Meetup 32

Who Carries the Responsibility for Health Care Carbon Reduction?

Policy-makers, doctors, organizations, and academics  who are persuaded that health care decarbonization is an ethical mandate are grappling with ethical and effective implementation. Health care carbon-mitigation strategies (both proposed and potential) can be envisioned at individual, regional (city, state, or council), national, and international levels. While these levels have been studied to different degrees, a comparative analysis of strategies at each of these levels, taking into account bioethical issues such as autonomy, responsibility, and shared decision-making, has not been adequately conducted.

This talk seeks to make clearer what the collective responsibilities are for health care carbon reduction, by undertaking a comparative analysis of the ethical issues of health care carbon reduction across levels from the individual to the international, based on the research of Drs. Cristina Richie and Gabrielle Samuel, with commentary by Anne Zimmerman.

Thursday 24 September 2026, 4PM Geneva Time

• Chair: Sally Davies, writer and editor

Cristina Richie

Lecturer of Ethics of Technology at the University of Edinburgh

Anne Zimmerman 

Lecturer, Columbia University

Editor-in-Chief, Voices in Bioethics

Co-Founder and Chair, Innovative Bioethics Forum / Modern Bioethics

Co-Chair, AI and Healthcare Subcommittee of the New York City Bar Association Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies

Gabrielle Samuel

Lecturer in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, Kings College London