Analysis Of Garrett Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics

“He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive,” quoted by Jack London in the story ‘The Call of the Wild.’ Garrett Hardin was an ecologist who alerted the risks of overpopulation and was so passionate about the topic that he wrote several essays and books on it. In the essay, “Lifeboat Ethics,” he discusses that people in rich countries should not help the people of poor countries, and we should not assist them with our resources. Hardin uses two metaphors to illustrate two ways of either helping the poor countries or not. One of the metaphors is the spaceship, which shows how if …show more content…
Throughout the whole essay, he briefly talks about the positive outcomes of the spaceship and instead discusses everything wrong with it. “The spaceship metaphor can be dangerous when used by misguided idealists to justify suicidal politics for sharing our resources through uncontrolled immigration and foreign aid. In their enthusiastic but unrealistic generosity, they confuse the ethics of a spaceship with those of a lifeboat.” Hardin passionately discusses how the lifeboat method will work not only for the wealthy countries but for the poor countries as well. His point of view for the lifeboat method is consistent through the whole essay and gave major points and reasons to agree with …show more content…
I agree and understand Hardin’s arguments, but I disagree on how harsh his solutions are to solve overpopulation. Overpopulation effects not only on nature but as well as complications within the human race. United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization have determined that in the year 2050, the world’s human inhabitants will rise up to a surprisingly nine billion. The human race has been escalating at a shocking rate. Three million years ago, our human race was about 5-10 million, and up until the eighteen hundred, or only two hundred years ago, did the human population escalated to five- hundred million. Between two hundred years, the human population escalated nearly to seven billion people, taking twelve years for the newest population rise by one billion. With no control over the population growth rate, particularly in third world countries, there will not be enough food to feed everyone in the world and the death rate will start to rise while the human race will start to