The Lifeboat is Sinking and No One Seems to Care

It may seem surprising, but learning to effectively manage and maintain a 10-gallon aquarium could prepare you to help ensure the survival of life on Earth. A 10-gallon aquarium occupies a limited space and contains a specific volume of water. For this tank, there is an ideal number of fish that can be supported by the available resources necessary for life. Adding more fish beyond this ideal number would place a significant strain on the resources. All the fish in the tank would suffer as oxygen levels decrease, biological waste would accumulate, and the tank would become polluted. Soon, the fish would have to compete for survival, becoming unhealthy and likely dying, further polluting the tank. The state of decay would become irreversible. I believe most people would agree that it is unwise, if not unethical, to overpopulate even a fish tank, fully aware of the potential severe consequences.

A vibrant 10-gallon aquarium teeming with colorful fish, lush green plants, and decorative stones.

A few years ago, while teaching a course titled Science and Technology at the University of Maryland, I frequently used the example of a 10-gallon fish tank to introduce the class, later expanding this analogy to include the Earth. Much like a fish tank, our planet has a limited size and finite resources. The course textbook was "Technology and Society: Issues for the 21st Century and Beyond" by Eicher, Khan, and Morello. These authors provided engineering data to determine the optimal human population by region, ensuring everyone could live healthily and prosper. This was based on the balance between habitable land and the land required for agriculture to sustain the population, as well as overall resource availability.

The authors compiled a collection of relevant articles that examined the positive, negative, ethical, and unethical challenges society has faced since the advent of technology, along with its ever-evolving impact on our world. The course structure mirrored the textbook and covered topics such as ethical theory, technological history, energy resource depletion, population growth, ecological changes, medical technologies, and third-world development, in that sequence.

The course had a significant impact on my students, with many admitting they found the subject matter, the textbook, and the course itself quite depressing. It was an 8 AM class, and they struggled to find the motivation to get out of bed, only to feel downcast for the rest of the day. I encouraged them to persevere, remain open-minded, and allow the course to fulfill its purpose: to enhance their analytical skills and critical thinking as they graduated and entered various technology fields.

The aim of the course was to instill respect and sensitivity towards the natural world, guiding them to make professional decisions that might seem appealing from a technological standpoint initially but may not be in the long-term best interest of life on Earth. It's a heavy topic, I know. Although published in 2002, the underlying ideas and philosophies were not new.

In 1974, renowned ecologist Garret Hardin introduced a metaphor for overpopulation and resource management known as Hardin’s Lifeboat Ethics. This metaphor described a lifeboat with 50 people aboard, having a maximum capacity of 60. The ethical dilemma for those on the boat was deciding which of the hundreds of swimmers surrounding them should be rescued. Moreover, for the safety and survival of those already on board, not even one more swimmer could be allowed beyond the limit.

A tense moment unfolds as rescuers face the ethical dilemma of balancing lifesaving efforts with the risk of capsizing the lifeboat.

Similar to my fish tank metaphor at the university, Hardin’s lifeboat metaphor paved the way to consider the Spaceship Earth model of resource distribution, as I had done with my students. Hardin criticized that, unlike a lifeboat, Spaceship Earth lacked a single identifiable captain to make tough decisions. In Hardin’s metaphor, individual lifeboats represented wealthy nations, while the swimmers symbolized poorer nations, with vastly more swimmers than lifeboats.

Engineering computer modeling estimated the carrying capacity of Spaceship Earth to be around 3.2 billion, but the global population is currently twice that number. The United States' maximum population capacity was calculated to be about 100 million, yet it has surpassed 300 million. The conclusion : our planet is severely overstressed, and there are limited resources to share among those in the lifeboat. We are facing an impending world crisis. The swimmers will inevitably have to be sacrificed.

A sprawling urban landscape filled with dense high-rise apartment buildings highlights the challenges of ever-increasing world overpopulation.

Despite the global challenge of balancing population growth with limited agricultural land, lush vineyards extend across the landscape.

 An essential question for society is how technology contributes to the problem and how it can be part of the solution. The same question applies to politics at local, regional, and global levels. Individuals often act out of personal selfishness and greed, neglecting their responsibility to the broader community. The suffering of many is perceived as someone else’s problem. People tend to seize opportunities while they can and let the future take care of itself.

Are people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk part of the problem or part of the solution?

So, I ask you, who is the honest broker on this planet? In this country of ours? Who will assume the role of lifeboat captain? How long until civilization as we know it descends into unrestrained anarchy and tyranny? At that point, it won’t matter who is a Democrat or a Republican, a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, rich, poor, black, white, or brown, when water and food become scarce, and it turns into a dog-eat-dog world.

How long before taking any meaningful action toward reducing the stresses on the planet will no longer result in a positive outcome? Have we passed that point and simply don't know it yet?