1 challenge the future sustainability and its ethical foundations guest lecture for 4413renesy -...

1Challenge the future

Sustainability and its Ethical FoundationsGuest lecture for 4413RENESY - Renewable Energy Systems

Behnam Taebi , 3 December 2015


To be discussed today

• A brief history of sustainable development

• Philosophical challenges to the notion of sustainability

• Sustaining what? Why? For Whom?

• Sustainability ethics: the case of nuclear energy


Part 1 Sustainability Ethics

Ethical pillars of sustainability


A brief history I

• The Club of Rome: The Limits to Growth – 1972 • Growth is not endless and depends on finite resources • Ecological impacts of economic growth

• The Brundtland commission: Our Common Future - 1987• First systematic introduction of sustainable development • …“meets the needs of the present without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

• Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro – 1992• UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)• Sustainable development enters policies: Precautionary Principle • Agenda 21: a blueprint of actions on global national & local level • A voluntary “non-binding” aim to reduce Greenhouse Gases


A brief history II

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 1988• Assessment 1996: “discernible human influence on climate”• Assessment 2001: “stronger evidence that most of the

warming … is attributable to human activities”

• Kyoto as amendment to UNFCCC in Rio started in 1997• To reduce and stabilize GHG – voluntary commitments• Emission trading was introduced

• Kyoto’s first commitment period ended in 2012• Second period 2013-2020 (Doha) has fewer

participants• Japan, New Zealand and Russia didn’t accept new

targets, Canada withdrew altogether and the US never ratified


The Precautionary Principle (1992)

• A key question in innovation is “how to deal with uncertainties”

• In 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development• Principle 15: Where there are threats of serious or irreversible

damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

• Early warnings are often not taken very seriously• Because of lack of scientific evidence that there could be harm for

the environment or human-beings • E.g. lead in petrol

• Source: Late lessons from early warnings: science, precaution,

innovation, European Environment Agency , 2013


Sustainability in terms of resources

• Sustainability is a matter of natural resources we bequeath• Strong: next generation inherit a stock of environmental assets

no less than the stock inherited by the previous generation• Weak: next generation inherit a stock of wealth, comprising

man-made assets and environmental assets, no less than…(Pearce 1989)

• Contention arises from the substitutability of resources • Distinction between natural and manufactured resources • Can we compensate for the depletion of natural resources?

• Strong concept sets the threshold for impact assessments• This is a matter of social, political and moral preferences


Sustainability as environmental impact

• Another key issue in sustainability is to limit our impact on the environment, assuming that people in the future will use the same environment

• Indeed, any activity with respect to the environment - – certainly technological developments - will have a certain impact on the environment• What level of impact is acceptable?• This is a question with a moral dimension


The growth dilemma

• Both the availability of resources and the environmental impact aspects are discussed in the Brundtland’s concept

• No-growth lobbyists and developing countries• The club of Rome retained that growth must be limited • Dire need for growth in Southern countries

• The Brundtland’s concept attempts to offer a solution• It does imply limits but no absolute limits • “limitations … on environmental resources and by the

ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities”


The ethical pillars of sustainability

• Social justice grounds sustainable development

• Sustainability is supported by three main pillars

1. Fair distribution of well-being among contemporaries • intragenerational justice – “essential needs of world’s

poor”

2. Fair distribution of well-being between generations • intergenerational justice

3. Sustainability also refers to the relation with nature


The Brundtland definition

• …“meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

• What does the notion of “need” entail? • For the present and future generations

• Can we simply coincide our and their needs? • Tragedy of the commons – Garrett Hardin• Commons as communal grazing of livestock

• Prisoner’s dilemma • it is in the collective interest of all parties to cooperate,

while it is in every party’s individual interest not to cooperate


Tragedy of the CommonsTo cooperate: to remain silent

To defect: to confess & to accuse the

other one

The common of pasture

Partiers are individual herdsmen

To cooperate: to take as few as possible

cattle

To defect: to take as many as possible

cattle


What are the commons?

• What are the important things held in common?• The non-renewable energy resources • The environment (including the atmosphere)

• Tragedy of Commons argues that we should accept limits• To our action and our freedom • In order to maintain the commons for all

• Tragedy of the commons primarily emphasizes spatial issues• But the same questions relate to all things we hold in

common with future generationsSpatial relates to the space dimension; also intragenerational issuesTemporal relates to the time dimension; also intergenerational issues


Philosophical challenges to obligations

• Sustainability assumes obligations to future people• 3 challenges to these alleged ethical obligation

1) The non-identity problem• How can we harm not existing people• whose existence and identity depend on our action?

(Parfit 1984)

2) The ignorance problem• We don’ t know what they need• We don’t even know that they will be

3) The distance problem• To which future people do we have obligations? To what

extent?


However…

• We can assume that • There will be people in the future • …whose interests can be affected by us • They need – at least – clean air, water and a protected

climate

• We all have access to same environment & resources• Consider limitations on our actions to protect their interest

• How far in the future should we care? • Should we make a distinction between different future

people?• Negative duties are more compelling and extend further Positive duties are duties to benefit someone

Negative duties are duties not to harm


Why sustainability in energy issues

• Recall: the two dimensions of sustainability • Social justice in a spatial sense• Social justice in a temporal sense

• Spatial & temporal Tragedy of the Commons• Depleting non-renewable resources • Affecting the environment

• Two aspects of energy discussion• Energy consumption • Energy production


Part II Sustainability Ethics

Sustaining what, why and for whom?

The case of nuclear energy


Sustainability & conflicting interests

• Three key ethical questions in sustainabilityI. What is it that we wish to sustain? II. Why should we sustain it?III. For whom should we sustain it?

• In order to answer these questions, sustainability is considered as a moral value• From which we can derive other contributing values

• How to deal with conflicting interests • For instance between the present and future

generations Values are things that we hold paramountMoral values refer to how we understand good life


Sustaining what? Why?

• Since we (the present generation) and future generations have all access to the same environment and resources, we have a moral duty to

1) Sustain the environment and humankind’s safety • Leaving the nature no worse than we found it

• Protecting public health

2) Sustain human well-being• Resource durability or availability of non-renewable

resources

• Economic durability


Source: Taebi, B. and A. C. Kadak. 2010. Intergenerational Considerations Affecting the Future of

Nuclear Power: Equity as a Framework for Assessing Fuel Cycles. Risk Analysis 30 (9): 1341-1362.

Environm

ent and humankind


Sustaining the environment

• Why should we care about the environment? • Should it primarily serve human interest?

Anthropocentrism • Does it have an intrinsic value? Non-anthropocentrism

• Unreasonable to expect no change in environment• How to repair/compensate for inevitable changes• E.g. how to repair the environment after toxic waste

pollution • E.g. how should we compensate for the damage causes

by climate changeInstrumental value means that something serves some other good Intrinsic value means that there is no need for instrumental references


Moral standing of non-humans

• Environmental philosophy deals with the relation of humans with the nature in general• And more specifically, with non-human animals

• How should we assign moral standing ? • The ability to think and to freely choose: autonomy • Right and duties towards each other (do animals have

rights?)• The ability to experience pleasure and pain

• These questions already entered policy making


Sustaining health and safety

• We should not jeopardize the safety of future people• This is a negative duty

• How far in the future should we offer such protection?• This is the third key question : for whom to sustain?

• Should we distinguish between different future people? • Is it feasible/desirable to offer exactly the same

protection?

• The scope of this questions goes beyond philosophical contemplations


Rem is a unit for measuring health impact of radioactivity also referred to as radiotoxicity. In Europe we use Sievert (1 Sv = 100 rem)

Radiological protection

•The next 10,000 years: 15 millirem per year (current level)

•Beyond that period: 350 millirem later adjusted to 100 millirem p/y


Sustaining natural resources

• Sustainability is interpreted here as durability (resources)• Obviously we can’t stop using non-renewable resources• So we should provide compensation for depletion (Barry

1999)• Debate on the moral relevance of the status quo

• There is no moral relevance for the present situation, because previous generations survived with much less (Beckerman 1999)

• If future generations are not responsible for the situation they find themselves in, we have to compensate them (Barry 1999)

• The status quo is quite conservative as it neglects population growth, which is a main issue in sustainability discussions The status quo refers to the present situation


Renewable resources

• Sustainability is often taken to be synonymous with renewable resources

• Durability is indeed a very important aspect of sustainability • Because no depletion of natural resources will occur

• However, it is myopic to see sustainability only as durability• Sustainability is a complex notion that relates to many

different considerations

• Also renewable brings about certain considerations• E.g. biofuel and food scarcity, land use (tropical forest) etc.


Economic durability

• For an energy source to be sustainable• It must be economically durable

• Durable for whom • Whose interest are we taking into account? For what

period? • Are future interests as important as the present ones? • Economist introduce here the concept of discounting• Very relevant for discussion on cost-benefit analysis

• We will extensively discuss the economic issues in lecture 3

(Acceptability of new technologies)


Is nuclear energy sustainable?

• …“affordable, reliable electricity” that does not put “the earth’s climate in jeopardy,”

(Bonser 2002)

• …the safety of plant operation as well as proliferation concerns

(Stevens 1997)

• under certain conditions “there is a basic case for treating nuclear energy as a contribution to sustainable development at least in a “transitional role towards establishing sustainable energy”

(Bruggink et al 2002)

• …nuclear power is inherently “unsustainable, uneconomic, dirty and dangerous”

(GreenPeace 2006)


Sustainability as a framework

• There are two methods for producing nuclear power

1. To use uranium once in a reactor (available resources at least 100 years) resulting in radiotoxic waste for 200,000 years;

2. To recycle and reuse the waste. Available resources for thousands of years; waste life time is 10,000 years

• Which fuel cycle do you consider more sustainable? • Based on which criteria? • How would you rank these criteria or moral values? • Why?


The open and closed fuel cycles


Are we there yet?

• In energy two aspects are very relevant• Availability of resources • How it affects the environment and public health

• Both aspects have a spatial and temporal dimension

• Sustainable development could be very useful notion…• In the future of energy discussions; both consumption and

provision

• IF we manage to identify interest at stake • And address conflicts of interests appropriately • ‘Appropriate’ has a strong normative dimension


Reading

• These books could be found in TU Delft library• Van de Poel, I. R. and L. M. M. Royakkers. 2011. Ethics,

Technology and Engineering. An Introduction: Wiley-Blackwell.

Chapter 10: Sustainability, Ethics and Technology

• Raffaelle, R., W. Robison and E. Selinger, eds. 2010.

Sustainability Ethics: 5 questions. Copenhagen: Automatic

Press.

• The following article could be found online(make sure you long in on a TU Delft network)

• Taebi, B. and A.C. Kadak. 2010. Intergenerational

Considerations Affecting the Future of Nuclear Power: Equity

as a Framework for Assessing Fuel Cycles. Risk Analysis 30

(9):1341-1362. available online

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