Earthsky Interviews
Private: What do we owe the poor?
03-31-2006 - Human World
_DB:_ Peter Singer is an ethicist at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. He believes that our world – which is increasingly interconnected – calls for new values.
_Peter Singer: And the values clearly include a greater concern for others irrespective of where they are in the world. And that?s the fundamental thing that we really take seriously:_ the idea of all humans being equal.
_JB:_ Singer spoke of a 2005 United Nations report indicating that, around the world – every day – 30,000 children under age 5 die, largely due to poverty, malnutrition and disease. Singer thinks developed countries should help developing countries more. For example, he said, the U.S. gives less than 0.2 percent of its gross national product for development aid each year. That?s money for food, roads, health care, and so on.
_Peter Singer:_ You think about how much we are prepared to do to save a single human life in our own country. We clearly ought to be giving up a significant amount to prevent these deaths. I mean, look at what people will do. If coal miners are trapped underground, we will spend millions to rescue half a dozen coal miners. We wouldn’t have to spend anything like that to rescue a human life if we had an equal concern for human lives in some part of Africa or Asia far away from us.
_DB:_ Read our interview with Peter Singer at earthsky.org. We?re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
Read Earth & Sky’s “interview with Peter Singer”:http://208.96.63.114/?p=2243.
Thanks to modern transportation and information technologies, humans around the world are becoming more interconnected. For example, when a famine or a major earthquake or a hurricane happens thousands of miles away, we see images of it on television and in newspapers within hours. And we can respond with relief efforts immediately.
According to Peter Singer, this new world requires that we treat people in other countries with the same respect as those in our own country. That should include more development aid than developed countries currently give.
About 30,000 children under 5 die each year globally (or 11,000 deaths per year). That?s according to a United Nations report issued in 2005 that evaluated the progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Download parts or all of the “Millennium Development Goals Report 2005″:http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_dev_report.htm.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that the United States spent 0.17 percent of its gross national product (GNP) on development aid in 2004. Download “Official Development Assistance (ODA)?figures for 2004″:http://www.oecd.org//dataoecd/0/41/35842562.pdf as a PDF.
Watch a flash animation by the Earth Institute titled: “How much does the U.S. give sub-Saharan Africa for development aid?”:http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/flash/us_development_aid_africa.html
Singer says respecting all people equally should also extend to the ways in which we affect the global environment. He says we – especially in the United States – should reduce our greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change.