Oldal 128 [128]
126 | Tue PaicosoPuy or Eco-Pozrrics
These objections lose none of their validity if one aims to support
the authority of the just redistribution with arguments of solidarity. As
is known, the economists and moralists who coined the expression
“Spaceship Earth” appeal to the principle that all humanity and even
all the inhabitants of our planet belong to a single community. We are
all passengers of a planet soaring through space; we all share the same
fate.!'® The spaceship-simile is not really apt, however: the planet has
no helmsman; its passengers cannot influence its course; its inhabitants
have never belonged to a single community — they are rather one other’s
good or bad neighbours, whose interests and fate differ at least as much
as they can be said to be similar.
American biologist and systems researcher Garrett Hardin, father
of lifeboat ethics, took a radically different starting point. He preferred
to compare the situation of humanity facing a global ecological crisis
to that of the shipwrecked. Each nation flees the catastrophe on its
own lifeboat; each is responsible only for the fortunes of his/her own
community (boat) and does not risk it for the sake of saving other
groups in need. According to Hardin, if we save the passengers of the
overladen, sinking boats, i.e., if we welcome the inhabitants of poverty¬
stricken areas or lend assistance with aid in the form of food, this just
reinforces them in the incorrect practices which led to their
impoverishment and overpopulation. Hardin warns against the
expanded reproduction of destitution and emphasises that immigration
cannot be a solution, because the population density of the target
countries is well over the ecologically sustainable limit. Mass
immigration would shake the foundations not only of their wellbeing,
but of their whole culture; finally, our lifeboat would also sink under
the increased burden, he claims.
Two serious objections can be made to Hardin’s arguments,
however. The cosmopolitan liberals question our right to, for whatever
reason, deny human beings similar to us the right, equal to ours, to
choose their dwelling-place as they see fit. We have already
encountered the communitarian refutation of this argument: if we
recognise the right of a political community to self-determination,
Territorial Right and Global Distributive Justice. Political Theory 40.1 2014.
118 The metaphor was coined by American diplomat Adlai Stevenson. It spread in the
specialised and popular literature following an article by the economist Kenneth Boulding.
(Kenneth Boulding: The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth. In: H. Jarrett ed.:
Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,
1966.)
19 Garrett Hardin: Lifeboat Ethics. In: Living on a Lifeboat. Bioscience 24, 1974.