Analysis Of Garrett Hardin's 'Tragedy Of The Commons'

This paper can be an excellent source for anyone researching into how to fight overpopulation. Hardin provides several other viewpoints that show he did not selectively choose evidence or distort it. Hardin proceeds from point to point logically which allowed the reader to comprehend the main idea effortlessly. The author glided to how the people of poor

“The Wreck of Time,” written by Annie Dillard, illustrates societies battle with population. Dillard emphasizes the disasters that savage our world. According to the author, “ By moderate figures, the dead outnumber us about fourteen to one. The dead will always outnumber the living.” (Dillard 168) The amount of natural or man-made catastrophes do not affect the population as much as we claim. Dillards opinions are supported with facts throughout her essay, but readers are still left to question, why is our world considered to be overpopulated? Perhaps it is time for our society to consider Earth is not overpopulated in terms of people, but in resources. In addition, humans are struggling to grasp that other ecosystems are also being affected. With the introduction of Darwinism (the theory of evolution, by natural selections), humans are programed with the mentality of “survival of the fittest” forcing our humanity to evolve. Although evolution proved to be beneficial, as our immune system and way of life improved, we sacrificed our natural resources along the way. The problem with our society is not the lack of knowledge, but the ignorance and selfishness within our society. Overpopulation, threatened by the lack of resources, intimidates humans to disrupt biodiversity as we know it. (1) Man-made changes jeopardize our biodiversity. (2) As a result, the Earth’s resources are being depleted due to rapid consumption. (3) Even though we lack resources,

Dr. Forsyth implements plenty of evidence as well as proven statistics to back up his outlook on these issues. The growth of human population is happening at an exponential rate, implying that in a short period of time population growth will double. “We find it difficult to comprehend exponential growth, but it may prove to be our fatal blind spot” [3]. When analysing the world’s population over a long period of time, it took roughly 19,000 years for the world’s population to go from 5million people to 500 million people in 1500 A.D. [4] With an estimated population of 7.5 billion people [5], for a period less than 1000 years, population increased more than 1500 times its size than it was in the 1500’s. In addition, on a more minute scale of time, in 1950 the world’s population was roughly 2.5 billion people [6] in merely 50 years the world’s population has tripled. With these statics, it is evident that the world’s population is increasing at an incomprehensive rate. With populations at their peak, overconsumption is another problem this world faces, as Dr. Forsyth affirms “humans consume far more than their fair share of the Earth’s natural productivity.”[7] Due to this over consumption of resources, there is a vast demand for cheap food which results in the clear cutting of large forest to generate room for new plantations of food. When doing so, humans destroy habitats that

In reading Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons,” and through my participation in the Kivulini Simulation lab completed in class, my knowledge and understanding of the psychological factors that contribute to the logic behind the decisions made by humans that negatively impact the planet we inhabit have significantly expanded. Many of these decisions are made out of ignorance, while others are made despite knowledge of the harm that results from them. There are some ways that I can apply this knowledge to my life in order to contribute to the effort to preserve this planet in the hopes of allowing it to sustain future generations.

   In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck uses both obvious references and subtle contrasts to emphasize the main theme of the novel: the sanctity of man's relationship to the natural world and to each other.

No matter how many people do claim overpopulation is not a relevant issue, it very much is because of the simple fact that starvation and pollution are very real and existing issues that are ultimately offset by overpopulation. In an article titled “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem,” author Erle C. Ellis uses the analogy “Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences,” to argue that overpopulation is not a problem by stating the opposing claim. “We are nothing like bacteria in a petri dish,” Mr. Ellis solemnly asserts, “...these claims demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ecology of human systems. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain

Hardin begins his paper by discussing a positive growth in population in a finite world. Finite in the terms of the resources available for the problems we must face in the next few generations. Specifically, the idea of zero population growth and how there is an ideal population on Earth. People and cultures should be able to identify what their ideal population should be and once they do, the population growth should hit zero. The reason why zero population is so important is because of how many people are taking up resources of the commons. Hardin touches on the difficulties of finding the optimum amount but understands the impossibility of it being solve in this generation.

In the article “ Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor”, Garrett Hardin (1974) argues that wealthy people should not be responsible for the poor and that the consequences of feeding the poor are detrimental to the environment and to the society as a whole. Hardin was a well known philosopher and ecologist. He earned his bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and also earned his doctorate degree in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941 (Garrett Hardin, n.d.). The main issue that he tackled was human overpopulation and one of the books that he wrote that analyzed this issue was called ‘How Global Population Growth Threatens Widespread Social Disorder’(1992). Because the author has a sufficient

In The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin proposes that the problem of population exists in a pool of problems without a technical solution. In particular, he notes that the infinitude of space fails to be a solution to the problem of over population. He strikes down opposition to this argument swiftly, citing one of his other publications as a defense. I take issue with this negative claim and explore ways in which the over-population problem as it pertains to modern humanity could be solved in the long term via inter-planetary colonization. In particular, I cite SpaceX's work toward colonizing Mars as the basis for the inductive argument that such colonization will allow humanity access to an effectively infinite amount of land and resources.

Firstly, and put very simply, fossil fuels are non-renewable! Once the finite deposits of brown and black coal are exhausted around the planet there will be no more energy generated by this process. Current estimates predict that all known coal deposits will be exhausted within the next 120 years.

The Treadmills of Consumption and Production together explain Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons. According to the textbook An Innovation to Environmental Sociology, Treadmill of Consumption theory is the process of moving materially ahead without making any real gain. In other words it is the process of consumers fighting to stay ahead of neighbors, making more money to keep buying more and better items. However, these material things do not actually bring people much more happiness or personal gain, because once the consumer has consumed, he or she needs more. In the Tragedy of the Commons, there is a common grazing land for cattle. Each farmer eventually asks himself how he can best maximize his gain, the answer; adding more and more cattle to his herd. Eventually, the land does not support the amount of cattle that all the farmers have added, and the commons area is ruined. The treadmill of consumption theory explains the first part of the tragedy well, as it explains why the farmers wanted to expand their herds in the first place. Each farmer wanted the gains that came from adding cattle, and having a large herd than others. According to the textbook, Treadmill of Production is “mutual economic pinching that gets everyone running faster but without much advancement”, tending to only escalate production and push aside any concern for the environment. Treadmill of Production in the Tragedy of the Commons explains why the farmers continued to add cattle to their herds to the

Garrett Hardin was a controversial ecologist who believed that overpopulation was going to bring a downfall to a world of limited resources. Each nation was compared to a lifeboat with the rich being inside the boat and the poor in the water, drowning (Hardin, 561). He wrote the “Lifeboat Ethics” in 1974 when Ethiopia was having a starvation problem. Hardin’s opinion about the situation was that sending aid to Ethiopia was only making the problem worse and by feeding the people would aid overpopulation; the root to the problem. Hardin’s thesis developed from the notion that the rich should do nothing to help the poor. He believed that one

“The Tragedy of the Commons” written by Garret Hardin explains how the human population is degrading the environment. When Hardin refers to commons he is talking about a resource that is owned by no one and used by a group of people. Some examples of commons include the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the oceans we fish. The tragedy is that people don’t look at the bigger picture; the over use of commons for our own personal benefit leads to the destruction or extinction of these commons. For example if one fisherman wants to fish the oceans as much as possible that’s fine, but now imagine if every fisherman wants to fish the oceans as much as they can, this is one example of a common being destroyed by the human population. The

Although Hardin does not talk in great detail in this essay as to the plans that he proposes for addressing this population issue- he says that- “The alternative to the commons is too horrifying to contemplate. Injustice is preferable to total ruin.” He indicates through the example of Kingsley Davis- how coercion could be necessary- even if it is not unanimously agreed upon!

Few decades ago, clean water was “commons” (Hardin, 1968) to us. It was a natural resource shared by everyone and not owned by anyone. This “commons” was taken for granted to the extent that people exploit clean water without considering its finiteness. Resorts and factories dumped wastewater and ruined nearby rivers and oceans. People carelessly littered garbage and substituted the dirty water with diminishing clean water. They definitely benefited in terms of financial cost and comfort from their negligence. However, those individual interests ended up bringing severe water pollution, attacking our collective interest of public health and well-being. In this vein, water pollution is undeniably the “Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, 1968). Following these dire circumstances, water purification techniques and systems have been further developed and become widespread. Yet, the technical measurements have not quite fundamentally solved the problem. What is needed at this point is people’s will and practical action to improve the environment. However, merely hoping and encouraging people to do so are not enough. In order to have a steady support from people, we need a practical device for a “mutual coercion” (Hardin, 1968) to earn consent to coercion necessary to amend the situation. In this paper, I am going to address the technical and individual effort for water pollution and its limitation, and suggest a way to complement this limitation through a device on an institutional