The Climate Emergency: Are the Doctors who take Non-violent Direct Action to Raise Public Awareness Radical Activists, Rightminded Professionals, or Reluctant Whistleblowers?

Abstract

When doctors become aware of a threat to public health, they have a professional duty to try to mitigate the threat. Climate change is a recognized major threat to planetary and public health that requires actions to both mitigate, and adapt to, climate change. The limited time and resources available to change what humankind are doing and protect planetary health add urgency to the threat. Some doctors take non-violent direct actions if their governments fail to take the effective actions needed. Professional regulatory organizations like the UK’s General Medical Council (GMC) are charged with protecting the health of patients by setting standards for, giving ethical advice about, and supervising the behaviour of doctors. This article examines the conflict between climate activist doctors and the GMC interpretation of a doctor’s duty of care when there is threat to public health from climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• professionalism
• government regulation
• environment and public health
• quality assurance
• health care

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dr Terry Kemple is a recently retired general practitioner (1980–2017) and a Past President of the Royal College of General Practitioners (2015–2017). Since 2017, he has been the RCGP representative for Sustainability, Climate Change and Green Issues and was the Co-Chair for the RCGP Climate Emergency Task & Finish Group (2019–20). Dr. Kemple is also an executive member of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (2017– present) and has been the Lead for the RCGP Green Impact for Health Toolkit since 2014.