The Tragedy of the Commons
The Population Bomb
The best-selling Population Bomb was first published in the late 1960s and looks at the issues surrounding global population growth, in particular access to food, and potential solutions.
Author Paul Ehrlich argues that rapid population growth needed to be bought under control, with the growth rate being reduced to zero or even negative. In this essay writer service considered the issues from an economical, political and religious point of view.
The author looks at previous efforts to keep population growth at a sustainable level and suggests his own solutions. Under the custom essay some controversial ideas was reviewed. Ehrlich presents his theories and the logic behind each in a clear way allowing readers to understand his perspective.
He makes a number of specific predictions that did not come to pass, which he has acknowledged, leading to the book being criticised. This included his assumption that population growth would outpace agriculture growth, resulting in mass starvation. The author maintains that the general argument in the Population Bomb remains intact and warnings such as his led to preventive action.
Despite the criticisms and some of the predictions proving incorrect with the benefit of hindsight, during help with essay writing was exposed that the Population Bomb is still a valuable book on sustainability. It offers an insight into the arguments and issues that the world was facing when it was originally published.
The message in the book that unsustainable population growth can lead to pressure on economies and resources remains as important today. It also successfully drew the attention of a wider audience to the related environmental and social issues.
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In the 1968 essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” the controversial Texas-based ecologist Garrett Hardin argues against the reconcilability of individual interests with the common good in the struggle for finite resources. (Hardin, 1968)
Hardin’s argument is not an entirely new one, and the title of his essay originated from an 1833 book written by William Forster Lloyd. In this book he examined land holdings during medieval times and observed that when pasture lands are made “common,” cattle owners will attempt to increase the size of their herds. However, this leads to overgrazing and soon the herds exceed the carrying capacity of the commons. As such, the Smithian notion of the invisible hand, in which the mass pursuit of self-interest leads to a common good, is rendered questionable. (Lloyd, 1833)
Hardin’s essay begins by quoting an article on the future of nuclear warfare written by J.B Wiesner and H.F. York, which concluded that the dilemma of decreasing national security in the face of increasing military power is a dilemma that possesses no technical solution. Hardin picks up on this note and contends that the problems raised by human population growth and the use of Earth’s natural resources are of the same class: they too cannot be solved by technical means. (Hardin, 1968)
Hardin builds his case by pointing out the limits of Earth’s carrying capacity, not just in terms of supporting human populations, but doing so at a level which constitutes acceptable quality of life. As such, the maximization of human population would require a degree of resource abstinence that would place everyone on subsistence levels of consumption. Furthermore, he concludes that there are no foreseeable technical solutions to this dilemma. (Hardin, 1968)
Hardin goes on to examine the possibilities of non-technical solutions to issues facing population and resource supply, particularly resource management ones. He illustrates this with the scenario of a pasture shared by local herders. It is assumed that herders aspire to maximize their yield by increasing the size of their herds. However, for each additional herd member, their comes the following dilemma: for each animal that the herder can profit from, the pasture becomes slightly degraded. In effect, the pasture becomes degraded in proportion to each increase in profit potential within the herd. (Hardin, 1968)
Complicating the matter is the fact that the distribution of effects is inequitable: While the benefits of increased profits go to an individual herder, the drawbacks affect all the herders using the pasture. A herder who weighs these consequences would rationally conclude that he should expand his herd, but when every herder follows this course of action, the pasture heads towards a nigh terminal state of degradation. (Hardin, 1968)
Because the gain is always greater to each herder than the divided cost of his actions, “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.” Such a situation is an example of the phenomenon known as externalization, in which the operating costs of economic activity are born by others rather than the agent of said activity. “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all,” Hardin (1968) concludes.
Hardin develops this idea further with additional examples of “commons” that have headed towards tragedy in the face of individual freedom. The streets of Leominster, Massachusetts saw endless litter in the wake of a Christmas shopping season that saw free parking. The world’s oceans are plundered of their biodiversity by ‘free’ mariners exercising their liberty to fish unrelentingly.
In essence, Hardin’s primary contention with conventional ethics is that conceptions of ‘freedom’ and ‘commons’ results in absolute irresponsibility in the behavior of individuals. Thus, Hardin believes that commons should be regulated in order to protect them from the selfish manifestations of freedom. It is only by recognizing the necessity of managing commons that he believes “we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms.” (Hardin, 1968)
Hardin’s dim view of the state of commons use, one which dismisses the dogmatic valorization and is noteworthy for positing a controversial repudiation of the freedom of families to breed, is the logical precedent for another controversial metaphor of his: “lifeboat ethics,” which he uses to justify his opposition towards providing assistance towards less affluent nations and peoples. (Hardin, 1974)
His essential argument that since resources and planetary capacity is a kind of commons that is limited in its ability to provide for all, it would be problematic to provide aid to those without since it endangers the welfare of those with. The metaphor places the Earth as the lifeboat, and providing room for swimmers in excess of the boat’s capacity is unethical because it requires that those who are already safe on the boat, to risk compromising their own welfare. (Hardin, 1974)
I have mixed feelings about Hardin’s views. I can certainly come on board the notion of regulating individuals and institutions from exploiting the commons in such a manner that is disadvantageous to others, it should be done in such a manner that recognizes the true extent of his ideas, rather than serving as academic justification for private interests who seek to limit the commons in such a fashion as to render it unavailable to a society that could possibly use it responsibly. However, his arguments about the planet’s ability to provide for all, and the freedom to procreate are those I find faulty.
While those arguments were difficult to dismiss at the time he wrote them – before many of the developed nations that had witnessed population explosions at the time had increased their life expectancies, developed family planning and progressed developmentally past the cliché of the starving Third World nation; before environmental concerns and the sustainability imperative began sweeping the global zeitgeist at the turn of the century – they are, as he would be inclined to admit, now obsolete in the face of emerging technical solutions that may enable us to retrofit our present industries and lifestyles.
As such, providing for poorer nations does not necessarily have to be done at the expense of the wealthier nations. Economic abundance and material plenitude is possible without compromising environmental sustainability or exceeding planetary capacity, so long as we are willing to re-engineer the present systems to such levels of efficiency and sustainability as to make this possible. (Steffen, 2006)
Under Hardin’s world view, it is immoral and/or unethical to provide for the starving people of the world insofar as there is a limited amount of people the planet can feed. But when matters of supply are no longer an issue, then the substance of his argument evaporates. One can make moral and ethical room to provide for the poor, and it is when this potential is embraced that we can take steps towards a future where the wealthier peoples can have their cake and share it too.
REFERENCES
Hardin, G. (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162, 1243-1248.
Lloyd, W. F. (1833) Two Lectures on the Checks to Population. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Hardin, G. (1974, September) Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor. Psychology Today. Retrieved June 25, 2008 from: http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
Steffen, A. (Ed.) (2006) Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century. New York: Abrams, Inc.
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