`` One Community `` By Peter Singer

The second question that comes to mind when discussing what is just and what is unjust in regard to the environment through the lens of racism is whether or not we have a higher obligation to our own immediate kind as opposed to humanity as a whole, or even to the entire biosphere as a whole. This can be directly related to the previous question regarding the distribution of resources. Is it just for a group to hoard as many resources as it can in order to ensure that it continues to thrive and not diminish in any way? If we again accept equality as the end goal, the answer is no. Not only is it unjust for a group to deliberately hoard resources, it is unjust for a group to have the knowledge that there is another group suffering due to lack of resources and abstain from providing assistance to that suffering group. Peter Singer, in his article “One Community” argues this point through an anecdotal situation that applies well here.

I asked the reader to imagine that on my way to give a lecture, I pass a shallow pond. As I do so, I see a small child fall into it and realize that she is in danger of drowning. I could easily wade in and pull her out, but that would get my shoes and trousers wet and muddy. I would need to go home and change, I’d have to cancel the lecture, and my shoes might never recover. Nevertheless, it would be grotesque to allow such minor considerations to outweigh the good of saving a child’s life. Saving the child is what I ought to do, and if I walk on to the lecture, then no matter how clean, dry, and punctual I may be, I have done something seriously wrong (95).

This story illustrates that, if one has the power to do so, it is wrong to abstain from helping someone else. Identity should play no role in deter...

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...urces are unfairly distributed with whites having more access to positive resources and blacks having more access to environmental crises, equality is the best solution. This means that resource access needs to be equal in the end, requiring rich, white communities to take on more environmental crises while poor, black communities take on more positive environmental resources. It also means that white communities will have to make sacrifices to ensure access to resources for black communities. Absolute equality may not be the answer for everything. Absolute income equality, cultural equality, or class equality, for example, would result in a disastrously boring and redundant world. The environment, however, is different. Each living human has an inherent right as living beings on this Earth to absolute equal access to its resources, blind of any consideration of race.