One of the benefits of globalization on the world's population is that injustice, such as human rights abuse, can no longer be contained within political borders, said philosopher Peter Singer in the first of this year's Dwight H. Terry Lectures.

It is no longer the exclusive purview of one nation's government to enforce laws of humanity for its citizens, but it is the shared responsibility of all, Singer told the audience gathered in the Law School's Levinson Auditorium on Oct. 31 for the first of four talks examining the ethical considerations and challenges of a world in which geopolitical boundaries are becoming irrelevant.

Just as globalization is underscoring the commonality of all nations, it is enlarging the ethical sphere of responsibility of individuals, according to Singer. While it is natural for individuals to prioritize their social obligations -- from family to friends to compatriots -- one implication of globalization, contends the philosopher, is that the circle must be expanded to encompass people of other nations.

"What obligations do we have beyond our borders?" Singer asked. One of the most important is that of rich nations to provide aid to poor countries, he said, pointing out that the per-capita income in the richest 20 countries is 37 times greater than that in the 20 poorest.

The technology of modern communications has given us instant awareness of events such as famines or natural disasters in other parts of the world, while air transportation has given us the means to respond to those events immediately, Singer pointed out. That wealthy countries have the wherewithal to know about these disasters and to offer relief puts a heavier moral onus on them to do so, the philosopher said.

Singer compared figures of foreign aid from three industrialized countries to make the case that the United States is particularly deficient in providing humanitarian foreign aid. According to United Nations guidelines, he pointed out, wealthy nations should ideally give 7/10 of 1% of their Gross National Product (GNP) as foreign aid, primarily to developing countries. In 1998, Denmark gave 1% of its GNP in aid, mainly to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty is greatest. Japan gave 0.28%, far short of the recommended 7/10, but that sum was also targeted to poor nations, he noted, while the United States gave 1/10 of 1%, and the main recipient of that aid was Israel.

Advances in technology have also introduced an unexpected shift in the labor market, said Singer. "The Internet has developed an entirely new kind of trade, a trade in services." Corporations are not restricted to the high-wage workers of developed countries when they can find much cheaper labor among developing nations, he noted, pointing as an example to the New York banks that are turning to India for technically skilled, low-wage labor.

"The impact we have had on the global atmosphere has brought us together," Singer said, introducing another important element of globalization. "Energy consumption habits in this country quite plausibly will have an impact on weather in Bangladesh, for example, or on sea levels rising." This development, Singer said, has forced countries to come together to tackle problems in common that previously they would have dealt with only internally.

The responsibilities of nations toward the environment was also the focus of Singer's second lecture. "The fact that we are truly one world and linked comes out, I think, nowhere more clearly than in the impact that we have on our climate," Singer said, pointing to global warming as illustration.

The most common cause of the so-called greenhouse effect is the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), he said, noting that the emission rate is expected to rise 10% every 20 years. The last decade of the 20th century, Singer noted, was the hottest ever recorded. He cited a New York Times article that said by the end of this century, the average global temperature will increase by between 1 and 3.50 degrees celsius. "We really are entering into an area where we don't know what will happen," Singer mused.

Nonetheless, he predicted that as a result of global warming, tropical storms, typically associated with the south, will ravage cities in the north; tropical diseases will spread to places where they had never been known before; food production will increase in the north and decrease in sub-Saharan Africa, where famine from drought is already prevalent; the sea level will rise, submerging some small Pacific islands; heavily populated and fertile delta regions, such as in Bangladesh and the Nile Valley, will see more storms and cyclones and will probably cease to be arable; and biodiversity will be threatened as species die out.

"Everything we do is linked," Singer said, singling out Baby Boomers in SUVs as the embodiment of unregulated wastefulness and pollution. "If we don't coordinate, we will probably all be worse off in one way or another," he noted. "That leads to questions about the sovereignty of individual nations to regulate their own affairs in what previously were thought to be purely domestic, purely internal matters."

Past efforts at setting international standards for CO2 emissions -- most notably, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit in Rio -- were unsuccessful, Singer noted, partly because they were not legally binding. The U.N. convention also only made recommendations that greenhouse gases be stabilized at "safe levels," and that developed nations take the lead by stabilizing their emissions of CO2 to the 1990 levels by 2000. Not only did most developed countries fail to comply with that agreement, said Singer, by the end of the decade greenhouse emissions by the United States were 11% higher than they were in 1990.

More recently, in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol set legally binding targets for 39 developed nations to reduce their emissions, noted Singer. The total recommended reduction in emissions was set at 5% below the 1990 level, with many industrialized nations agreeing to exceed that targeted reduction. The countries of the European Union and the United States, for example, agreed to go 8% and 5%, respectively, below that level. The Kyoto Protocol also uses a complex formula for determining how much individual countries would have to reduce their emissions, said Singer, noting that the formula takes into account the nation's past contribution to the problem.

The Kyoto Protocol has yet to be ratified, said Singer, arguing that the obligation to ratify the treaty falls heaviest on the countries most responsible for greenhouse emissions. In fact, none of the major industrial nations, most notably the United States, has ratified the agreement, he noted.

Pointing out that it is up to individuals to see that their nation meet its ethical obligations, Singer said, "The public needs to be educated. That's the most that a philosopher can do."

-- By Dorie Baker

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