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 The United States is shirking its ethical responsibility to the global community, noted philosopher Peter Singer told a standing-room-only crowd during the University of Delaware's annual David Norton Lecture held Tuesday evening, May 7, in 128 Clayton Hall.
Singer, who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, focused on three areas in which he believes the U.S. has not met its ethical obligations: global warming, foreign aid and the recent announcement that it would not participate in the International Criminal Court.
Citing a United Nations report, Singer said global warming could spin tropical storms further from the equator, lead to the spread of tropical diseases, cause a shift in arable lands and result in a rise in the sea level. These catastrophic effects, he said, will be felt most acutely in developing nations least able to deal with them.
Global warming is an ethical issue, Singer said, because it concerns a scarce resource--the atmosphere, or more properly the ability of the atmosphere to absorb waste gases--held in common by everyone on the Earth.
He likened the atmosphere to the village green of old, in which farmers could graze their cattle. It was in their personal interest to graze the most possible cattle, but not so many that the grassy green turned into a dust bowl, of no use to anyone in the community.
Singer argued that the developed nations use a disproportionate share of the atmosphere and so should bear the majority of the responsibility for alleviating the problem. "On historical principle, it seems the burden should fall on the industrialized nations, including the United States, to solve the problem," he said.
Singer noted that the United States, the single greatest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, has vowed not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on emissions. "The United States," he said, "is not thinking in a way someone concerned about global ethics ought to be thinking."
That stance carries over to foreign aid, with which the nation is far too stingy, he said.
American leaders are well aware that people in other countries are in need of such basics as food, health care and safe water to survive and yet do very little to assist them, according to Singer.
The U.S. spends about 0.1 percent of its gross national product on foreign aid, Singer said, a figure that is the lowest among all developed nation. "Surely the United States has a superabundance and it is not sharing it with the poor in other parts of the world," Singer said.
Much of that foreign aid, he added, is targeted to strategic rather than humanitarian aid. The two leading recipients of American foreign aid are Israel and Russia, neither a developing nation. "This is a serious ethical problem because it fails to take into account that human needs are human needs no matter where the people are," Singer said.
The recent announcement that America would not participate in the International Criminal Court demonstrates "a failure to play the kind of role the world's superpower ought to play in moving us toward a global ethical community with global standards," Singer said.
American fears that its own citizens could be prosecuted by the court are probably unfounded, he said, adding, "It is the height of arrogance to elevate the United States above international law."
The lecture was supported by the David Norton Memorial Fund, in conjunction with the Delaware Biotechnology Institute.
May 8, 2002
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