Ghost of a flea: Lifeboat ethics, Part I

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April 29, 2008

Lifeboat ethics, Part I

Ecologist Garrett Hardin suggested a metaphor of "lifeboats ethics" in the mid-1970s, one of many fathers for today's neo-Nazi "environmentalism". Somebody must starve - must never be born - for the good of Gaia. And somehow that somebody is never an undergraduate student at a top drawer university, never an ecologist. Somehow it is always brown people, people living in far away countries about whom we know little who are meant to sacrifice. Closer to home, somehow it is always the poor who are expected to do without for the common good.

There is only so much jet fuel, and only so many carbon credits, to go around.

I have two more specific lifeboats in mind. Case studies drawn from brutal human experience rather than science fiction of ecological speculation. The first lifeboat scenario is the long boat of the William Brown, a ship lost to the ice of the north Atlantic in 1841. This is depressing, dispiriting stuff.

The American ship William Brown, left Liverpool on the 13th of March, 1841, bound for Philadelphia, in the United States. She had on board (besides a heavy cargo) 17 of a crew, and 65 passengers, Scotch and Irish emigrants. About 10 o'clock on the night of the 19th of April, when distant 250 miles southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, the vessel struck an iceberg, and began to fill so repidly that it was evidence she must soon go down. The long-boat and jolly-boat were cleared away and lowered. The captain, the secnd mate, 7 of the crew, and 1 passenger got into the jolly-boat. The first mate, 8 seamen, of whom the prisoner was one (these 9 being the entire remainder of the crew), and 32 passengers, in all 41 persons, got indiscriminately into the long-boat. [n. 2] The remainder of the passengers, 31 persons, were obliged to remain on board the ship. In an hour and a half from the time when the ship struck, she went down, carrying with her every person who had not excaped to one or the other of the small boats. Thirty-one passengers thus perished. [n. 3] On the following morning (Tuesday) the captain, being about to part company with the long-boat, gave its crew several directions, and, among other counsel, advised them to obey all the orders of the mate, as they would obey his, the captain's. This the crew promised that they would do.

And this they did. His orders being to throw passengers into the Atlantic so as to prevent the vessel from being swamped; fourteen men in all and none of them from the ship's crew. Holmes, the sailor charged with physically throwing passengers to their deaths, had an enterprising attorney. He claimed his client had acted in "self defense". I am not certain whether to laugh or cry that even in a clear-headed Victorian morality could not see reason: Holmes served all of fifteen months in prison and a twenty dollar fine for manslaughter. It is one thing to understand in the abstract that people are despicable, quite another to be presented with the evidence.

Tomorrow: Another life boat.

See also: The wreck of the Medusa.
Related: These days a lifeboat joke is arguably grounds for a human rights complaint. It comes down to whether pigs use two-sided fax machine paper.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at April 29, 2008 08:23 AM

Comments

Commenting on the enviro-ZPG folks once, P.J. O'Rourke characterized their position as "Just enough of me; way too many of you."

With 100 million murdered by state-socialist power in the last century, it's clear to all that killing is what that form of government does best. It would appear that the environmentalist movement recognizes this and embraces it.

Posted by: Clayton Barnett at April 29, 2008 08:37 AM

Commenting on the enviro-ZPG folks once, P.J. O'Rourke characterized their position as "Just enough of me; way too many of you."

Given that he had four children, Hardin's take apparently was, "Not enough of me; way too many of you."

Posted by: Varenius at April 29, 2008 02:25 PM

That is hilarious. For some reason it reminds me of listening to Mrs. Obama complain about repaying her student loans on only $300k a year. These people have no sense of shame whatsoever.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at April 29, 2008 02:30 PM

And when you think about it, the lifeboat analogy doesn't even work. For after all, the whole idea of lifeboats is to enable people to be rescued from their situation. The limited environment is supposed to only be temporary. True, as your example and many others from history indicate, rescue isn't 100% assured, but on the other hand neither is the idea that one will be on the lifeboat for the rest of one's life.

A better analogy might actually be from science fiction, that of the spaceboat/stowaway dilemma that was made famous by the story "The Cold Equations." Then again, it isn't -- for after all, stowaways have no right to be where they are. They are simple criminals, parasites even. Of course, the environuts think that's what human beings are on "Spaceship Earth."

Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 29, 2008 08:11 PM

I should say actually, the idea that one will be on a lifeboat the rest of one's life, as the environuts' theory necessarily means, makes no sense, not that it isn't 100% assured. I really need to use that preview button more often.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 29, 2008 08:14 PM