Nature - autonomous learning

de-naturalisation 113depicted the West’s rich population as living on a lifeboat surrounded bythe poor of the developing world who are desperately trying to clamberaboard. Since room on the lifeboat is limited, Hardin argues that theonly ethical solution is to ignore the poor’s pleas for help so that those onthe boat can survive.The benevolent alternative – namely, trying to assistthe floating masses – would, in Hardin’s view, bring ruin to all. As heput it:we should go lightly in encouraging rising expectations among thepoor . . . for if everyone in the world had the same standard of livingas we do, we would increase pollution by a factor of 20 . . . Thereforeit is questionable morality to increase the food supply. We shouldhesitate to make sacrifices locally for the betterment of the rest of theworld(Hardin cited in Neuhaus 1971: 186)Before turning to Harvey’s critique of neo-Malthusianism, we needto make explicit the conception of nature implicit in overpopulationarguments. The Activity below will get you thinking about how natureis conceived in neo-Malthusian reasoning.ACTIVITY 3.1Read the previous paragraph again and try to answer the followingquestions:• Which of the three definitions of nature stated in Chapter 1 are part ofthe overpopulation argument?• How are these definitions linked to moral judgements and practicalpolicies?Let’s answer each question in turn.The term nature, you will recall, means(i) the non-human world, (ii) the essence of something, and (iii) aninherent force ordering the human and non-human worlds. All threedefinitions are in play in neo-Malthusian reasoning. First, the non-humanworld of natural resources is cited as a key factor limiting population