Abstract
Technically produced energy is a “basic resource”: a supply of cheap and safe energy is indispensable for mankind to maintain physical subsistence. Energy is needed to process and provide drinking water and sufficient food. Large parts of the world would not be habitable without a constant flow of energy to heat or cool the living environment. Technically generated energy is an essential prerequisite for transport and communication and thus the basis for the creation and preservation of prosperity by division of labor, specialization, and participation in markets and society.
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Notes
- 1.
While the central contribution of division of labor, specialization and trade to the development of prosperity since Adam Smith’s “Wealth of the Nations” (1779) is undisputed, the influx of energy indispensable for this has only recently received the necessary attention. Cf. for instance Hall and Klitgaard (2012) and Smil (2017).
- 2.
It is controversial to what extent Marx’s understanding of a communist society constitutes an exception. In his programmatic writings, however, he is unambiguous: his prominent distribution principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” (Engels 1847), for example, seeks merely to define abilities and needs as the yardstick for the social distribution of goods—instead of class affiliation and capital ownership. Cf. also F. Engels’ Preface to Marx’ “The Poverty of Philosophy” (1847): “Justice and equality of rights are the cornerstones on which the bourgeois of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would like to erect his social edifice over the ruins of feudal injustice, inequality and privilege”. For a more detailed discussion, cf. Buchanan (1982).
- 3.
Cf. the discussion using the example of nuclear waste disposal in Streffer et al. (2011).
- 4.
The definition of failed states focuses partly on economic and partly on legitimatory aspects. Uniform definitions and indicators have not become established, so that the numerical data also fluctuate. An assessment of the current state of affairs in 178 compared nations with regard to relevant factors can be found in the “Fragil State Index” (http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/data/ accessed 13-Dec-2019).
- 5.
Cf. the impressive descriptions in Wenar (2015) and Yergin (2011).
- 6.
For an overview of the project and an analysis of its failure cf. Schmitt (2018).
- 7.
Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, Book V; cf. e.g. Rawls (1971), Gauthier (1982), Hinsch (2002) and Gosepath (2015).
- 8.
The fact that such inequalities can be regarded as divine providence and that in the context of a theistic world view it could certainly be deplored as injustice by those concerned that the Creator has put them “into misery”, while others enjoy their happiness, will indeed play a role for their reaction to the perceived injustice. The constellation between the complaining person and the divine “distributor” could also be described as a conflict. Conflict resolution efforts on the part of the person concerned could then be presented in the form of magical or religious practices. Here and in the following, however, injustice is always addressed as a type of conflict that exists between conflict parties acting according to human standards. Religious convictions are only taken into account to the extent that they play a role in the discussion of conflict resolution strategies.
- 9.
The calculation by Nordhaus (1996) impressively proves this: according to his findings the Stone Age man had to invest approx. 50 h of work around 9,300 b.c. in order to obtain a thousand lumen-hours of light (corresponds to the approx. one-hour light output of a conventional 75 W lightbulb), whereas the members of Western industrial nations today only have to work approx. 0.00012 working hours—calculated in the mid 1990ths, before the LED lamps became widespread.
- 10.
This thesis is emphatically supported by Simon (1996). For a historical outline of resource multiplication through innovation from antiquity to the present, see Mokyr (2017). In this context it is worth noting, that the same applies to information: Since information are the result of information gathering efforts, and since one never can know ex ante whether and when further efforts might be fruitful, there is no such thing as “complete information”. By principle reasons therefore decisions and resolutions about just distributions are to be made with incomplete information (Kamp 2015a).
- 11.
The assertiveness potential of smaller groups with a higher density of interaction (such as those that would be directly affected spatially by a large-scale installation) in the face of the “silent majority” of beneficiaries, who would have to make far greater efforts to overcome their mutual anonymity and represent their interests in an organized manner, was exemplarily presented by M. Olson as a “logic” of collective action (1965).
- 12.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-air-pollution-and-health, accessed 13-Dec-2019.
- 13.
In the scientific and epistemological debates, there is then talk of a situation- and addressee-invariant defensibility of assertions that form the ideal of scientific discourse. The same applies analogously to the defensibility of calls that want to be regarded as ethically justifiable (cf. e.g. Gethmann and Sander 1999).
- 14.
D. Hume’s in 1751, for example, stated, that no one can commit an injustice by using the abundantly available air wastefully, although it belongs to the “most necessary of all things” (Hume 1751:Part 3, para. 4). To think of climate as a resource and to think of emissions in terms of a budget is a development that took place only over the very last decades.
- 15.
This was prominently emphasized in the approaches of philosophical hermeneutics. Cf. Gadamer (1969) as representative for the debate.
- 16.
The great importance attached to the issues of sustainability and intergenerational justice when setting the political agenda, especially in Europe, is not necessarily to be seen as an indication of the existing need for protection and rescue of civilization and its environment. Rather, it can also be seen as an indicator of the high degree of stability and planning certainty that these countries have achieved. Contrasts between nations that plan for the long term and those that depend on immediate solutions to existential threads are impressively described in Deaton (2013).
- 17.
To put it in R. Axelrod’s words, institutions live “in the shadow of the future”: Future benefits from cooperation motivate the individual to cooperate now (e.g. in the preservation of institutions), even if it would be more profitable for the individual not to cooperate (e.g. to exploit the institution as a freeloader) in the respective upcoming decision-making situations with an exclusive view to the directly expected returns. If, however, the shadow of the future dissolves (and an end to the institution becomes foreseeable), cooperation collapses. In game theoretical description the actors play so-called endgames. Cf. detailed Kamp (2015). The argument has a structural kinship with I. Kant’s, when he sees the categorical imperative based, among other things, on the practical necessity to preserve the institutions where they are condition of the possibility of purposeful and effective action (e.g. personal benefits from a broken promise depend on the existence of a social institution of promising—which would not exist if everyone would try to exploit the institution and breaks promises at will).
- 18.
For example, the UN Secretary-General heads a “Sustainable Energy for All initiative”, the aim of which is to ensure universal access to modern energy services (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/energy/, accessed 13-Dec-2019).
- 19.
The public debates are full of examples of more or less quickly withdrawn proposals, from flat tax to income-based tiered pricing for access to public goods, income-related fines for traffic offences and much more.
- 20.
This is a variant of Hare’s (esp. 1952) universalizability argument, reformulated for distributive justice and relativized for moral communities.
- 21.
This insight is well established in philosophical debates at least since L. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1951). For an application on ethical consideration cf. McDowell (1981). For insights from behavioral research cf. Ariely (2008), Kahneman (2011) and the papers collected in Kahneman and Tversky (2000).
- 22.
For a resilient control, at least two clocks are required, see Janich (1985).
- 23.
Singer (2009), for example, undertakes this thoroughly popular but misleading attempt.
- 24.
Hardin (1968). The literature structure underlying the problem, especially in numerous cases of overuse of resources. Cf. representatively for many of the systematic investigations Trapp (1998).
- 25.
Th. Hobbes (1651) describes a state in which there is competition for the elementary resources, but in which obligations and claims have not already been created by agreements, as an original state. Until the standards for this are created with the constitution of the first rules, there is no such thing as justice or injustice in this state—people in the state of nature virtually only follow the laws of nature as long as they are the only standard. Such an original state is conceivable both at the level of the individual, under suitable marginal assumptions, e.g. a biological disposition to instinctive care for one’s neighbors or the necessity to form defense communities against organized enemies, etc., and also at the level of the hordes, settlement communities or the territorial states.
- 26.
Cf. the overviews of the diversity of approaches in Moellendorf and Widdows (2015) and the thematic compilations in Stückelberger (2016).
- 27.
Cf. the contributions in Lichtenstein and Slovic (2006).
- 28.
See Singer (2009). The analogy argument is often quoted and is—especially outside professional philosophical circles—often cited in order to promote financial transfers from developed regions to regions in need of development. Cf. Peter Singer’s own online platform https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org (accessed 13-Dec-2019).
- 29.
A normativistic fallacy is the missed (but often superficially convincing) attempt to derive concrete requests or recommendations from general principles without due consideration being given to situational circumstances that stand in the way of the application of the principle to the given case. The definition of the normativistic fallacy goes back to Höffe (1981:16), cf. for instance Gorke (2003, Chap. 14).
- 30.
As altogether in this contribution here “justice” is used only in the sense of distributive justice (iustitia distributiva), not in the sense of exchange justice (iustitita commutativa) or justice before the law (iustitia legalis).
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Gethmann, C.F. et al. (2020). Questions of Distributive Justice. In: Global Energy Supply and Emissions. Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, vol 47. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55355-5_9
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