Authors: Robin Attfield
Abstract:
The impacts of climate change include the migration of species to higher altitudes and latitudes. This involves the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever to new places and populations. Ethical implications include the imperative to mitigate carbon emissions and to help existing communities adapt to become more resistant to climate change, and greater effort and investment being made to tackle these diseases. This is often within the power of the scientists of developed countries, whose resources usually surpass those of developing ones, and whose countries have often caused the problems. Articulating and expounding these responsibilities is a role for medical ethicists, developmental ethicists and ethicists of the environment.
Keywords: Climate change, medical ethics, environmental refugees
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