houses flooded in hurricane

Bioethics Forum Essay

Do Your Part to Address Climate Change: Vote

At 5,000 feet above sea level, one might expect a temperate climate in a place like Denver. But despite its altitude, the city had record-breaking heat this summer. As newcomers, my family set out for a full day in June at the vast and wonderful Denver Zoo. By midday it was too hot to carry on and we went home. Similarly, a June day at the botanical garden turned into lunch in an air-conditioned café, not outdoor seating as planned, after which we went home. The weather app on my phone gained importance and delivered, all summer, repetitive heat and air quality alerts.

Ninety miles away is Rocky Mountain National Park, ranging from roughly 7,000 to 12,000 feet above sea level. Excited to return after 10 years, and for cooler temperatures, we got more record-breaking heat during our five days there in July. The scenery was not lush as we remembered, and our hikes were short to avoid the hottest hours. Weeks later, I grew curious about the accuracy of my memory of a cooler and greener visit ten years before. I looked up the data and found I was correct.

In July, the park normally receives more than 50 inches of rain (scroll down to rain graph).  This year, it received less than one inch (scroll down to graph). The heat and drought fed local wildfires, caused evacuations, and overstretched firefighting resources. Conditions were so dangerous that on August 1, the National Park Service banned campfires and barbeques throughout Rocky Mountain National Park. The ban lasted until September 4. July temperatures in the Rockies typically reach the 70’s or 80’s and drop into the 40’s at night.) Just outside the national park in Estes Park (altitude 7,500 feet) daily temperatures were in the 90’s. Our return to Denver was hotter, reaching above 98 degrees, with an average of 91 degrees for the entire month.

Extreme heat inconvenienced countless families like mine. Worse, it harmed the health of multitudes who were unable to escape it. In the Caribbean where I live, for about one year it has been unusual to find local fruits and vegetables for sale, the same fruits and vegetables that for decades have been plentiful and inexpensive. This sudden change is attributed to a year of excessive heat and drought plus the devastation brought by Hurricane Beryl that wiped out Carriacou Island and destroyed parts of St. Vincent before going north to do further damage. I have heard that what little produce remains is being sent to communities in need.

As a concerned citizen and bioethicist whose work has for years addressed climate change in and beyond the Caribbean, I wonder how I can help reduce emissions at the scale needed to avert the worst of climate change. That climate anxiety is a recognized symptom suggests that many others also wonder what they can do to help. Because few individuals have direct influence on the largest emitters, and because advances made by conserving, recycling, driving electric vehicles, and using renewable energy are countered by the volume of industrial emissions produced daily, we are left asking — what can we do? After much reflection, my conclusion is that we can use our influence to reduce emissions production by the largest emitters by voting in every election we can and considering the implications for emissions production in each instance.

There are many serious global worries today and it is not practical to expect leaders to make emissions reduction or environmental protections their top, or only, priority. What matters though is voting for leaders who value emissions reduction and voting against those who discount, greenwash, or oppose it.

I don’t only mean local, state and national government ballots. We need to vote for local school boards, condominium boards, and corporate boards of directors. Whether intended or not, each elected leader has some kind of influence on emissions. For example, school boards and condominium and coop boards may advance or oppose environmentally sustainable improvements in their facilities, such as energy efficiency, ease of recycling, and whether trees and vegetation are replaced by concrete structures. School boards influence whether and what type of content on climate change and health is incorporated into their curricula.

Any hope of containing the damage of industrial emissions production requires us to elect leaders at all levels and in all realms who acknowledge the climate crisis and its cause. 

That the largest emitters provide jobs, products, and services is no excuse for them to keep raising their annual emissions production. Those decisions are influenced by their most senior leaders and advisors. Other actors have indirect and limited influence through divestment campaigns and boycotts that, when they succeed, take decades. Many talk, teach, or write about these issues or join or donate to groups that have advanced environmental sustainability, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and Healthcare without Harm. Our most direct influence on industrial emission is our vote in every election we are eligible for.

While my family was inconvenienced by extreme weather, others are more vulnerable due to age, health, or socioeconomic status. Among those most likely to be harmed are those who work outdoors such as park rangers, fire fighters, construction and sanitation engineers, gardeners, car mechanics, farmers, zookeepers, servers in outdoor restaurants, and athletes. Those with employers who provide the time and facilities for them to cool down as needed can avoid heat-related health effects. Those less fortunate can expect to experience heat stress, which can last for hours and lead to heat stroke, which can be deadly.

Evidence and predictive models show that extreme weather has worsened faster than before and will continue doing so for decades   An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states:  “In the scenarios we assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C (2.7°F) requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030; at the same time, methane would also need to be reduced by about a third. Even if we do this, it is almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this temperature threshold but could return to below it by the end of the century.”

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F),” said Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”

Understanding the health impacts of emissions production, some hospital systems have transitioned to carbon-neutral policies across their facilities, including Kaiser Permanente and Gudersen. Nearly 40 institutions collectively representing more than 3,000 health care facilities in 17 countries have joined the Race to Zero, a global campaign backed by the United Nations that encourages cities, regions, companies, and educational institutions to take rigorous and immediate action to halve global emissions by 2030.

Let’s be realistic. No single politician, government, or industrial leader can unilaterally implement the level of emissions reduction needed, and no single policy will bring emissions production to net zero. But because the decisions of each leader can impact emissions production within their region or institution, the most important thing an individual can do is to try to influence who those leaders are. So, vote in every election you can. Vote in referenda, proposals, ballots. There’s an old saying that makes fun of Chicago’s checkered political past: Vote and vote often. As someone who comes from Chicago, I couldn’t think of a more apt message when it comes to the environment.

Cheryl Macpherson, PhD, is a professor at St George’s University School of Medicine and a senior research fellow at the Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation in Grenada. She is the principal investigator of the CREEi-Hastings Center Climate Bioethics Program.

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Hastings Bioethics Forum essays are the opinions of the authors, not of The Hastings Center.

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