Ethics and Environment

Ética y ambiente

Constança MARCONDES CESAR y José TRASFERETTI

PUC-Campinas, Brasil.

RESUMEN

En este ensayo, trataremos de la crisis energética en el contexto de una reflexión filosófica acerca del ambiente. El texto presenta una perspectiva general en materia energética y se profundiza en los conceptos de la responsabilidad y el cuidado de los pensadores Hans Jonas y Martin Heidegger.

Palabras clave: Crisis, ambiente, responsabilidad, cuidado.

ABSTRACT

This essay deals with the energy crisis in the context of a philosophical reflection about the environment. The text presents a general view of the subject of energy and delves into the concepts of responsibility and care expressed by thinkers Hans Jonas and Martin Heidegger.

Recibido: 21-03-2007  ·  Aceptado: 14-05-2007

INTRODUCTION

Thinking of energy, cosmus, ecology, atomic weapons, oceans, etc., is thinking of a “planetary conscience”. For philososophers and educators this is an urgent and difficult task, of a serious educational try searching for this called “planetary conscience”. For Manfredo Oliveira¹ this new conscience must have the pretension of becoming possible the correct situation in our world and help people to capture the reality like an opposites unit. The philosopher declares that “the transcendence reveals the human being as a being of the meanings, that situates all and any information at a meaning horizon and that acts since a captured sense. For this reason he is the being of the responsibility, because he is capable of free decisions”. The refered theme will be dealt with inside of the energy crisis perspective and at the same time of the responsibility and the care that the modern philosophical reflexion requires.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE CRISIS

Let’s imagine the space. Beyond it, let’s imagine a sidereal elevator, which has carrying capacity for two hundred tons and that goes up to a cosmic platform one hundred kilometers far from Earth. It is a reality, already. The space which we all “know” includes the Moon, our natural satellite, being 1/6 of Earth gravity – a man who weighs 70 kilos on Earth, would weigh 11.6 kilos on the Moon. Average temperature of 107 degrees Celsius (day) and -153 degrees Celsius (night). Maximum temperature of 123 degrees Celsius and minimum of -233 degrees Celsius. We can find in Mars – the “red planet” – almost one third of Earth gravity – 70 kilos on Earth corresponds to 27 kilos on Mars. Average temperature of –63 degrees Celsius, maximum of 20 degrees and minimum of –140 degrees Celsius. We can also see millions of asteroids – around three thousand asteriods are close to Earth and there are billions of Dollars in cobalt, gold, iron, magnesium, nickel, platinum and silver. There is ice which hydrogen and oxygen molecules are fuel for rockets. It is an energy a potential market that can make US$ 10 billions annually in 2030².

Only the Moon, to which NASA plans to go back in 2020, is with the first stage of the way to Mars, it is known that it may contain 1 million tons of helium-3 – a potential source of energy which ton will cost US$ 7 billions. The market potential: US$ 104 billions in contracts with NASA up to 2018. It is the space releasing energy! We can also detach the solar satellites which control panels orbit around Earth will capture energy to supply the demand of electricity in the planet. The potential market: US$ 100 billions year, since 2020. Solar candle. This prototype will capture photons (electromagnetic particles) sent by the Sun and slowly accelerates, however in a constant form, in the beginning at 312 Km/h, increasing up to 3.680 km/h after 12 days. The potential market: US$ 350 millions in 2014. These are, for next decade, the new sidereal gadgets for capturing energy and lots of money.

We have already reached the evidence that there is water out of Earth – and whether there is water, probably, there is life. It was in Mars that the European drill Mars Express has obtained ice presence. Also, at one of Saturno moons, the American drill Cassini found signals of water.

In space conquest plans we can still notice a “Spacial Tourism” presence – which adventure will be a suborbital flight (and eventually orbital) in aircrafts like SpaceShipTwo, spending US$ 200 thousand each flight and potential market of: US$ 1 billion a year since 2023; “Spacial Hotels” – through a hotel suite, it will be possible to have a beautiful view of the Earth. Potential market: US$ 5 billions a year since 2015. Besides these studies, there are many cosmic investors, like the example of Elon Musk, a north-american – the PayPal electronic payments site foundator – that has sold his business and changed his line of work. Now he has established SpaceX, an enterprise that develops and makes rockets. Among them is Falcon I, that was launched on March 20^th, 2006 and worths US$ 6.7 millions. Musk is entering a market of US$ 4 billions. Another investor is John Carmack, responsible for revolutionary computer games, like Doom and Quake, and established his enterprise to send people to space. Jeff Bezos, from amazon.com – the greatest shopping site in the world – developed the project Blue Origin, that foresees the bulding of a spaceharbor in Texas, USA. Another visionary is Paul Allen, the seventh richest man in the world, Bill Gates’s friend and Microsoft co-establisher. He has spent US$ 24 millions to finance the well-succeeded SpaceShipOne that could transport a civil, north-american citizen, to the space³.

The truth is that the space, the cosmus, represents monetary symbols for governments and private investors. It is evaluated in approximately US$ 50 billions the amount that some contries will spend in 2006 with spatial projects. NASA has been offering US$ 250 thousand for whom invents a device of oxygen extraction from the moon soil. Pioneer Astronautics, enterprise founded by an ex-engineer from Lockheed Martin, has won a contract of US$ 600 thousand with the american agency to build an artifact that produces rocket fuel since carbon dioxide that covers martian atmosphera⁴. The communication matters, caused by the distance, will be solved by the enterprise called Cisco, which objective is to establish communication between Washington and Mars. Comparing with the informatic area, the space investors have already created the “Silicon Valley”- it is the Mojave Desert, California, where the main civil search and development industries of the spacial tourism are. Everything considered it is hoped that the ticket prices are attractive for the people and that a lot of them can leave Earth.

RÉSUMÉ AND RISKS IN OUTER SPACE

The galaxy has been full of fast particles that are able to destroy ADN and other molecules. On Earth, we are protected from this cosmic radiation by the air mass over our heads.  The planet magnetic field protects the astronauts who are in orbit. But the ones who develop long trips will suffer serious damages.

- A water or plastic circle blindage could protect the space travellers, but would reach up to 400 tons – load over the most powerful rockets capacity.

- Biodoctors need to; more precisely evaluate the exposition degree to cosmic rays that a person can put up with for a long time. Maybe some medicines could estimulate the body natural repairing mechanisms.

The cosmic rays have been discovered in laboratories when the physicists observed that the ellectrically loaded bodies don’t remain like that for a long time and goes getting empty little by little. In 1912, when the austrian physicist Victor Hess went up in a baloon and showed that the higher it got, the faster the load emptied from the electroscope, this way he revealed this mistery, since the ionized air cause was unknown, coming from space – because of this it took the name of “cosmic rays”.

In 1950, physicists found out that the term was mistaken, because of the evidence that the cismic rays are not rays, but ions – in the majority protons. Opposing the popular believes, it is not the Earth magnetic field that protects the people on the soil of a full impact of these rays, but, our atmosphere volume. Because of this, the only quantitative available information about the biological consequences of the energetic radiation come from the people who have suffered short, but intense, gamma ray and fast particles rajaships during nuclear explosions or laboratory accidents. Many suffered damages in cells and are under a bigger cancer risk. A traveller in Mars would obtain similar doses, although distributed by the time⁵.

The implications were recently studied by Wallece Friedberg, United States Civil Aerospace Medical Institute Aviation Federal Administration, at Oklahoma City. In an August 2005 report, they estimated that the astronauts in Mars would receive a dose of 80 rems a year. In comparison, the maximum legal dose for nuclear factories in the United States is of 5 rems a year. In other words, one each ten men astronauts and one each six women ones would die with cancer.

The constant cosmic rays rain is not the only radiation threat. The sun may release heavier protons and nucleus that displace almost at light speed. Such rajaships occasionally reach around 100 rems an hour – lethal dose for a human being, astronaut without protection.

Recognizing the radiation threats, NASA created the Protection Program against the Spacial Radiation, at Spacial Flights Marshall Center, Alabama, 2003, United States. The first idea was to surround the astronauts with the material, by analogy, with Earth atmosphere. The other was to divert magnetically the cosmic rays, in the same way that the magnetic Earth field.

The Earth field, for instance, supplies little protection for Polar Regions inhabitants. In order to keep the astronauts at an equivalent equatorial region, the spaceship accommodations would need to have donut form⁶. Furthermore, the astronauts would have to support a large magnetic field and nobody knows what the biological effects of it would be.

Some researchers proposed a field to be extended through a quite superior distance. The field could be impeled out by means of a plasm, the same way of an ionized gas from the solar wind that transports the solar magnetic field to very far from the Sun. Such field “inflamed” would not need to be so intense: 1 Tesla, or less, could be enough. Unfortunatly, according to Scientific American Magazine such proposition ignores the fact that the plasms are evidently instable. The efforts go on. In the last 50 years, to capture plasm at a magnetic field to produce nuclear fusion energy have shown the noticeable plasm capacity of dribbling the tries of controlling it. Even the plasm that could be utilized to inflate a magnetic field, would serve just to weaken, not to strengthen, the shield⁷.

Nevertheless, up to the moment, to protect the astronauts from the cosmic rays sollutins were not found yet. However, the positive aspect is that the searchers have just started to explore the biomedical problem side. In 2003, NASA created Spacial Radiation National Laboratory, in order to analyse the molecular routes of the cells damages, to check the possibility of finding a remedy to reduce or repair. This laboratory is also investigating how radiation attacks the ADN and what kinds of lesions are most serious.

For Sciencies, Technology, humanity progress, it would be very bad if the human spacial trips were impracticed due to cosmic rays. This way, abled people who desire to travel to the Moon or Mars for adventure, couldn’t run serious risks caused by radiation.

These arguments above are some of the themes that compound the scientific searches area. A lot of other studies happen simultaneously involving the space, the conquest and the possibility of man going further. Nevertheless, it is more and more important and urgent for us, to search for a sollution for our terrestrian problems. At last, many of the millions and billions invested on spacial area, could be enough to solve problems like hunger, violence, education, health, and this way, try to dicrease the social inequality among peoples and countries, furthermore to invest on environment at the preservation and quality of life aspect.

Talking about this subject, Brazil, in spite of the misery, already searches for exporting a trash separation system based on the catchers’ organization. Countries like Thailand, China, India and Russia copied this model that moves R$ 7 Billions all around the trash recycling net last year, 2005. 140 thousand tons is the daily volume of urban trash produced in the country. 500 thousand is the number of recycling material catchers in Brazil. 21,1% of the urban trash collected a day was thrown into the garbage pools in 2000, according to the most recent IBGE information – Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. In 1990, 90% of the detritus used to be taken to this embankment⁸.

There are 100 million people in China living with less than US$ 1 a day, and India, with 250 millions under the poverty line, has not always organized waste catchers. Because of this, Brazilian example reveals a not only social question, but also an ecological one. The Coca Cola Company head offices, Tetra Pak, Nestlé, and other industries have suggested to their subsidiaries, in the referred above countries, that they tried to know Brazilian pattern. According to a Folha de São Paulo topic, what has awakened such interest was the fact that the recycling waste process has been growing and the defiler waste has been diminishing⁹.

According to what this reporting has revealed, the multinationals worry when they import the Brazilian model is not only with the environment. At developed countries which have reached elevate recycling rates; the industries have to be responsible for the collecting costs of the package they put in the market for sale. It’s Germany example, world recycling champion, where the collect is financed by the enterprises at an annual cost of 4 billions Euros. This finance is payed, at the end, by the consumer at a forced tax form hidden in the products prices.

The industry collects this tax and charges this amount from the municipal administrations that take the responsibility for the selective collect. Nevertheless, this model is not doable in emergent countries like Brazil, considering that our country is a sustainable selective.

In China, for example, only 20% of the garbage produced at the urban zones is treated, and the rest goes piling-up day-by-day. According to Xinhua news agency, two thirds of the Chinese cities have been surrounded by acumulated trash for years. The garbage pools occupy an area of 500 millions square metters, totalizing 4 billions tons of dregs¹¹.

URBAN GARBAGE RECYCLING RATE, IN % OF THE PRODUCED TOTAL¹²

These reflexions about energy, space and factors related to the environment, can, at any time be stopped by the Legislation. At the Brazilian National Congress, since 14 years ago, law projects that serches for establishing a residual national politics, PL 203, developed by the senate. Other 115 projects about the garbage destination were presented but, were attached to the original one.

The project is ample and its subjects are from piles and batteries, from technological residual, from the tyres recycling up to the garbage collect and selective collection universalization. In recycling residuals case, the project will have to estimulate the productive chain. Nevertheless, the law won’t have to clarify details about the responsibility for collecting packages for post-consumption.

At last, the world is done of individuals and the acquaintanceship of these beings is fundamental for the life establishment and manutention¹³. Our responsibility is individual as well, but passes through the feed back of governmental, not-governmental organisms, social institutions and politic and ethic actions. Only since then we’ll be able to exercise a true social responsibility.

THE ENERGY CRISIS

The contemporaneous world has been characterized by the threat of energy scarcity. By one hand, the vertiginous population increase demands a more and more rigorous planning of food and essential goods such as: clothing, housing, etc., to answer to the growing demand of man’s life in the world. By the other hand, the natural resources like water, wood, vegetation, among others, are not endless, and the technology complexity in the contemporaneous society, provokes a much bigger consumption of these resources at an accelerated rhythm.

We add to this evidence, that the man could never before interfere in the environment with such intensity; never, before the technique allowed a so fast destruction of it, through deforestment, water pollution, depauperation of natural deposit of iron, copper and other metals.

The building of a human world over the surrounding world has been done through damages for nature, provoking the extinction of animal species, of vegetables, including soil and air contamination.

It is to Hans Jonas that we initially need to go in order to sign the first ethics question imposed by the energy crisis: the question of the man’s responsibility towards the preservation of an inhabitable place for the current and the coming humanity.

The ethics question focused by this author emphasizes the idea of responsibility. In the philosophical tradition, this notion is attached to the consideration of the other, to the interpersonal relations correctly guided.

At Jonas’s perspective, this idea is amplified, in such a way that it can embrace not only the human being, who we live with immediately, but also the humanity as a whole, the present and future one.

At the same proportion of the technical increasing capacity, possibility of transforming intervention over the environment, the possibility of world and man destruction, have increased as well.

The conscience of the risks, awoken, provokes fear. The heuristic of the fear, in the philosopher, has the purpose of provoking this conscience, claim for the immediate actions to detain the destruction process that has been started by the man himself.

It is, thus, the amplified reach of his action that brings as a correlate, for the contemporaneous human being, an amplified responsability on the action consequences. These consequences have a planetary character: involve the humanity as a whole. The pollution of the rivers, of the air, the soil contamination, affect not only a restrict group, that provoked the disaster, but an immense number of individuals, not directly related to the restrict group that has acted inadequately. Disasters in atomic factories, like the one in Chernobyl, affected the people who worked in the factory, the city in which it was installed and also, an immense population not immediately connected to the local of the accident.

The technique has planetary implications: changes the world, intentionally guided; but can also produce not predicted consequences, undesirable, problems that the man was not able to solve.

His responsability has become, thanks to the technique, an ampler responsibility: it means consideration, not only of the circle of people we live directly with, but of the current mankind as a whole. The soil and the water contamination, for instance, affect directly the users who live next to the infected places, and indirectly everybody, by the reduction of access to essential goods: drinking water, soil able to produce healthy food.

To the precepts of the Kantian ethics: “act in such a way that you can desire that your maxim becomes a universal law”, “act in such a way to consider the person, in you and in the other, like an end, not like a means”, Jonas adds a new imperative: “act in such a way that your action effects are compatible with the remaining of an authentically human life on the earth; or: “Act in such a way that your action effects are not destroyers for the future possibility of such life; or: Don’t jeopardize the conditions for the indefinite survival of the mankind on the earth” and, at last: “Include in your current choice the future integrity of mankind like a secondary object of your wish”¹⁵.

The essential ethics inquiry is of knowing if the man, nowadays, has the right of risking the totality of the others’ interests. For others, it must be understood the future humanity. For the philosopher, the search for an immediate life improvement, of the comfort, doesn’t justify to risk this life itself. The humanity doesn’t have the right of suicide: the remaining in the being is an ethic experience; there is a right to come to the existence in what concerns to the ones who haven’t been born yet.

Jonas answers affirmatively to the question: “must man exist?”, being supported by the metaphysic priority of the being on the not-being, inspired in the philosophical tradition that identifies being and good, and in the leibnizian perspective, that recognizes the being as a value.

The energy problem is broached by Hans Jonas, which starts distinguishing between the renewable and not-renewable sources. Pointing to the limitation and the not recyclable fuels like the coal, petroleum and gas, the philosopher calls the attention to its fast exhaustion, because of the current consumption. Further more: shows that the agriculture itself depends nowadays of the chemical products derived from these fossil fuels, being, this way, dependent of the energy conditions. Evidences as well that the use of the fuels have as a negative effect, the pollution and the destruction of the ozone layer, with the consequent planet temperature heighten and the risk of the catastrophic fusion of the polar ice caps and of the ocean level elevation, doing “the frivolous and cheerful human party of some industrial centuries be paid with thousands of a transformed terrestrial world...”¹⁶.

Though the atomic energy can replace partially the other fossil resources, it has serious implications: the nuclear garbage can last too much and there isn’t a way for solving the problem yet. Moreover, “all energy use releases heat” and “the fast heat emission towards the environment”¹⁷ may become critical, producing an effect similar to the destruction of the ozone layer.

In the presence of these risks, Jonas talks about the “heuristic of the fear”¹⁸, about a “progress with precaution”¹⁹, about the criticism to the technological society utopia and about the scientific and technical progress ²⁰.

Relating the fear, the hope and the responsibility, our philosopher defines the hope, as expectation of, in the uncertain flow of the time and the world; it is unleashed what is desirable. The fear reporting itself to the uncertain of the happening, provokes a responsible attitude, that doesn’t deny the action, but that cautiously evaluates the act, revealing its implications. The fear is, thus, “the courage of assuming the responsability” for the act²¹. This responsability “is the helpfulness, recognized as a duty, in relation to another being that, when his vulnerability is threatened, he becomes an “object of care”²².

The relation between responsability and care is one of the most interesting aspects of our philosopher’s meditation. The heuristic of the fear is the meditation about the danger, that leads the man in the direction of recognizing himself and of taking care of the more fragile, hoping to recognize the risks, to be able to avoid the worst.

The theme care, key-notion in Jonas when he talks about the shortage of energy, is also broached by Heidegger in Being and Time. In this work, the philosopher evokes an antique fable, to interpret man’s presence in the world as demand of care with the world. In this fable, Care, crossing a river, takes a little bit of clay that it had found and starts giving it form. Jupiter approaches and Care asks it to give a soul to its creature. Jupiter answers to the request, but demands that the creature should carry its name. But Care wants the same as well. The Earth comes up in this argument, intending, at its turn, that the creature that is being molded in clay receives its name. The argument incites among them, what takes them to ask Saturn to be the arbiter of the argument. Saturn’s solution is to give the creature soul back to Jupiter, when it dies; give back its body made of clay to Earth. As, however, it was Care who gave form to the being, he will own it while it lives. This creature will be called man (homo), because it has come from the humus of the earth.

The fable, says Heidegger, shows the care as the origin of the human being and as his essential constitutive²³.

It is taking care, establishing a sense, worlding the world, that man builds his habitat, by thought and action. To be man is “to be on earth as a mortal, that is: inhabit”; that is also to veil and to care, to keep ourselves among the things, establishing bows between earth and heavens, gods and mortals ²⁶.

Take care is to turn the world an inhabitable place, to allow the man to carry his destiny out in the presence of the other things and opening to the Transcendence.

Heidegger and Jonas thoughts are complementary; Jonas applied Heidegger’s ontological categories in the ethics field, evidencing the relation between responsability and care.

These two notions implicate, thus, the consideration of a future humanity, not born yet, with the one we don’t have any direct relations.

We are responsible for the existence possibility preservation that belongs to this humanity, taking care of the environment in such a way that life, after us, is still possible and completely human.

We are responsible for the use of the resources that we recognize nowadays as being finite, in such a way to become possible the existence of the human beings on earth, through the maximum time extension. In other words: the energetic resources, available nowadays, are not only ours and don’t belong to any political or social group. They belong to everyone, to the current humanity, but also to the one that has no been born yet, just potential or hypothetically existent.

To be responsible means: not unjustly take possession of goods that are not only ours; means to affirm the life possibility, the life value of the ones who haven’t been born yet, like a good as precious as our own lives²⁷.

CONCLUSION

Facing the energy crisis, the environmental degradation, the shortage and finitude of the energetic resources, it is imposed an adequate use of these goods, an especial care that makes of a properly human life preservation possible, for the longest time possible. Then, to be is much better than not to be, to exist is much better than not exist, once the being is always expression, in the world, of qualities and plenitude.

Ethics that belong to our days: ethics open to the future, in a society that lives in crisis, that notices the finitude and the shortage of the goods which it is the keeper.

Bibliografias

1. Oliveira, M A (2001).  Desafios éticos da globalização. Paulinas, São Paulo.        [ Links ]

2. Prado, Ac & Camargo, C (2006). “O espaço está mais perto”. Revista IstoÉ. nº 1899.15 de março, São Paulo: Editora Três.        [ Links ]

3. Scientific American Brasil (2006). “Um escudo contra raios”. Ano 4, nº 47, abril.        [ Links ]

4. BALBI, S (2006). “Brasil já exporta sua tecnologia da miséria urbana”. Folha de S. Paulo. 21/05, Caderno Dinheiro.        [ Links ]

5. Trasferetti, J (2006). Ética e responsabilidade social. Alínea, Campinas.        [ Links ]

6. Jonas,  H (1990). Le Principe Responsabilité, Cerf, Paris.        [ Links ]

7. Heidegger, M (1993). Sein und Zeit. Max Niemeyer.        [ Links ]

8. Heidegger, M (1967). Carta sobre o Humanismo. Tempo Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro.         [ Links ]

9. Heidegger, M (1958). Essais et Conférences. Gallimard, Paris.         [ Links ]

Notas

1  OLIVEIRA, M A (2001): Desafios éticos da globalização. São Paulo: Paulinas. pp.287-288. 

2  PRADO, AC & CAMARGO, C (2006): “O espaço está mais perto”. Revista IstoÉ. nº 189. 15 de março, São Paulo: Editora Três.

3  PRADO, AC & CAMARGO, C (2006): Op. cit.

4  Ibidem.

5  SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN BRASIL (2006): “Um escudo contra raios”. Ano 4, nº 47, abril.

6  Ibidem.

7  Ibidem.

9 

Ibidem.

10  Ibidem. 

11  Ibidem.

12  (1) Urban garbage includes the organic rests (gardening pruning food) and wet (glass, paper and carton, plastic and cans); (2) Includes organic garbage compoundage only (Source: Industrial Recycling for Impresarial Compromise, 2004).

13  Cfr. TRASFERETTI, J (2006): Ética e responsabilidade social. Campinas, Alínea. p. 32.

14  JONAS, H (1990): Le Principe Responsabilité, Paris, Cerf. 

15  Ibid., pp. 30-31.

16  Ibid., pp. 253-254.

18  Ibid., pp. 300-310.

19  Ibid., pp. 276-279.

20  Ibid., pp. 297-300.

21  Ibid., p. 300.

22  Ibid., p. 301.

23  HEIDEGGER, M (1993): Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer, p. 196.

24  Ibid., p. 230.

25  HEIDEGGER, M (1967): Carta sobre o Humanismo. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro, p. 46.

26  HEIDEGGER, M (1958): Essais et Conférences. Paris: Gallimard, p. 173.