Politics & Power Quote by Peter Singer

Singer is doing what he often does: taking a seemingly “practical” deadlock and smuggling a moral grenade into it. The setup is almost game-theory plainspoken. If every leader rationally prioritizes national interest, global warming becomes the ultimate collective-action trap: everyone waits, everyone loses. That’s the surface logic, and it’s meant to feel disappointingly familiar to anyone who has watched climate summits dissolve into finger-pointing and fine print.

The phrase “ethical trump” is the tell. Singer isn’t asking for nicer leaders or better messaging; he’s arguing that the normal political hierarchy of reasons has to be overturned. National interest can’t just be balanced against climate action, it has to be overruled by a higher claim - obligations that reach across borders and generations. The poker metaphor matters: a trump card ends the debate about whose suit matters. Singer wants ethics to function less like advice and more like authority.

Subtextually, he’s skeptical of solutions that stay inside the nation-state’s self-justifying logic. Technocratic tweaks, market nudges, even enlightened self-interest won’t reliably scale because the incentives are structurally misaligned. So he leans on what philosophers do when institutions stall: insist that some choices are not negotiable.

The context is Singer’s broader project - expanding the moral circle beyond tribe and passport. Climate change is his cleanest example because it punishes the very idea that morality can stop at the border: emissions are local, consequences aren’t, and the victims are often people who didn’t benefit from the bargain in the first place.