AGENDA
- Finish discussing Native American kinship with nature
- Disappearing nature & population ethics (Monday, Wednesday)
- Restoring vs. rewilding (Friday, next Monday...then debate)
Do we have a wilderness problem because of human overpopulation?
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| Nature |
Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons" (1968)
- important article because of key concept: tragedy of the commons
- applies to many environmental issues
Why environmentalists worried about overpopulation in the 1960s
- thought population would always grow exponentially (double ever X years)
- thought famines and other resource depletions would eventually kill everyone
- Garrett Hardin, Paul Ehrlich, Kenneth Boulding (biologists, economists)
- Watch up to 3:21
Why environmentalists worry about population today
- high consumption --> climate change, loss of biodiversity and wilderness
Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons" (1968) -- biologist
The pasture example
- 10 herders share a pasture-- a "commons"
- each herder has an incentive to add more sheep, to the point of overgrazing
- Why?
- herder keeps the whole benefit of adding one more (the profits)
- herder shares the cost of adding one more with the other 9 farmers (the depletion of the pasture)
- so the herder will gain more than he loses by adding another sheep
- The way a "commons" inevitably leads to disaster = "the tragedy of the commons"
The tragedy of the commons--other examples
- Free parking (commons = open access spaces)
- National park access (commons=park)
- Dumping (commons = stream)
- Air pollution (commons = atmosphere)
- Water use (commons = groundwater)
- Buffalo hunting before ~1880 (commons = public herds)
- Lazy approach to Halloween (commons = bowl of candy)
- Having children (commons = world plus welfare state)
How should the tragedy of overpopulation be avoided?
- Ethics isn't enough because it's not sufficiently motivating to overcome the incentive to overuse the common
- The only alternative to ethics is coercion--"mutual coercion mutually agreed upon by the majority of people affected" (p. 1247).
Applications
- Free parking--pay by the hour
- National park access--allocate entry
- Dumping in stream--laws, fines
- Air pollution--laws, regulations
- Using up groundwater--limit water use (various laws in different states)
- Buffalo over-kill--hunting permits
- Halloween candy--"trick or treat" custom plus allocation
- Reproducing...
Ethics
- 1960s ZPG movement--wrong to have more than 2 children
- Today--some people refrain for ethical reasons
Hardin--ethics not effective enough--need coercion (mutually agreed upon)
A proposal from the 1960s
- Kenneth Boulding, The Meaning of the Twentieth Century (1965) p. 135-136
- Cap and trade for reproduction
- Decide on cap--1, 2, 2.1, whatever, per person
- Women get the permits
- Unused permits can be sold or gifted
- Reproducing without a permit is prohibited--deterred through taxes, fines, imprisonment, what?
Next--
- Did population growth continue like the 60s authors predicted?
- If not, why not?
- Are there now too many people? How many is too many?
- To what extent is vanishing wilderness the result of overpopulation?