The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. . . Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 48, 51
The earth is the Lord’s and all it holds, The world and those who dwell in it. For he founded it on the seas, Established it over the rivers Psalm 24:1-2
The Unites States spends the most on its health care system than any other nation, making possible state-of-the-art hospitals in many cities, furnished with cutting edge facilities and equipment. Unsurprisingly, hospitals rank second as the most energy-intensive commercial buildings in the country (after food service facilities) due to their operations and consumption of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. A 2016 study by Matthew J. Eckelman and Jodi Sherman estimated that healthcare-related greenhouse gas emissions grew 30% in the previous decade, comprising 9.8% of the nation’s total in 2013. If the US health care sector itself were ranked globally, it would rank 13th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of the entire United Kingdom. Their discovered that 12% of the nation’s acidification, 10% of smog formation, and 9% of respiratory disease from particulate matter is attributed to the U.S. healthcare sector. Perhaps we try to justify these environmental tolls as the cost of caring for the health of our nation and saving lives. However, this excuse falls flat in the face of the health effects of those tolls. Eckelman and Sherman estimated 470,000 disability adjusted life years (DALYs) lost due to ill health, disability, or early death caused by healthcare activity in 2013. We cannot claim that the environmental impacts are justified by the system’s betterment of health when these very same impacts are harming our health. In Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), Pope Francis describes how intertwined our health is with our earth’s.
Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. Francis, Evangeli Gaudium, 215
Not only do our healthcare system’s environmental effects negatively impact our health, they are contributing to the degradation of our global environment. Those of us benefitting from health care and other environmentally deleterious institutions are often far removed from the ever-intensifying reality of environmental deterioration. Disadvantaged groups are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation, so caring for the environment is essentially tied to caring for our neighbors.
A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. Francis, Laudato Si’, 49
Hospitals have tremendous room for environmental improvement, and fortunately organizations and hospitals have responded to this need. For example, Practice Greenhealth created the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI). HHI helps healthcare organizations adopt environmentally conscious practices like energy and waste reduction, choosing safer and less toxic products, and purchasing and serving healthier food. 1300 hospitals have committed to this initiative. Our healthcare system must not only think of the health of those within the walls of its hospitals, it must consider the health of those impacted by its emissions and the health of our earth, and efforts like the Healthier Hospitals Initiative must be promoted and amplified.
Sources "Care for Creation." United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2020. Eckelman, Matthew J, and Jodi Sherman. “Environmental Impacts of the U.S. Health Care System and Effects on Public Health.” PloS one vol. 11,6 e0157014. 9 Jun. 2016. "Healthier Hospitals." Premier, 2020. Kashef, Ziba. "Environmental and Health Impacts of the U.S. Healthcare System." YaleNews, Yale University, 9 Jun. 2016. "The Legacy of Healthier Hospitals." Practice Greenhealth, 2020. Nazrul Islam S, and John Winkel. "Climate Change and Social Inequality." DESA Working Paper No. 152, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, Oct. 2017.