W. 2013. Plato’s revenge: Politics in the age of ecology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Parr, A. 2013. The wrath of capital: Neoliberalism and climate change politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Potter, V.R. 1971. Bioethics: A bridge to the future. New York: Prentice Hall.
Potter, V.R. 1988. Global bioethics: Building on the leopold legacy. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
Potter, V.R., and P.J. Whitehouse. 1998. Deep and global bioethics for a livable third millennium. The Scientist 12: 1–9.
Prainsack, B., and A. Buyx. 2011. Solidarity: Reflections on an emerging concept in bioethics. London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
Rayner, S. 2010. How to eat an elephant: A bottom-up approach to climate policy. Climate Policy 10: 615–621.
Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, A. Persson, F.S. Chapin III, E.F. Lambin, and J.A. Foley. 2009. Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society 14(2): 32.
Rose, N. 2006. The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twentieth first century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Runciman, D. 2009. How messy it all is. London Review of Books 31(20): 3–6.
Scheffler, S. 2013. Death and the afterlife. New York: Oxford University Press.
Schön, D., and M. Rein. 1994. Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. New York: Basic Books.
Schor, J. 2010. Plenitude: The new economics of true wealth. New York: Penguin Press.
Shrader-Frechette, K. 2005. Environmental justice: Creating equality, reclaiming democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
The Hartwell Paper. 2010. A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27939/1/HartwellPaper_English_version.pdf
Victor, P.A. 2008. Managing without growth: Slower by design, not disaster. Northampton: Edward Elgar.
Whitehouse, P.J. 2002. Van Rensselaer Potter: An intellectual memoir. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 11(4): 331–334.
Whitehouse, P.J. 2003. The rebirth of bioethics: Extending the original formulations of van Rensselaer Potter. American Journal of Bioethics 3(4): W26–W31.
WHO. 2005. Millennium ecosystem assessment, ecosystems and human well-being: Health synthesis. Geneva: WHO Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jennings, B. (2016). Putting the Bios Back into Bioethics: Prospects for Health and Climate Justice. In: Macpherson, C. (eds) Bioethical Insights into Values and Policy. Public Health Ethics Analysis, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26167-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26167-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26165-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26167-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)