Garrett Hardin’s article “The Tragedy of the Commons” illustrates the continuing problem of the commons. The article clearly illustrates the effects of the exponentially increasing population such as pollution and food. Possible solutions to the problems are stated in the article, but any and all solution will be difficult to accomplish and may not be effective because of man’s sense of freedom and selfishness.
The commons is an area of land that belongs to the public as opposed to being owned by individuals, which is private property. Garrett Hardin describes the ‘tragedy of commons’ as a population problem and individuals over-exploiting a commons for their own personal gain. He discusses the over-exploitation of resources, and pollution, but these are ultimately causes of the exponential population growth. He states that because we live in a finite world we can only support a finite amount of people, and our resources will eventually run out; however, we are living as if our resources are infinite. As our population increases it will become harder and harder to support, and in order to attempt to support the increasing population our amount of resources used must be as close to zero as possible. This creates a problem, because man is naturally selfish, and wants to advantage themselves only.
Over-herding is a product of over-population: many farmers over-herding not only to feed the population, but also to earn more money for themselves and their families. Over-herding causes environmental issues; in order to raise the animals, a large amount of space and attention is needed, which is not always available. These animals graze as a source of food to survive, but if there is not enough grazing space the animals may not get eno...
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...e the only ones who can change the ‘tragedy of the commons’. He also states on page 1246, “…the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.” Until man cease to think of only themselves and instead the greatest good for the greatest number, sustainability will be achievable and demanded.
Works Cited
Ending the oceans’ ‘tragedy of the commons’, by ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, ScienceDaily, Sept 14, 2010
The tragedy of the Commons, by Garrett Hardin, Science,vol.162, Dec 13, 1968, p 1243-1248
Why the BP Oil Spill is a Tragedy of the Commons, Part II, by Andy Mannle, Environmentalleader.com, July 27, 2010.
Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” is an article that identifies the nation’s current problems and predicaments that can’t be resolved through the use of technical solutions. Hardin’s work heavily focuses on overpopulation, a prominent and unceasing issue that significantly distorts and affects the stability of the Earth and the abundance of the planet’s resources. In his article, he mentioned some reasonable and important solutions to overpopulation, but he also explained its downside and how the said solutions may not be ideal and practical. “Tragedy of the Commons” revealed that the human population will continue to flourish and how it will be greatly detrimental to our society unless individuals get the education that they need and
“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 fishing lab we did the other day is a good example Tragedy of the Commons. Every student was placed into groups of four, each group received a bowl (which represented the ocean,) and 20 M&M’s (which represented 20 fish; salmon.) Ms.Engen told the class it was a competition but what she did not say is that if we catch all our “M&M’s” we will not receiv...
One main issue is that the world is biophysically finite, which means that we all have a limit, the more people we have, the less each person should possess. Also, we can’t just increase the number of people uncontrollably and be able to satisfy everyone. The second key issue is, over population. Hardin assumes that every person is selfish, and everyone is looking to benefit themselves. Actions they would be doing are like, having more of what they need which leads them over using the only resources we have left. The third key issue, in Hardin’s point of view, is that we should just forget about the Commons system; meaning there should be a statement or right or law to restrict people from overbreeding. Being able to freely over breed will bring us other problems like losing some of our other freedoms. There should be laws to determine the size of families. Finally, the fourth key issue is to gain peoples approval for the new system that is going to pressure them a lot. Basically, we should make all people understand the consequences of letting them freely breed, and what overpopulation will do to us in the very near future.
In his 1968 essay, The Tragedy of the Commons, Garret Hardin addresses the problem with overpopulation and it’s eventual toll on our planet’s resources in a scenario where the individual interest clashes with the collective interest. Self-interest only serves the good of an individual while collective interest is meant to serve the good of everyone in the society. In his essay, he describes overpopulation as a tragedy of the commons because as population grows exponentially, resources only grow statically, and this will result in the depletion of our resources. When a resourc...
The Tragedy of the Commons typically results in resources being over used and depleted (Khan). Let’s say that there are 10 mines being used to dig out iron. Nine of the mines are privately owned, but the tenth mine is open for the public. That tenth mine is going to be over used and depleted to the point where there is no iron left. The other mines and the rest of society will use that one public mine rather than use their own to gather the iron. This occurs with lots of resources. Another great example could be woods for both logging and hunting. If there are public woods where no permits are needed to hunt or chop down trees for lumber, then the society will completely destroy that public ground due to
Garrett Hardin’s classic “Tragedy of the Commons” theory has often been cited by researchers even until today. Despite being a widely understood theory, I have some reservations with regards to the validity of his claims made in this article. Hardin coined the phrase “Tragedy of the Commons” as a phenomenon, similar to the “Prisoner’s Dilemma ”, where people thinking only about their own self-interest, would exploit a shared resource (i.e. common) to the extent that it will eventually become degraded. Hardin illustrates this concept by giving an example of a perished pasture that was a result of overgrazing by the farmers. In his opinion, the only two solutions to managing a common are – government control (socialism) or privatisation (Garrett Hardin, 1968).
of people sharing a resource tend to utilize it to satisfy their own needs, but
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Garrett Hardin presents several ideals on whether the poor should be saved or not through his article of “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor”. Hardin was an ecologist who wrote several articles on overpopulation. Throughout the article Hardin talked about how the poor could be saved by the rich by using the different ethnics of life. Although he tells the possible ways to saving the poor, he fails to give his stance on how he would save them.
A large issue we have that effects multiple different areas of our communities, are tragedy of the commons, which are actions that are rational but lead to irrational outcome. Government needs to take responsilbities to enforce rules for commons so they can diminish tragedy of the commons. Dams are a tragedy of the commons that only recently were come to the realisation of its more negatives effect they have on our world. Dams used to be seen as only positive, for their productful factors such as hydroelectricity and water supply. In this essay, I will argue that dams are an example of a tragedy of the commons proven by the documentary, Damnation, by the directors Travis Rummel and Ben Knight by describing that dams are highly subtractable
Winston A, 2010, Five Lessons from the BP Oil Spill, Harvard Business Review, accessed 1 April 2014,
The Tragedy of the Commons “is a problem that occurs when individuals exploit a shared resource to the extent that demand overwhelms supply and the resource becomes unavailable to some or all” (Wigmore, 2013, August). He explains if by using an example of herdsman caring for their cattle in a common land owned by others. Everyone in the land have the same number of cattle they are allowed to have. If one herdsman was being self-centered things and had more cattle because he was thinking of his needs would then damage the community by “overloading it, erosion set in, weeds take over, and he loses the use of the pasture. He would just worry about his goals now and not the overall outcome which not only affected him, but the other herdsmen as well. (Hardin, 1974,
When faced with the issue of alleviating poverty or saving nature, many would agree with the following statement: as a society we ought to use available resources and funds to help the poor. In his article “Feeding people versus Saving Nature” Rolston opposes this position and asserts his view that there are times when we ought to choose to save nature instead of feeding the poor. I will argue in favor of Rolston’s argument and against those such as Singer, who strongly opposes the notion that preserving nature and allowing people to unnecessarily die is morally wrong. In reality there are many ways in which we can address the issue of global poverty without resorting to destroying natural ecosystems that we are dependent on.
The relationship between humanity and nature has undergone a power shift since the time of cave paintings in Lascaux. The Tragedy of the Commons describes a balance between pre-industrial humans and nature, a relationship of morbid regulation. Human kind was prosperous, however limited in growth by various methods of population culling, which prevented humans from dominating the resources presented by nature. The issue occurs when humans reach a point of social cohesiveness that they are able to resist nature’s methods of population regulation and grow uninhibited. At this moment I believe humans departed from our relationship with nature, we circumvented the terms of natures presence in the relationship and embodied a supreme position of exploitation
...contemporary environmental crisis, we are able to gather a concise understanding of issues that are often hard to explain yet alone understand. Wealth has become a power system evoking dualism of the western and third world. Power and quality of life is measured against the wealth of an individual. This is a result of human’s tendency to over utilize and eventually deplete the resources available to them inevitably leading to overpopulation. In the next fifty years, the success of the environmental movement may depend much more on its ability to change ethics and values. Environmental philosophy gives an invaluable lens into the issues of overpopulation by deconstructing complex dynamics within society. By spreading ideas within environmental philosophy to all different corners of the globe then everyone will have a chance to learn how to live rightly in the world.