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Climate Change, Human Health, and the Post-Cautionary Principle
Lisa Heinzerling, Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown Law Journal (forthcoming)
ABSTRACT:
In this Article, I suggest two different but related
ways of reframing the public discourse on climate change. First,
I propose that we move further in the direction of characterizing
climate change as a public health threat and not only as an
environmental threat. Second, I argue that we should stop
thinking of responses to climate change in terms of the
precautionary principle, which counsels action even in the
absence of scientific consensus about a threat. We should speak
instead in terms of a ?post-cautionary? principle for a
post-cautionary world, in which some very bad effects of climate
change are unavoidable and others are avoidable only if we take
dramatic steps, and soon. These points are related insofar as
they together create a moral imperative both to adapt to the
changes we cannot prevent and to mitigate those we can. Without
these efforts, people will fall ill and many will die, and we
know now that this will occur. No fancy moral theory is required
to condemn, and to make every attempt to avert, this large-scale
knowing killing.
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Lisa Heinzerling,
"Climate Change, Human Health, and the Post-Cautionary Principle"
(September 15, 2007).
Georgetown Law.
Georgetown University: O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law Scholarship.
Paper 4.
http://lsr.nellco.org/georgetown/ois/papers/4
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