Prévia do Artigo - Parte 1 (ENG)

Energy Development, Geopolitical Impact

 Ethical and Moral Dilemmas in the Global

 Transition

Author: Arthur Lívio (Draft Version)

Abstract

At the current moment in history, human development has reached its peak. However, persistent challenges remain, and new ones continue to emerge—particularly those related to sustainability, energy production, and the geopolitical dynamics surrounding these issues. This work examines contemporary cases involving energy and geopolitics, offering reflections grounded in philosophical principles of ethics and morality. By doing so, it seeks to identify solutions or alternative courses of action aimed at improving quality of life while promoting global sustainability, human advancement, and technological progress.

I – Introduction

The ethical and moral perspective is virtually a prerequisite for understanding energy-related geopolitical issues. Before examining specific case studies, it is essential to consider sociocultural, environmental, economic, and other energy interrelated factors.

Energy is still a neglected topic in philosophy and ethics. There is a close connection between people’s moral rights and secure access to energy. It is common to see the rights to life and physical and psychological integrity as connected to access to food, clothing and shelter, but we may fail to notice that electrical energy is necessary to produce and distribute food in sufficient quantities, to preserve it at low temperatures, to cook it or to keep our homes sufficiently warm or chill. Energy is necessary to guarantee basic needs, to make economic development possible and to allow a certain standard of living that facilitates the protection of people’s rights. The absolute poverty or the extremely low standard of living of billions of human beings is intrinsically linked to widespread energy poverty, that is, the lack of access to sufficient quantities of safe, secure and affordable energy. [1]

An analytical openness is needed one that allows our interlocutors to share our visions of how the world should and could be, an analytical approach that enables them to be social, situated, and unpredictable beings, entangled in the politics of life. Ethical sensibility animates people’s everyday thoughts and practices, whether they work with renewable energy, nuclear power, or fossil fuels; whether they work in industry, politics, or advocacy; whether they produce, distribute, or consume energy. We must take seriously and strive to understand people's own experiences and assessments without uncritically imposing our own visions of how we think the world should be lest energy becomes just another chapter in a long history of global interventions based on unquestioned ideals. [2]

Broadly speaking, all energy systems distribute benefits, costs, and risks among individuals and groups. The issue is not whether some energy sources are ethical and others unethical, but rather how different system designs contribute to ethical or unethical outcomes. By highlighting how these distributions vary depending on the design of the socio-energy system, we must encourage the explicit consideration of ethics in design choices. Design choices can be made more ethical sometimes by adjusting technological designs, other times by modifying the social, economic, and political organization of these technologies. [3]

In human history, technologies, industries, and social developments have always produced changes in natural environments, composed of mineral, agricultural, and animal elements (Lewis and Maslin, 2018). But since the mid-18th century, the Industrial Revolution, with its shifts in modes of production, consumption patterns, and the structure of societies across much of the world, has led to rapid population growth and urban expansion, causing a surge in the effects of anthropogenic interference in the Earth system (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2013). This shift inevitably compels us to confront, from an ethical perspective, issues such as the use of geo-resources and energy, protection against natural and anthropogenic hazards, pollution and biodiversity loss, soil consumption, depletion of freshwater resources, and, more broadly, global environmental changes (Peppoloni et al., 2019). Humanity must carefully consider its impact on natural environments, which is capable of altering living structures, impoverishing them, and rendering them artificial (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2013).[4]

Accordingly, we face one of energy ethics' most intricate dilemmas concerning climate and sustainability. To fight global warming, the world's fossil fuel-based energy systems must undergo a swift and comprehensive transition to clean energy sources. Yet this necessary transformation seems at odds with the developmental needs of much of the global population and could undermine stable energy access - the very foundation of welfare and rights protection for humanity's more affluent segments. [1]

This article examines these issues first through broad conceptual frameworks before delving into the specific interplay between energy geopolitics and ethical considerations.

References (Draft Version)

[1] Klaus Steigleder, Robert Heeger, Climate_Change_and_Energy_Ethics, 2019, p. 01-02.

[2] Jessica M. Smith, Introduction The ethical constitution of energy dilemmas, 2024, p. 04.

[3] Clark Miller, Ethics of Energy Transitions, 2014, p. 04.

[4] Silvia Peppoloni, Giuseppe Di Capua, Geoethics as global ethics to face grand challenges for humanity, 2020, p. 07.