When we talk about spaceship and lifeboat, to our common knowledge, we can come up with their features: Spaceship has enough capacity so that all the people there enjoy equal resources and rights. The passengers will live together in peace and help each other without conflicts. However, lifeboat, with limited room that is much smaller than spaceship, can just offer to the strong people while others have to swim in the water. Because of the special feature of lifeboat, Lifeboat Ethics was first brought forward by Garrett Hardin in his Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor. He used the metaphor of the earth as a “lifeboat” in trying to persuade the rich to give up the poor. In his eyes, the poor countries didn’t pay attention to their population control and other aspects, so they deserve the sufferings.

I have to say that Lifeboat Ethics is absolutely a selfish opinion. Apart from his unmerciful reasoning and self-contradictory arguments, his Lifeboat Ethics is all centered on America but pretending to be on the whole world. However, there are quite a few differences between the lifeboat and the real world.

Firstly, the quantity of a lifeboat’s supplies is fixed, and its survivors have no choice to deal with their pattern of consumption. While in the real world, the supplies cover many areas and the rich nations have other options to consumption.

The rich allege that they have been in an overloaded and sinking lifeboat surrounding by numerous drowning people outside. However, the percentage of the world resources consumed by affluent countries has shown the contradiction over their thinking. As the author is an American, we take America for example. With only about 5% of the world's population, Americans consume more than one fourth of the world resources, which accounts for more than 25% of global emissions of heat-causing carbon dioxide. The consumption of natural resources of each American newborn baby equals to that of about 30 babies in China or 40 babies in India. If we calculate the population according to the consumption of resources, America is the most crowded country in the world. In fact, they are still having plenty of spare room and supplies but unwilling to share with the drowning victims all around them. If they do not take advantage of the overabundant resources to help the poor, it will result in their waste of natural resources.

Secondly, it is a historical problem for the poor nations to struggle for their development. In the past century, the rich nations had insulted in the poor and seized numerous treasures from them. The rich had done so much harm to the resources that the poor nations got poorer and poorer, which causes a huge economic gap between them. In fact, poor nations can control population and make a great progress if their economy develops earlier, their political systems have been perfected, and their people are well-educated.

Thirdly, the rich nations' economic and political policies, such as insistence on price scissor in international trade, war against some poor areas, are partly responsible for poverty of the poor nations. Their ill-gotten benefits enlarge the great income gap between rich people and poor people, leading to world instability, which must eventually give an adverse effect on the rich nations themselves.

Last but not least, people in the world shall get together to fight against global disasters. Nowadays, nations interact with each other constantly. The rich nations cannot ignore poor ones since we are living in an integrated world. Globalization brings in lots of problems; especially economic problems experienced in one country can easily spread to other countries. To export SARS and to import AIDS reflect how fast problems can spread. So, if the rich countries withdraw their financial and medical aids and are only to be passers-by, they may be afflicted with such diseases as well. Another case is the profound impact of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It is not until now that many developing countries as well as the developed countries have walked out their shadow.

All in all, there is a close connection among nations, not to mention the rich and the poor. Natural resources go less and less, while globalization that links all the countries together becomes more and more important. In order to achieve each nation’s goal: peace and development, we shall first put our eyes on the world and insure that world peace and development have been accomplished. Let’s get rid of the selfish Lifeboat Ethics. We should put forward the co-prosperity to all the people on the earth.