abstract: Societies seeking sustainability are transitioning from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources to mitigate dangerous climate change. Energy transitions involve ethically controversial decisions that affect current and future generations’ well-being. As energy systems in the United States transition towards renewable energy, American Indian reservations with abundant energy sources are some of the most significantly impacted communities. Strikingly, energy ethicists have not yet developed a systematic approach for prescribing ethical action within the context of energy decisions. This dissertation reinvents energy ethics as a distinct sub-discipline of applied ethics, integrating virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism with Sioux, Navajo, and Hopi ethical perspectives. On this new account, applied energy ethics is the analysis of questions of right and wrong using a framework for prescribing action and proper policies within private and public energy decisions. To demonstrate the usefulness of applied energy ethics, this dissertation analyzes two case studies situated on American Indian reservations: the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Navajo Generating Station. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2019

Submitted by Noeme Timbo (noeme.timbo@metodista.br) on 2017-01-26T12:32:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 OFIRMORAGRISALES.pdf: 1496235 bytes, checksum: c2b9867fdd285911680e608d0ccfbe68 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-26T12:32:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 OFIRMORAGRISALES.pdf: 1496235 bytes, checksum: c2b9867fdd285911680e608d0ccfbe68 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-01 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Eros is a vital and dynamic energy very difficult to define and frame. Thus I decided to grasp with it through the fragments and tracks I could glimpse within the impetus and beauty of its journey in the lives of people and through human relationships. My interest in eroticism was triggered by some initial concrete suspicions regarding its peripheral, almost absent location in theological discourses, the erotization of violence and domination as a common phenomenon in Latin America, the racialization of the eroticism and finally an excessive sexualization of eroticism in Western culture. I aimed at a reconstruction of eroticism from an ethical and transformative perspective. Deconstruction and interruption were used as feminist and subaltern strategies of searching for other meanings, other practices and even another language. This led my way through a destabilizing dynamic of the hegemonic thinking that underpinned eroticism in theory and practice. Feminist critical theologies, as well as liberation and indecent theologies, walked together along this erratic route that ended up transcending the theoretical framework of theological discourses. Thus I proposed that er/ethics shall be a plausible expression for an open and new space of meaning and negotiation of eroticism which can only be discovered in its transgressive potential in that it is able to discover and keep alive the flow of energy that moves us in the depths of our bodily experience, individually and collectively and beyond domination, beyond the way in which time is experienced in our capitalist and postcolonial world. The fragmented character of the word make the borders fluid, destabilizing disciplinary boundaries, and at the same time, it creates the conditions of its relatedness. / Eros é uma força vital, um fluir de energia difícil de definir e emoldurar. Optei assim, por percebê-la a partir dos fragmentos, dos rastros que consegui vislumbrar no ímpeto e beleza do seu percurso nas vidas e nas relações humanas. O meu interesse pelo erótico decorreu inicialmente de algumas suspeitas concretas: o lugar periférico, quase ausente do erótico na teologia, a erotização da violência e da dominação como prática recorrente na América Latina, a racialização do erótico e finalmente uma excessiva sexualização do erotismo na cultura ocidental. Visei, pois, reconstruir o erótico desde uma perspectiva ética e transformadora. Para tanto, o caminho foi a desconstrução e a interrupção enquanto estratégias feministas e subalternas de busca por outros significados, outras práticas e inclusive outra linguagem. Tal caminho me endereçou num processo de desestabilização da compreensão hegemônica que informava teológica e simbolicamente teorias e práticas do erotismo. Teologias críticas feministas, de libertação e indecentes, caminharam junto nesse percurso errático que inevitavelmente excedeu os limites do discurso teológico. Finalmente então, propus que a er/ética seja a expressão para um novo e aberto espaço de significação e negociação do erótico, o qual só pode ser compreendido no seu potencial transgressor, na medida em que é capaz de descobrir e manter vivo o fluxo de energia que nos move, no profundo da nossa experiência corpórea, individual e coletiva e para além da dominação e da utilidade do tempo e mundo capitalista e colonial. A fragmentação da palavra coloca as fronteiras em aberto, desestabiliza os limites disciplinares, ao mesmo tempo em que cria as condições para sua relação.

Ecocentrism is a philosophical position developed in the field of environmental philosophy that offers an alternative view of the complex relationships between humans and the nonhuman world. This dissertation develops an ecocentric philosophy of energy in order to account for a wider set of ethics and values dimensions involved in energy politics. It focuses especially on inter-species justice as a crucial missing element behind even those energy policies that seek to transition society from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The goal is to develop an ecocentric philosophy of energy that accounts for the fundamental and deep ecological interdependences of human and nonhuman animals, plants, and other living and non-living beings. I start with an introduction and a summary of the chapters followed in chapter 2 by a clarification of the terms "paradigm" and "energy." In chapter 3 I offer an exploration of the origins of the "energy paradigm" or the predominant understanding of energy that emerged during modernity (18th century onwards). The modern energy paradigm progressively became a "traditional" forma mentis that is nonetheless based on flawed presuppositions about the human-energy-nature relationship. I criticize the homogeneous, colonizing and hegemonic nature of this paradigm, unveil its tacit anthropocentric and instrumental assumptions, and show how it still fuels contemporary lifestyles and policy. Chapter 4 presents a literature review that traces the most significant contributions from the humanities (broadly construed to include social sciences such as anthropology and sociology) to the study of energy. In this chapter, I also focus on the scarcer yet relevant literature on energy's metaphysical, ontological, and ethical dimensions. In chapter 5 I develop the theory of a radical, ecocentric philosophy of energy, building on the work of other ecocentric thinkers such as Holmes Rolston III, J. Baird Callicott, and Arne Naess. Chapter 6 suggests paths towards the realization, in praxis, of this ecocentric philosophy of energy. It provides the sketch of an "ecocentric energy ethic" to enhance an ecologically sustainable and inter-species just energy transition. This normative framework is intended as a flexible and nonetheless precise "moral compass" that supports an ecocentric turn in the human-energy-nature relationship. The energy ethic outlines key principles to evaluate the "morality" of energy policies, practices, and technologies. These principles can provide ethical guidance to energy practitioners (engaged consumers, energy users, educators, designers, and public policy makers) and thus contribute to the theoretical and practical achievement of an ecologically sound and inter-species just energy transition.