Energy ethics – applied ethics or not always ethics?

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15421/272015

Abstract

In the process of understanding the subject specific of energy ethics was proved in spiteof a long period of actualization of, moral questions connect with the energetic decisions inthe global and national scales, its investigation field had been starting to form at the beginningof the XXI century and this process is still continue. Moral collisions which were considered which were put into the questions of production and using energy, energetic safeness, existinginitiatives in the field of energy efficiency and receiving the pure energy from the re-new sourcesand also connect with the development of the energetic sphere as the such. Essentially, it goesabout two big complexes of problems: firstly, those which are generated by the sphere of energyitself and need ethic analysis (dichotomy of reduction / increase of energy consumption in theworld and individual countries; providing access to the energy and the necessity of energysafety; moral aspects of transaction to alternative sources of energy because of the unfavorableecological situation; the problem of global energetic inequality, etc.), secondly, problems whichare connected with the conceptualization of ethical discourse in the energy sphere (developmentof instruments, conceptual-categorical apparatus, principles and criteria of ethic analysis ofenergetic problems), including ideals of post-noclassical rationality where is the classical ideaof subject autonomy inferiors the ideas of co-existence and collect responsibility.

It is emphasized that today there is no universal management or textbook in energy ethics,like any base document which can connect different approaches and topics. In the westernscience dominates a tendency to combine the concept of energy ethics and a system of energyjustice that is not the same from the view on energy ethics disorganization as the sphere ofinvestigation. Conceptualization and standardization of terminology remains a priority withinenergy ethics studies.

Analysis of the investigation field of energy ethics and the absence of standard management forcreating ethics instructions for action don’t give the possibility to say about the applied energyethics existing as the sphere. That’s why for many specialists in energy sphere the energy ethicsis not the ethics by itself, and for researchers who study ethics aspects this very sphere is beingin the process of formation as an ethics- applied and project-oriented knowledge, creatingarchitectonics and organizational and methodological principles.

Published

2020-12-05