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But wi th oil prices becoming an
increasing burden to the U.S. econ–
omy as well as to othe r developed
countries, a powerful ímpetus has
been genera ted to
trade
excess food
for vi ta lly needed energy supplies.
With tbe mounting worldwide de–
mand for food , the era of massive
free
food aid may be over. "We'd be
fools not to parlay our agricultura!
abundance for whatever trade con–
cessions we can get," said one ob–
server. "The Arabs may have the
crude, but we have the food."
lifeboat Ethics
To a number of thinkers, especially
Garrett Ha rd in, a human ecologist
a t the Uni versity of California,
Santa Barbara, a future food crunch
should be handled in much the
same way those on a lifeboat would
handle themselves in a disaster.
"Each rich nation amounts to a life–
boat full of compa ratively rich
people," says Hardin. ' 'The poor of
the world are in other, much more
crowded lifeboats. Continuously, so
to speak, the poor fa ll out of their
lifeboats and swim for awhile in the
water outside, hoping to be admit–
ted to a rich lifeboat, or in sorne
other way to benefit from the good–
ies on board. What should the pas–
sengers on a rich lifeboat do?"
Hardin's ·point is that if the pas–
sengers in the rich lifeboat take on
the poor swirnmers, their boat will
eventua lly become overcrowded
and swamped and they will all lose
their lives. Logically, the refore, they
should not admit any more people
into their boat. By analogy, the
" lifeboat theoris ts" believe tha t if
the rich countries undertake massive
grain sharing with the poor, their
own economies will sutfer and, con–
ceivably, they could even so draw
down their own food supplies as to
make
themselves
vulnerable to fam–
ine.
Critics say such an approach is
morally repugnan!, but Hardin and
his associates claim that this ap–
proach is not as hardhearted as it
init ially sounds: In fact , they a rgue
that it is a deeply moral, even al–
truistic course of action.
Ha rd in mai ntai ns that if the
United Sta tes were to sacrifice its
own standard of living to send mas–
sive shipments of food to India, it
26
would only mean tha t so many
more people would be kept alive
and would eventually procreate and
make the task of feeding them tha t
much greater. Eventually, the time
would come when it would be phys–
ically impossible for the U.S. to feed
them all, and, at that time, many
more people would end up starving
to death than would have if the
United Sta tes had never sent food in
the first place. "Every life saved this
year diminishes the qua lity of life
for subsequent generations," Hardin
maintains.
The main criticism of the lifeboat
approach comes from those who
disagree with the lifeboat ana logy
itself.
Sorne charge that the lifeboat ap–
proach
assumes
the worst possible
thing will happen: No means will
eventually be found to feed the ex–
tra people which current a id would
keep alive.
Furthermore, they fear that li fe–
boat ethics would become a self-ful–
filling prophecy. If the rich nations
do not
try
to help the poor nations
develop their own agricultura! re–
sources, millions of people wi ll be
condemned to death, when a decent
etfort on the pa rt of the "have" na–
tions in that area could have pre–
vented it. Cri tics also maintain that
Hardin errs when he says that the
rich nations would be swamped if
they were to "take on" the poor.
They contend that there is a grea t
deal more "fat" and surplus in the
rich nations than Hardin would
aiJow for, and that while the rich
nations might not enjoy "first-class
berths," their lifeboa t wouldn't
exactly be swamped. As one crit ic
put it: " Before you start pitching
people out of lifeboats, you could at
least get rid of the golf clubs."
Nuclear Blackmail
F inally, critics point out that whole
nations simply do not starve quietly.
Sorne nations might even attempt
nuclear blackmail to prevent the
rich nations from withholding aid.
In such a case, it might be more
profitable-even from the stand–
point of tbe ricb nations' own self–
interest-to make an all-out etfort in
food aid and agricultura! devel–
opment in the Third World .
"India was only the first of many
poor nations to decide, given the
near-certa inty of famine, that nu–
clear weapons are a better invest–
ment for survival than tractors and
fertilizer," says former Pentagon–
think-tank researcher Lowell Ponte.
" If poor na tions have nuclear capa–
bi lity," concludes Ponte, "they will
use such weapons openly against
their neighbors, or terrorists [will]
threaten the United States to de–
mand a share of a shrinking world
food supply."
Fortuna tely, present U.S. food
policy is not being dictated by vi–
able threats of nuclear blackmail.
But the hotly debated moral ques–
tion of food reserves and food aid
continues unabated.
Trlage
Another approach to the food crisis
is " triage," a term taken from the
World Wa r
J
method of sorting
wounded soldiers into various cate–
gories for treatment with scarce
medica! supplies. According to
tri–
age, wounded soldiers were grouped
into three categories: those wbo
would survive even if tbey didn't
receive any medica! help, tbose who
might survive if they received medí–
cal help, and those who would die
no matter how much medica! help
was lavished on them.
As it applies to the food crisis,
triage means that sorne countries
would purposely be denied aid be;–
cause they would "survive" anyway,
and others would be denied a id be–
cause they would be considered
beyond help. The triage idea was
adapted to the world food shortage
by William and Paul Paddock in
their 1967 book
Famine 1975!
The book assumed continua! pop–
ulation growth in the poor nations
and, eventually, a "time of famine"
when this growth
would
overwhelm
avai lable food sources. At such a
point, the Paddocks argued, the
U.S. and other agricultural-surplus
countries should " ra tion" food aid
on the basis of how much ultimate
good it would do. They even made
practica! suggestions: Pakistan and
Tunisia were judged good candi–
dates for survival if they were given
aid ; Libya and Gambia would
probably get along without it; and
Indi a and H a ití were d eemed
beyond hope.
The
PLAIN TRUTH
January
1978