The United States has a clear moral obligation to assist poorer nations throughout the world, according to Peter Singer, DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton Uiversity, at a lecture last Thursday at Crowell. Singer, whose lecture opened the Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, combined environmental, economic and human rights issues to address the validity and necessity of a global ethic.
Assistant Professor of Philosophy Lori Gruen introduced Singer, listing his accomplishments, publications and the importance of his beliefs as they relate to the contemporary political climate.
“Professor Singer is what…is called a genuine philosopher – one whose writing and teaching is always connected to real-world practical problems,” she said. “His ideas and commitments are deeply concerned with touching real lives in the hopes of making those lives better. In his case, this hope often becomes reality. His writings have influenced policy-makers across the world.”
In order to make a case for the ethical responsibility that the wealthy have towards the less fortunate, Singer broke his lecture up into four sections. He first used the atmosphere as an illustration as one of the ways in which we live in an interconnected world and then discussed globalization in economic terms.
From there, he directed his attentions toward the issues of sovereignty and the question of whose responsibility it is to intervene if a ruler abuses his or her citizens. He concluded by arguing that the citizens of rich, industrialized nations have a moral obligation to help those of poorer countries.
Singer represented the atmosphere as a limited commodity currently dominated as a resource by industrialized nations. Not only do the actions taken in one country affect the climate in another, such as global warming caused by emissions in the United States altering the reliability of rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa, but Singer argued that the situation has reached a critical point.
“We cannot, on a global level, simply continue with business as usual,” he said.
Due to the scarcity of the resource, Singer presented two options by which the atmosphere could be shared: “lots” could be allocated to each country according to a historical entitlement to the atmosphere, or the atmosphere could be distributed on a per capita basis. Since, as far as Singer knew, no one had any “deeds” to the atmosphere, Singer determined that the atmosphere should be divided up based upon the number of people living in each country. As Singer explained, according to this principle industrialized nations dominate use of the atmosphere and President Bush’s decision not to sign the Kyoto Protocol only makes the situation worse placing us in a moral quandary.
“Essentially, the problem has come about because of the developed nations having increased their rate of emissions of greenhouse gases,” Singer said. “Moreover, what the developed nations have put into the atmosphere over the last century or so of their development is basically still there…So if you ask why is it that we’ve now reached this critical level where we can say we can’t take anymore, the answer clearly is that the developed nations are responsible for that situation. So, by one historic principle of justice, it seems that developed nations are the ones who ought to be the ones doing the most to fix the problem.”
From there, Singer went on to talk about free trade and the World Trade Organization. According to Singer, in recent years the gap between the richest third of the world population and the poorest third has not necessarily widened, yet the majority of the poorest third live in countries like China, which have over the years become more economically stable. Thus these impoverished peoples have remained impoverished despite the increasing economic success of their nations.
In addition to these issues, free trade would deprive consumers in other countries from choosing the products they buy based upon the process by which they were produced because the Free Trade Agreement is intended to create a level playing field for all goods and not to discriminate based upon the way that something is harvested or created. According to Singer, the agreement would also prevent people from third world countries from getting a fair price for their goods because richer countries could raise tariffs against them.
Singer also advocated that the Security Council of the United Nations be reformed so that it could serve as a better mediatory force, deciding when intervention is needed in countries whose people are being exploited. This would prevent other nations from getting involved in conflicts in order to advance their own interests.
“[One way to prevent the Security Council from being an ineffective force] would be to deprive the permanent members of their veto rights,” he said. “The permanent members are really just a historic remnant of the victors of the Second World War.”
Singer continued by explaining that unreasonable uses of the veto allow the United States to dominate world politics, preventing true justice from being served.
Singer concluded by analyzing the amount of aid that various industrialized nations give to underprivileged countries in order to show that the United States gives the least amount of aid of any industrialized country. By pointing to his previous deductions, Singer claimed that we live in an interconnected world and thus it is our moral obligation to help those who are less privileged than ourselves.
“This is a case where it’s not just up to the government, this is a case where we can all make a difference,” he said. “[We] can all think about our own moral obligations…Think about how much we have in terms of luxuries. We all spend money on things that are not necessarily necessities and if you think about the difference that that tiny amount of money could make to some of the world’s poorest people, then I think we have an obligation to assist them.”
Student reactions to Singer were mixed. Though most were excited to have the opportunity to hear a lecture by such an eminent scholar in person and to see ethics applied to real world situations, not all were convinced that his lecture was effective.
“He didn’t really prove a whole lot of anything,” said Gabe Tabac ’06. “He gave a general overview of all of his beliefs, but didn’t give a clear assessment of his line of ethics.”
Others found the lecture hard to follow.
“He covered a lot of general topics and related them back to the same theme but to truly analyze [his beliefs] it seemed like you had to have an established opinion,” said Brendan O’Reilly ’07.
Not all found his words so mysterious. Many were impressed both with the depth and breadth of his knowledge and with his ability to give logical reasons to conclusions that seem intuitive.
“He is distinct from other intellectuals, even of his stature because he speaks clearly,” said Matt Roe ’05. “Everything was so well reasoned and so well spoken. He’s really talking to everybody and is much more humble than one would expect.”
As for the relevance of the lecture, all present seemed to agree on the topic’s significance.
“All of the things he talked about were general issues because that’s the great thing about an ethicist,” Roe said. “They can talk about anything and make a point.”
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