Sufficiency and healthcare emissions

Parker, Joshua (2025) Sufficiency and healthcare emissions. Bioethics. ISSN 0269-9702

Abstract

In this paper, I am concerned with how healthcare systems ought to transition away from the greenhouse gas emissions that they have historically relied on to provide care. I address two questions in relation to this issue. The first is what emissions target should healthcare systems adopt? Second, is how should the burdens of mitigation be shared fairly in light of that target? I argue that sufficientarianism offers an attractive way to answer both of these questions because it is better situated to strike the right balance between healthcare benefits and the costs of mitigation than rivals. Sufficiency describes the view that what is important from the perspective of distributive justice is that individuals have enough. I argue that this ideal can be used to set a threshold of enough health from which an emissions threshold can be set. Once an emissions threshold is in place, this can be used to demarcate permissible from impermissible emissions in healthcare. In turn, the emissions threshold provides guidance on which emissions are liable to mitigation and when it would be fair for healthcare to shoulder the associated burdens. Permissible emissions, on the other hand, are necessary to secure sufficiency and so healthcare's mitigation responsibilities should be altered in light of this. I also discuss various alternative methods of setting an emissions target like net zero, zero emissions, emissions grandfathering and emissions egalitarianism. I point to several issues with these approaches.