Global Reality
Rain does not fall on one roof alone
The chances are high that before reading this post, you used quite a
bit of energy today, and this access to energy makes your quality of life
beyond decent. Today still 1.2 billion people live their lives without electricity
access, and over 2.7 billion people use solid biomass for cooking, leading to
health hazards and 3.5 million deaths annually from indoor air pollution. Can
you imagine your life under these circumstances?
What is needed and what is considered a basic standard of living
adequate for one’s health and well-being differs per culture and state of
development. We need to reevaluate on a global scale what energy consumption,
transportation, and production patterns reflect a ‘decent’ standard of
well-being in order to ensure sustainable energy access for all people, now and
in the future.
A sustainable society is founded on equal access to health care,
nutrition, clean water, shelter, education, energy, economic opportunities and
employment. In this ideal society, humans live in harmony with their natural
environment, conserving resources not only for their own generation, but also
for their children’s children. Each citizen enjoys a high quality of life and
there is social justice for all. This concept transverses national borders and
requires we enable these rights on a global basis.
Legal Principles
We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality
– Ayn Rand, Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright.
Legally there are many agreements for global cooperation to providing
a decent living standard including sustainable energy access, and mitigating
climate change as means to improve sustainable consumption.
- Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25:
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing,
housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to
security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age
or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992:
ii. The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of
present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in
accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective
capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead
in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof. (UN, 1992a, Art.
3).
iii. The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate,
prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse
effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of
full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such
measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate
change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest
possible cost (UN, 1992a, Art. 3).
As we saw in the previous post, there are many SDGs involved with
sustainable and ethical energy access and consumption, not just #7 'Ensure
access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all'. And even
if we implemented the SDGs, there is no guarantee energy access and consumption
is ethical. Additional ethical principles are listed below.
Ethical principles
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will
save it - Robert Swan, first person to walk both poles, advocate for protection
of Antarctica
- Utilitarianism: What produces the most good over the least harm, do no harm principle
- Rights: Humans have the dignity to make choices about their own life
- Fairness or justice: Fair distribution of benefits and burdens, polluter pays
- Common good: Protect common conditions required for everyone’s welfare, precautionary principle
- Virtue: Does this action represent the envisioned type of person, enterprise, nation?
Further reading
No comments:
Post a Comment