The author Garrett Hardin used the metaphor of the earth as a “lifeboat” in trying to convince us that “lifeboat” ethnics is a practical and correct way to solve the contradiction between increasing need and limited resources. Different from spaceship, lifeboat has too limited capacity to save others outside it. Otherwise, all the people on the earth will suffer the disastrous tragedy. The poor swimming outside the lifeboat should be to blame for overpopulation. Finally, the author suggested us to govern our actions by the ethics of a lifeboat and to refuse to help poor people.

However, can the growing rate of death in poor countries really solve the problem? Is the essential reason for depletion of resources really overpopulation? In my view, the lifeboat ethic is virtually the selfish excuse for capitalist countries to veil its nature of pressing and usurpation. This essay is a splendid and persuasive defense for capitalist countries, but it can not deny the crimes they did to the poor countries, and also to the environment.

The statistic shows that, the rich and the poor are totally different in needing resources. Consumption ratio of a citizen in developed country to one in developing country is 2:1 for corn and fish, 3:1 for meat, 9:1 for paper and 11:1 for oil. What’s more, most developed countries prefer to use the resources from poor countries, because they plan to preserve their own resources for future. For instance, a worker installing the copper pipe in Los Angeles may never know that the copper is from the Ok Tedi Mining which locates in Papua New Guinea. Everyday 80,000 tons indisposed mining wastes are slopped out into Ok Tedi River, which kills most of the creatures in the river and also destroy the local living environment. Ignoring their crimes, people in the lifeboat shout to the poor to blame them for river pollution on one hand, and enjoy the benefits from destroying the poor people’s living environment on the other hand.

If there is an end for human beings, it will be war rather than hunger that kills all the people. Oil seems to be a massager of this prediction. As a nonrenewable but necessary resource, it has become the virtual purpose of some countries to let loose the bloodhounds of war in the name of national security recently.  For example, 655,000 Iraqi dying in 4 years’ Iraq war are the victims in oil competition between capitalist countries. War kills people faster and more than hunger. Obviously, the lifeboat ethics fails to take the unbalanced distributed structure of resources into consideration. What if some resources owned by the poor outside the lifeboat? Usually the rich would take measures to process them depending on their overwhelming power. As a result, the rich becomes richer and the poor poorer.

Some may argue that overpopulation makes impact on the rising global temperature and changing global climate. However, the vast majority of CO2 which leads to this problem is released by global industrial activities which usually centralized in developed countries. Since 1997, the increasingly serious problem of CO2 has enjoyed an extensive concern in different countries and areas. The famous KYOTO PROTOCOL was proposed, aiming to control the discharge of CO2 with hope of preventing the global warming atmosphere.  As a country which makes up a quarter of the whole global CO2 discharge, the US insists on refusing to enter into this agreement, for it will necessarily make an huge impact on the economy in US, especially the interest of oil industry and automobile industry.  

To conclude, the author’s opinion that the poor should be blamed is unfair for them. Personally speaking, there is no lifeboat at all in the real world. There is no shipboard of lifeboat between the rich and the poor at all. We are troubled in the same boat and should pull together in times of trouble. We can’t waste time arguing who should be blamed any more. Establishing reasonable ownership and distribution system of resources can be an effective way to avoid the common disaster. The sooner we cooperate together and help each other the less we will suffer from the nature.