Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
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.
That basicly gurantees right to energy and would cover all examples given above. Housing without proper heating, in an enviroment were it is needed is no longer housing. Spoiled food is not longer food and medical service do include having energy for medical devices.
Ethically speaking? Yes. Legally speaking? No, and it never will be, at least not in the US.
I couldn’t give a fuck what they think is legal anymore, the law of the modern world seems to be in the upside down.
The plain, simple answer is Yes.
There’s two ways that energy access could be considered a human right.
In one way, energy access is considered a human right in that everyone is given energy for free.
In the other way, energy access is considered a human right in that everyone has the right to purchase possess and utilize energy.
Something I think a lot of the current group of activists don’t understand is that without energy, people die en masse. And they want to end access to energy, which isn’t good. In much of the world, if you can’t hit your home over the winter, you’re dead. We also require energy to grow food, to transport food, to build and maintain shelter. Energy is simply an important thing. If anyone tries to make it so that individuals are locked out of acquiring energy, that’s certainly something that would be effectively a death sentence. To be less abstract, if we were to tell certain people that they are not allowed to buy food, that certainly would be considered an atrocity.
On the other hand, when people say that something is a human right and therefore people need to be given it free of charge, that’s a very dangerous cliff. The energy has to come from somewhere, and it’s not easy to acquire. Even unimaginably huge sources of energy such as major hydroelectric dams still have a limited amount of power available, and pricing systems are a way to manage the scarce resource.
That being said, I think that there is a moral element to governments using taxpayer money to produce common goods such as hydroelectric dams to produce energy long term for the people represented by that government. By engaging in such projects, even if they are not going to give the power away for free, and they are making it available for the people, which in my view would fulfill a right to energy, particularly if there’s enough energy to provide it at a relatively low cost.
Something I think a lot of the current group of activists don’t understand is that without energy, people die en masse. And they want to end access to energy, which isn’t good.
Why the strawman out of nowhere my friend :)
Why the strawman out of nowhere my friend :)
I was sure you were joking because no one would seriously think @sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net was misrepresenting your argument - his post wasn’t even a reply to you. But then I see that you doubled down on that later.
It isn’t a strawman when people are calling for exactly that by demanding we stop using fossil fuels immediately, which many are.
Reasonable people can see there’s a need to transition into something sustainable and less continuously polluting (all industrial scale energy production has an environmental impact, but dumping thousands of tons of gas into the air 24/7/365 is particularly continuously polluting), but people saying we need to just stop using oil(like the name of a certain activist group demands) or that we need to stop right now(As a certain activist screamed at the UN to do) are calling to end access to energy with the corresponding consequences.
Recently I had a deep review of my book “The Graysonian Ethic” done, and two of the recurring themes throughout the book was the balance between idealism and realism and considering both the short and long term consequences of decisions. The need for a balanced approach between urgent action and the potential consequences aligns with the overarching themes. The book emphasizes the importance of considering both short-term and long-term consequences of our actions, as well as the complexities involved in making decisions that impact individuals and humanity as a whole.
You ask for 10 to receive 7-6-5…
And btw a lot are asking to stop subsidizing fossil fuels to start subsidizing renewables with that same amount of money
It’s a strawman cause we are talking about no particular case. Seems to me that it’s just another attack to just stop oil and similar people, which I don’t like lol
People will die anyway if we don’t stop with fossil fuels also.
It’s really a matter of what path we want to achieve:
- people dying for capitalism
- people dying for green capitalism
- stop with the capitalism, people will die in the transition but should be much fewer than those other 2 options
Energy in the technical sense has always been a human right as we would literally die without it (ATP production kind of requires it and sunlight tends to power food production too)
If by energy you mean electricity or chemical energy in convenient containers (like butane canisters) then no but improving access would extend lives and reduce the total environmental pollution if done properly. As there is not an upper bound on how much every one could claim they need and lack of access to energy efficient options would make the lower bound insufficient for most people to live off.
My early thought was: how can energy be a human right when you have people living remote and far from the grid?
Suppose Alice and Bob both need an organ transplant. Only one viable organ is available. In that case, it is /impossible/ to protect the human right to live for both people. But we do not say “welp, guess we have to scrap the right to live as a human right”. We maintain the right to live as a human right even though protecting that right is impossible in some situations. If an ER doc decides to save Alice and let Bob die and he gets dragged into court for violating Bob’s human rights, the doc obviously has a strong defense that he was forced. The other human rights violation is that the two people were not treated as equals. The defense would be that if you let them both die to treat them as equals, the right to live was denied in more cases than needed.
So w.r.t. energy, we could still declare energy is a human right (or claim that it inherently follows from other declared rights) despite the impossibility of serving everyone.
People who survive off grid have ways to meet their energy needs, or they would not survive.
In the UK, the energy companies are not allowed to cut off someone’s supply. They’ve been getting round that by forcibly installing pre-payment meters, a practice which is coming under increasing scrutiny.
I am blocked from #newsAndStar but was able to reach the article this way:
Thanks for the info. I wonder if those meters take cash, or if they take no money at all and perhaps they are just a remote controlled switch. One of my concerns is whether unbanked people can pay in cash.
They have a plastic key that has to be topped up at a shop which offers the service. You can only pay in cash (something to do with card fraud, apparently). I assume it is the same when they cut people off remotely via their smart meter but I don’t know how the credit is physically transferred to those.
I don’t think it would make sense. Better have access to: clean water, food, (temperature regulated) housing, low cost entertainment, medicine
Legit just let people live, not just surviving, and will be enough
(temperature regulated) housing
Energy naturally follows from that in most housing in the world. Exceptions being very temperate regions or corner cases where someone lives in a passive house (i.e. insulated so heavily that heating & cooling is not needed).
Define “access”.
Should everyone have access to pay for the energy they consume? Sure.
Should they be granted free energy they aren’t paying for? Um, erm, well…
Should everyone have access to pay for the energy they consume? Sure.
The problem in some regions (e.g. Europe for sure & probably China) is the utility companies force payment by bank transfer. So if someone is excluded from the banking system because banks refuse them or the consumer refuses the bank, they’re stuffed because the suppliers will not accept cash. The US somewhat protects against that because legal tender laws ensure that all debts can be paid in cash.
But in any case, indeed this is the no-brainer case. People should not be refused energy by way of exclusion due to payment methods.
Should they be granted free energy they aren’t paying for? Um, erm, well…
This is the case Europe does better than the US.
I think in the US they just cut you off if you can’t pay your bills (though there are probably some welfare programs probably mitigate that to some extent).
In Europe, they don’t just pull the plug on you. No matter how deep your debt is, they throttle you so you have a little energy but your consumption is limited. This is not a solid option though because the throttling is only possible if you have a contract for energy to begin with. If you just moved and don’t yet have a contract, then they can cut you off. I’m not sure if suppliers can refuse to let you start a contract, but the contracts are worded such that you agree to pay by bank transfer, thus unbanked people are essentially forced to sign a contract they cannot satisfy.
