Thinking like a mountain: A land ethical approach to healthcare resource allocation

Abstract

Human activity is now having a defining influence on global systems. The Anthropocene epoch requires revisiting our ethical presuppositions to understand our relationship to the earth's life support systems. The Land Ethic of Aldo Leopold proposes an ethic that is diachronic, holistic, and biocentric, in contrast to the synchronic, individualist, and anthropocentric axioms of mainstream bioethics. I argue that these features of the Land Ethic make it more suitable to engage with the ethics of healthcare resource allocation in the Anthropocene; that understanding sustainability in a Land Ethical fashion requires that we view it as placing a side-constraint on all permissible healthcare resource use such that this use remains within planetary boundaries; and outline how this might re-shape debates around healthcare resource allocation.

Keywords: Anthropocene; aldo leopold; climate ethics; environmental ethics; land ethic; resource allocation; sustainability.