Lifeboat Ethics Critique Essay

Michael Jones

Deidra Sutton

ENG 111

9 March 2016

Lifeboat Ethics: Critique

In this selection, an excerpt from the first part of Garrett Hardin’s essay, was published in September 1974, in the magazine psychology today. Here the author compares being in a lifeboat; stranded in the ocean, to the rich and poor societies across the world.

This excerpt is an excellent source of a metaphor to rich and poor societies, and what must be done. Many countries today have limited resources on feeding or providing for its increasing population “and as the current energy crisis has shown us, in some ways we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our land”(Hardin 290).

The use of the lifeboat represents many nations. Increasing birth rates to low mortality, and better scientific or medical technology has led to an ever increasing problem as to where should people live and how will countries continue to provide food when

Is it okay to deny a dying person who will soon die anyway to make room for someone else? Suppose the food on the boat was low: is cannibalism acceptable? If someone will die in a day of two, is it okay to murder them now to save resources, of if they are going to die in a day of two, is it okay to murder them for cannibalism” (Wikipedia) .

Hardin’s lifeboat ethics is clearly closely related to environmental ethnics, preserving methods of survival and addressing the issue of resource depletion. He uses lifeboat ethnics to question many policies in countries around the world on foreign aid, immigration, and food banks.

In his 1974 manuscript, “lifeboats ethics” he outlines a case for and against aiding poor, overpopulated nations. To explain his metaphor, he pointed to many proposals to create world food banks- in which nations would contribute based on their abilities and according to the needs of their