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| Living on a Lifeboat |
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Metaphorically, each rich nation amounts to a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. The poor of the world are in other, much more crowded lifeboats. Continuously, so to speak, the poor fall out of their lifeboats and swim for a while in the water outside, hoping to be admitted to a rich lifeboat, or in some other way to benefit from the "goodies" on board. What should the passengers on a rich lifeboat do? This is the central problem of "the ethics of a lifeboat." |
population overpopulation migration |
| Living on a Lifeboat |
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"I feel guilty about my good luck," say some. The reply to this is simple: Get out and yield your place to others. Such a selfless action might satisfy the conscience of those who are addicted to guilt but it would not change the ethics of the lifeboat. The needy person to whom a guilt-addict yields his place will not himself feel guilty about his sudden good luck. (If he did he would not climb aboard.) The net result of conscience-stricken people relinquishing their unjustly held positions is the elimination of their kind of conscience from the lifeboat. The lifeboat, as it were, purifies itself of guilt. The ethics of the lifeboat persist, unchanged by such momentary aberrations. |
population overpopulation migration |
| Living on a Lifeboat |
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A social system is stable only if it is insensitive to errors. To the Christian-Marxian idealist a selfish person is a sort of "error." Prosperity in the system of the commons cannot survive errors. If everyone would only restrain himself, all would be well; but it takes only one less than everyone to ruin a system of voluntary restraint. In a crowded world of less than perfect human beings--and we will never know any other--mutual ruin is inevitable in the commons. |
population overpopulation migration |
| Living on a Lifeboat |
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The input of food from a food bank acts as the pawl of a ratchet, preventing the population from retracing its steps to a lower level. Reproduction pushes the population upward, inputs from the world bank prevent its moving downward. Population size escalates, as does the absolute magnitude of "accidents" and "emergencies." The process is brought to an end only by the total collapse of the whole system, producing a catastrophe of scarcely imaginable proportions. Such are the implications of the well-meant sharing of food in a world of irresponsible reproduction. |
growth stabilization control Malthus charity starvation hunger international aid |
| Worldwide Extent of Land-use Change, The |
309 |
Despite the fact that the period between 1850 and 1990 represents only a small fraction of the time since the development of settled agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, the area of cropland worldwide more than doubled in this 140-year period. Half of the world's croplands were added in the last 90 years. In the tropics, the doubling occurred in the last 50 years. The rates resemble the history of population growth. |
agriculture farming |
| Worldwide Extent of Land-use Change, The |
312 |
Ten thousand years ago, terrestrial ecosystems were largely undisturbed by humans. Today, approximately a third of the land surface is devoted to either croplands or pastures. The area amounts to approximately half of the world area suitable for agriculture. Although the expansion of agricultural lands was slow over most of this 10,000-year interval, the rate of expansion has been increasing. For croplands alone, half of the long-term increase occurred in the last 90 years. In the tropics, this doubling occurred in the last 50 years. At current rates of deforestation, clearing for both crops and pastures will have eliminated tropical forests in approximately 100 years. If the rates of deforestation continue to accelerate, most tropical forests will be cleared in approximately half that time. |
agriculture farming |
