'Their deaths are on our hands'

BY ANTHONY HUBBARD

PETER SINGER puts poison in the latte and gall in your bottle of water. The money you spend on these luxuries, he says, is money you have not given to help the wretched of the earth. You are, he suggests, like someone who refuses to wade into a pond to save a drowning child because he doesn't want to ruin his new shoes. Death sits at your cafe table, and will not go away.

It's an insidious argument, this. Nine million children under five die every year from causes related to poverty, the philosopher says. "By donating a relatively small amount of money, you could save a child's life. Maybe it takes more than the amount needed to buy a pair of shoes – but we all spend money on things we don't really need, whether on drinks, meals out, clothing, movies, concerts, vacations, new cars, or house renovation." Who won't find themselves included in this list?

Singer's not trying to make us feel guilty, he tells the Sunday Star-Times from Melbourne. However, "the deaths of those we could have saved are on our hands, and that is obviously something very serious".

Singer gives between a quarter and a third of his income to Third World charities such as Oxfam. And yet he admits he could be giving more. He divides his time between Princeton University and Melbourne, where he has children and grand-children he wants to spend time with. "I would be able to give a lot more money away if I was only in Princeton," he concedes. That problem, however, "I have not been able to find a way around".

Singer is modest and never ducks an argument. If it's a moral duty to save lives, and much of our spending is on things we don't strictly need, where do we draw the line in our giving? It's not clear. If we were better people, we might give half or even more of our income. Some people do.

He also concedes that perhaps his own sacrifice is easier because of a certain personal austerity. He's not a music buff so doesn't need a flash stereo: his is "cheap and tacky". He doesn't care about having expensive furniture in his house. His passion for tramping – he has done many of the South Island bush tracks during visits here – is fairly cheap.

"If I gave half of what I earn," he says, "there would be things that would hurt."

But he is not insisting on heroic self-sacrifice. Singer has outlined a scheme of "reasonable giving" by the rich. Those earning more than $US100,000 should give 5% of their income. Those above around $150,000 should give 10% of each additional dollar, and so on up the tax scales. Those earning more than $10 million, he suggests, should be giving a third of every extra dollar they get.

If the 855 million rich people of the world gave this much, it would provide $1.5 trillion every year for aid. He calculates the cost of saving a life in the Third World as somewhere between $200 and $2000. Modest sacrifice by the rich would end world poverty. A billion people around the world struggle to survive on less than the cost of a bottle of water.

Feel like another swig?

THE CRITICS, of course, object. The obvious reply to his parable of the drowning child is that, by contrast, we can't save the children of the Third World ourselves: we depend on aid agencies – and how do we know whether they are effective? This is a good question, says Singer, and he spends a long chapter of his latest book – The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty – answering it.

Singer is highly critical of government aid. Much of it has not gone to where it is most needed, he agrees, and big reforms are needed. However, aid given by non-government organisations has been much more effective, he argues, and in recent times there has been much more done to test this effectiveness. Two rich young hedge fund employees, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, wanted to donate money but found that the charities had surprisingly little evidence about whether their aid was doing what it was intended to do. So they set up the Give Well website, which evaluates aid projects, and the Clear Fund, which gives money to the most effective.

So there is no longer the excuse for the well-off that "you can't be sure if your money is used properly".

Singer himself gives a good deal to Oxfam America, and also to other organisations recommended by Give Well. "I am a United States taxpayer and I get a tax deduction for what I give – and that means I can give more." He checked out an Oxfam project in Pune, India, which helps women rag-pickers who salvage, from the local dump, metal, glass and plastic to be recycled. Oxfam "helped the women organise themselves into the Registered Association of Rag-pickers, which enabled them to demand better prices and protected them from harassment".

The local council issued them with identity cards that allowed them to work in apartment buildings in clean and safe conditions. The association also began running a savings scheme and a micro-credit facility. The women started sending their children to school instead of using them as helpers at the dump.

"I attended a meeting of the ragpickers, held in a room in the cramped but tidy district in which they lived. I couldn't understand anything that was said, but the atmosphere was one of wide and lively participation," Singer writes. Eventually the women decided to end the help they got from Oxfam.

"The project had achieved its goals, and the Registered Association of Ragpickers was now self-supporting. That surely demonstrates that the project was a success."

This is the kind of aid, in short, that really makes a difference: it helps the poor to help themselves, and enables them to leave the help behind. Singer does not advocate just throwing money at the poor. That would simply breed dependence, he says.

Singer is scathing about billionaires' "obscene" self-indulgence in the face of global penury. He mentions Larry Ellison, the boss of the software company Oracle, who has spent millions trying to win the America's Cup. Ellison also spent $200m on his leisure yacht Rising Sun. And Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and now worth $16b, who spent $200m on his yacht Octopus, which has a permanent crew of 60.

"Vitellius, the Roman emperor, dined on the brains of thousands of peacocks and the tongues of thousands of flamingos. Today we regard that as evidence of moral depravity. We could say the same about those who own these mega-yachts," says Singer.

But Singer has praise for billionaire Bill Gates, who has given $29b to fighting poverty, "the largest philanthropic donation ever made". He notes, however, that Gates lives in a house worth $135m and spent $31m on the Codex Leicester, the only hand-written book by Leonardo da Vinci still in private hands.

Singer questions the large sums spent on artistic works at a time when children are dying of hunger and disease. New York Metropolitan Museum's payment of $45m for a small painting by the medieval painter Duccio was "morally dubious", says Singer.

"At $1000 a life it could have saved 45,000 lives – a football stadium of people. How can a painting, no matter how beautiful and historically significant, compare with that?"

IT IS questions like this, Singer says, that have got him into trouble. But then, he is used to trouble. Singer launched the animal liberation movement with his book of that name in 1975, arguing for the rights of other species. He is a vegetarian and doesn't wear leather. Ten years ago, when he became professor of philosophy at Princeton, he received death threats and hate mail, and there was uproar: fundamentalists hated his liberal views on abortion and euthanasia. Nowadays, he finds common cause with the "better Christians" in his campaign for the poor.

One of the many reasons we don't give to the poor, he suggests, is that we tend to think there is no such thing as genuine altruism. "When celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Madonna support organisations that help the poor, we look for hidden selfish motives. We readily agree with the suggestion that they are only doing it for the publicity."

In fact, he says, "contrary to what so many of us believe, there is an enormous amount of altruistic, caring behaviour in everyday life".

And there is abundant evidence, he says, that people enjoy giving once they start. "If you and other comfortably-off people in affluent nations were all to give, say, 5% of your income for the fight against global poverty, it would probably not reduce your happiness at all. You could well end up happier, because taking part in a collective effort to help the world's poorest people would give your life greater meaning and fulfilment."

In any case, Singer says, it doesn't really matter what drives you to give: what matters is that you do give. "If people say, `You're only doing it so you will look good in the eyes of your friends' – well, fine! If people say, `You just do it because you get a warm glow,' well, it's good that people get a warm glow from giving to others."

And there is a small sting in the argument. We like to think that we are good caring people. But if we continue to spend on luxuries while children are dying, asks Singer, can we really call ourselves "good"?

PETER SINGER

Born In Melbourne and now 63, Singer was named by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the world's 100 most influential people. Singer comes from a Jewish Viennese family, some of whom emigrated to Australia. His grandfather, a classical scholar and associate and later critic of Sigmund Freud, died in the Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt in1943.

Educated at Melbourne and Oxford University. Originally wanted to study law but "became more and more interested" in philosophy. Divides his time between Princeton University, where he is professor of bioethics, and Melbourne University, where he is a laureate professor.

First started thinking about global poverty and the responsibilities of the rich in 1971, as a graduate student at Oxford. "My wife [Renata] and I talked about it and we started giving 10% of what we earned, amounts we gradually increased over the years."

Stood unsuccessfully as a Green candidate for the Australian senate in 1996. Author of more than 25 books, he is in international demand as a speaker – though nowadays he prefers to speak by teleconferencing rather than wasting money on air fares.

That money should go to the poor, he says, and air travel is bad for the planet.

Will speak at Readers and Writers Week in Wellington at the International Arts Festival on March 10-11.

The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Peter Singer, Text Publishing, $30. All proceeds from the book will go to fighting world poverty. See also www.thelifeyoucansave.com.

- © Fairfax NZ News