The book Enough: Why The World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman discusses the causes and solutions to hunger in Africa. The book starts out with the story of Norman Borlaug, a plant pathologist, who was working to create a rust-resistant plant. He eventually created seeds that were very successful in Asia, helping to lift people out of starvation. Because of this, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. However, Borlaug’s seeds did not make it to Africa, where many people were starving.…
Tragedy of the Commons: The Lorax meets the Dakota Access Pipeline The tragedy of the commons is an economic problem popularized by Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s. This widely accepted theory states that “every individual tries to reap the greatest benefit from a given resource. As the demand for the resource overwhelms the supply, every individual who consumes an additional unit directly harms others who can no longer enjoy the benefits.” (Investopedia)…
Garrett Hardin, the author of this essay, is trying to explain this topic as survival of the fittest by saying that the wealthier countries and the people that…
Jared Diamond espouses the view that the “root of inequality” is the geographical location of a country and the resources it possesses. According to Diamond, all societies in the world were equally wealthy at one time in history. Unfortunately, global environmental changes made some parts of the world to experience harsh weather conditions that made traditional hunting and gathering inefficient in providing food for households. Regions that were geographically disadvantaged were unable to access adequate resources and skills for their development. Diamond uses New Guinea, which is a poor country, and the United States, a wealthy nation, for his analysis.…
Malthus is as successful in repetition and joint writing as Hardin is in his use of logical analogy and real-world illustration; however, both economists artfully convey their points of discussion and leave their audiences to ponder if there really is any moral or sensible way to alleviate poverty and the world’s population…
(Intro) Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” and Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat ethics” are contradictory philosophical works that examine whether scarce resources should be shared with the poor. Singer’s argument is that “suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad" (Singer, 1972); therefore all people become morally obligated to help the poor. While Hardin argues that ethics of a Lifeboat should be followed because there is a finite amount of resources available at our disposal (Hardin, 1974, pp.566). Both authors take extreme positions by providing opposing arguments on whether we should be involved in helping the famine or not. This essay will analyze the rational of both authors’ while trying…
Through examples from lecture and the article, I will review how this is a beneficial article to understand. Hardin goes into detail about how with every country having a different population causes for unequal resources needed. In the article it discusses the options that could be used to help countries where there is overpopulation and hopefully stop the hunger of many people. This is done through the discussion of The World Food Bank and a number of programs for improving agriculture in hungry nations called “Green Revolution”.…
Inadequate farming leads to inadequate food supply. It seems that plenty of land is used to farm, but due to difficult conditions, poor transportation, and even competition with “free food,” the farmers cannot keep up. This is exhasturbated by the lack of fertilizer, heat-tolerant seeds, irrigation, and climate change. Many of the governments use these conditions to control their people because…
Global economic justice is a set of moral principles and obligations that guide economic policy. If implemented thoughtfully, it will produce the best possible economic outcomes for all inhabitants of our planet. The purpose of this discourse is to contrast two different approaches. The first approach is Hardin’s lifeboat ethics. In Hardin’s view, developed nations that adopt free immigration policies and give economic assistance to poor nations will pay a heavy price.…
Introduction: In the article “Living on a Lifeboat,” Garrett Hardin believes that our obligations to the poor and hungry are metaphors based on the ethics of living on a lifeboat and the tragedy of the common. The ethics of living on lifeboat is based upon the rich and the poor. Rich people are in the lifeboat and poor people are in the sea. The wealthy has only three options in the situation with the poor people.…
Africa is growing rapidly and the ten or twenty years to come, its population will grow. As of now, it’s growing at a 3.9 percent per year and it will continue to been one of the highest growing population in the world. Currently about 1.2 billion people live in Africa; with over 40 percent of the population living in urban areas. The growth of the population is demanding more and more water for this region. This problem is further aggravated by the rate at which populations will be increasing.…
Population control is any method that is used to control the type and number of people. Over the past few years there has been a slight increase in world population. Overpopulation has always been a concern (Watson). Many people fear that there will not be enough resources to support the human population. Even with this knowledge, people still decide to have children.…
In fact, he points out “1 billion of the world’s meat eaters, car drivers, and throwaway consumers are responsible for the lion’s share of the damage humans have caused to common global resources.” (406) Essentially, he disagrees with Hardin’s essay in regards to the lifeboat and what Hardin thinks about overconsumption. According to Hardin, if the wealthy nations continue to provide for the poor nations their population will continue to grow. As a result, they will use most of the resources provided from the earth. The lifeboat in turn will be affected because of the overpopulation and overconsumption.…
The phone rings. It's a friend of yours who just booked a recurring role on a big television series. She is ecstatic; her voice sings and screams in a high pitched excitement. She is so grateful to share her moment with you. Despite your genuine desire to be happy for your friend's good news, a pang of anxiety erupts in the pit of your stomach.…
In the article, “Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People,” published on January 28, 2010, Charles Godfray asserts that because of the continuing growing population and the growth of food consumption, the demand for food will increase for at least 40 years due to the lack of certain factors which could prevent the issues being faced with the demand for food. Godfray supports his implication by supplying the reader with a variety of causes as to why the demand for food has continued to rise such as the yield gap, production limits, the change of diets, yet at the same time provides solutions to these certain complications which could reduce the demand for so much food. Moreover, Godfray wishes to convey the readers into understanding the importance of reducing the impact of the food system on the environment and the certain precautions or actions that can be taken in order to better the situation by creating a “multifaceted and linked global strategy” to…