Global justice for humans or for all living beings and what difference it makes

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 9, Issue 1-2, 2005, Pages 283-300

  Sterba, James P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

Author keywords

Anthropocentric; Distant peoples; Future generations; Libertarianism; Liberty; Nonanthropocentric; Population policy

Indexed keywords

EID: 77952455095     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-004-3330-y     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. James P. Sterba, How to Make People Just (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield,1988).
2. James P. Sterba, Justice for Here and Now (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
3. Sterba, How to Make People Just;
4. Sterba Justice for Here and Now.
5. See John Hospers, "The Libertarian Maniesto," in James P. Sterba (ed.), Morality in Pratice, 7th edition (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2003).
6. See Henry Shue, Basic Rights, 2nd edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 155.
7. Basic needs, if not satisfied, lead to significant lacks or deficiencies with respect to a standard of mental and physical well-being, Thus, a person's needs for food, shelter, medical care, protection, companionship and self-development are, at least in part, needs of this sort. For a discussion of basic needs, see Sterba, How To Make People Just, pp. 45-48.
8. See James P. Sterba, "Is There a Rationale for Punishment?," Philosophical Topics 18 (1990), pp. 105-125.
9. By the liberty of the rich to meet their luxury needs I continue to mean the liberty of the rich not to be interfered with when using their surplus possessions for luxury purposes. Similarly, by the liberty of the poor to meet their basic needs I continue to mean the liberty of the poor not to be interfered with when taking what they require to meet their basic needs from the surplus possessions of the rich.
10. Bob Bergland, "Attacking the Problem of World Hunger," The NationalForum 69 (1979), p. 4.
11. For example, see World Watch Institute, Vital Signs 2003 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), pp. 28-31 (http://www.bread.org/hungerbasics/ international.html).
12. For example, see World Watch Institute, Vital Sigus 2003, pp. 28-31.
13. Stuart Pimm, The World According to Pimm (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001). Chapter 2;
14. World Watch Institute, Vital Signs 1996 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996), pp. 34-35.
15. Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef (New York: Penguin, 1992), p. 1.
16. For a discussion of these causal connections, see Linda Starke, (ed.), State of the World 2003 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), Chapter 1
17. Cheryl Silver, One Earth One Future (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1990).
18. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random, 1989).
19. Jeremy Leggett (ed.), Global Warming (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
20. Lester Brown (ed.), The World Watch Reader (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991).
21. Linda Starke, State of the World 2004 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), p. 8.
22. See Starke, State of the World 2004. There is no way that the resource consumption of the US can be matched by developing and underdeveloped countries,and even if it could be matched, doing so would clearly lead to ecological disaster.
23. See, Constance Mungall and Digby McLaren (eds.), Planet under Stress (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1990).
24. Frances Lappe and Joseph Collins, World Hunger: Twelve Myths (New York: Grove Press, 1986).
25. Once basic needs are met among existing generations, however, it may be that renewable resources can used to for meeting nonbasic needs in ways that do not jeopardize the meeting the basic needs of future generations.
26. See Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1987), pp. 129-135.
27. R. and V. Routley, "Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism," in K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre (eds.), Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979).
28. For the purposes of this paper, I will follow the convention of excluding humans from the denotation of "animals".
29. See Holmes Rolston III, "Enforcing Environmental Ethics: Civil Law and Natural Value," in James P. Sterba (ed.), Social and Political Philosophy: Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2001) where Rolston uses this example to object to my Principle of Human Preservation and I respond.
30. This did not hold in the real-life case that Rolston actually presented. See my response in Sterba (ed.), Social and Political Philosophy: Contemporary Perspectives.
31. In a nonideal world, the Nepalese and their human allies should press against rich people to acquire the available surplus to meet the basic needs of the Nepalese until their own lives are threatened and then regrettably the Nepalese would be justified in preying on endangered species as the only way for them to survive.
32. For a detailed discussion of this argument, see James Sterba, "From Liberty to Welfare," Ethics 104 (1994), pp. 64-98.
33. Sterba, Justice for Here and Now, Chapter 3.
34. For further argument for this conclusion, see Sterba, Justice for Here and Now, Chapter 3.
35. Sterba, How To Make People Just, Chapters 2-10.
36. James P. Sterba, "The Welfare Rights of Distant Peoples and Future Generations: Moral Side-Constraints on Social Policy," Social Theory and Practice 7 (1981), pp. 99-124.