Environmental protection often comes at the expense of the world’s poorest people, who struggle to meet their subsistence needs. Children carry firewood in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. via ReutersToday’s WSJ Saturday Essay ‘Does Helping the Planet Hurt the Poor? is a twosome, written first by Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University and laureate professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include “Animal Liberation,” “Practical Ethics” and “The Life You Can Save”.

A counterpoint is written by Bjorn Lomborg, the author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and “Cool It.” He directs the Copenhagen Consensus Center and is an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School. Mr. Singer replies to Lomborg.

Both essays raise valid points, although Singer relies on the essentially moral argument that the ‘haves’ must cut back for the benefit of the ‘have nots’ and also future generations.

There is also a strong moral case for saying that rich nations should cut back on their “luxury emissions” before poor nations have to cut back on “subsistence emissions.” India still has more than 450 million people living in extreme poverty, and China over 200 million. No one with any concern for human welfare could ask the world’s poor to refrain from increasing their greenhouse gas emissions in order to put more food on the table for their families, when we think little of flying down to the tropics for a winter vacation, emitting more in a week than the typical family in a developing country does in a year. Needs should always take precedence over luxuries.

Singer’s argument that Americans and the rest of the developed world should use less air-conditioning and less, heat, fly and drive less, and eat less meat is valid. Having implemented these changes in my own life, the sky has hardly fallen on my head.