Garret Hardin, a professor of human ecology, claimed that struggles between short-term individual welfare and long-term societal welfare only makes environmental problems more complicated and unsolvable. Hardin used the commons to exemplify this struggle. In medieval Europe, the inhabitants of a village shared a pasture land, called the commons. Herders from all over the village brought their own animals onto the commons to graze. However, a problem occurred when these herders began to take advantage of the provided area by bringing as many of their animals possible to graze on the commons. Eventually, the plants were killed from over-grazing and the entire village suffered as the once pasture land became barren and incompetent. The destruction of the commons led to private ownership of land. And because it became the people’s best interest to protect and cultivate their own parcel of land, they acted more responsibly. Hardin's parable has relevance today. The commons today are parts of the environment that are available to everyone but for which no single individual holds responsibility – such as the atmosphere and the oceans. These commons, sometimes called the global commons, are currently experiencing an increasing level of environmental stress because they are not owned by any one individual, jurisdiction, or county. Therefore, they are susceptible to overuse. Such exploitation is an environmental injustice, which only benefits a few of the elite. Thus, the rest of the world suffers from this environmental inequality, and eventually everyone on earth must pay for the environmental cost of exploitation. In response, the U.S. government should enact a law to eliminate environmental injustices. The gradual obliteration of ai... ... middle of paper ... ...mons and ensure the long-term well-being of our natural resources and the environmental justice. For every piece of pollution that disrupts the ozone layer and every piece of trash that pollutes our oceans, the whole world pays a price. People should work together towards eliminating environmental injustices by addressing needs to the government. The wealthier nations need to be more aware of how they are impacting the rest of the world, and everyone needs to be more careful of how we utilize our natural assets. There are no quick fixes, because most environmental issues are inextricably linked to other persistent problems, such as poverty, overpopulation, and social injustice - problems that are beyond the ability of a single nation to resolve. Thus cooperation and international commitment are essential if we are to preserve our environment for future generations.
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...
In our world there are many resources, all of which people do not have a choice in sharing such as our air and our oceans. These resources are looked at as infinite, although this is not actually the case. Each time one person does something to pollute or use these types of resources, it affects the whole of society. This is the idea of the tragedy of the commons. This tragedy is the phenomena in which a resource may be used to such an extent that it is ruined for all. An example of this tragedy is given in the following scenario: given an open pasture as a commons to which all the herdsmen have a stake; each one will try and keep as many animals on the commons as possible. By adding one more animal to his herd, an individual gains a positive to himself but the negative effect of over grazing is felt throughout the commons. The effect, of overgrazing by one additional animal appears minimal so the other rational herdsmen conclude to add an additional animal to their own herd. Since all the herdsmen are thought to be rational this conclusion is reached by each of them. The effect of, overgrazing will become detrimental to the pasture and all the animals will die. There in is the tragedy because of peoples’ greed to use and or need of a limited resource the over use or degradation of it leads to its destruction. The destruction of these resources leads into another topic discussed by Shari C...
Garrett Hardin developed the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons. The basic concept is a giant pasture that is for everyone to have a piece of land and for the herdsman to have as many cattle a possible to sustain the land. This land should be able to maintain itself for quite a long time because of cattle dying as well as the population staying relatively stable. But at some point the population will begin growing and the herdsman will want to maximize their profits by having more cattle, which in return the land cannot sustain. The herdsman receives all the profit from adding one more animal to the pasture so the herdsman will eventually begin adding more cattle, but the overgrazing caused by that added animal will destroy the land making it uninhabitable for everyone. Thus you have the tragedy of the commons. For all the herdsman on the common, it is the only rational decision to make, adding another animal. This is the tragedy. Each man is compelled to add an infinite number of cattle to increase his profits, but in a world with limited resources it is impossible to continually grow. When resources are held "in common" with many people having access and ownership to it, then a rational person will increase their exploitation of it because the individual is receiving all the benefit, while everyone is sharing the costs.
To reach a more sustainable world, everyone's cooperation and participation are essential. Therefore, the equal rights to everyone is prominent, particularly the equal rights gained from our daily surroundings and natural environment which, in together, is the so-called environment. In order to achieve the equality, the concept of environmental justice was developed, that is originally from the unequal distribution of toxic pollutants in an African-American community. As an ongoing framing process, environmental justice has been expanding into more issues and aspects, also horizontally and vertically. It also moves from a rather anthropocentric view to more emphasisation on natural environment and the relationship between human and environment, which on the way to sustainable world. However, there are also some controversy has been generated, an inherently generated issue about justice is illustrated here.
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
This altruistic respect for the environment does not mean that Nature has to be left alone to its own devices; the environment can be used sustainably but needs to be respected as an equal that has its own power to impact people. Citing history, Leopold alludes to the gradual degradation of the American Southwest from pioneers and others overgrazing the land with livestock. The land suffered and went through multiple successions to produce increasingly meagre grasses and arid environment to hardly sustain anybody today (). He views Nature as an overworked servant to a demanding populace master constantly yelling for more service. When humans extend their ethics into environmental interactions with a land ethic, it means people are conscientious Nature’s rights and welcome the all-encompassing being as a community
The tragedy of the commons is a very unfortunate and very real thing. It occurs whenever everyone takes a little bit of a limited resource repeatedly. The result of this is that all the resources are gone. In The Lorax, the Once-ler cuts down all the truffula trees in the area to make thneeds (The Lorax). When all the trees are gone, the business shuts down and all the animals are forced to leave (The Lorax). The factories polluted the air and made the area unsafe to live in (The Lorax). This is a perfect example of a tragedy of the commons. A similar event happened in Easter Island. Tribes started inhabiting the area and began using the trees to build houses and eat food from them (Easter Island). Eventually all the trees are gone, and the society resorted to cannibalism and war because there was no food (Easter Island). Garrett Hardin states in his essay that maximimizing population does not maximize goods (Hardin). In this essay, both tragedies of the commons will be compared and will be examined to see how they could have been prevented.
...ctually need and never consider the natural resources as a global property that should be used equally to fill the gap between rich and poor, and wisely to benefit our future generation. In a word, to achieve an agreement about climate change, we will have to work on the control of the use of natural recourses and balance the needs of both developed countries and developing countries respectively, and treat our responsibilities towards sustainable development as an obligation to benefit not only us but also our future generation in a long term.
I will be discussing Environmental Justice as defined by Julie Sze and London, is the social movement that came from environmental racism which involves paying less attention to environmental concerns such as pollution among racial minorities (Sze and London 1332). Therefore, there are two parts of environmental justice and the first is that it battles environmental racism ad second, it deals with issues and policies regarding natural resources like air, water and land (Sze and London 1336).
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,
Many people assume that the environment is not in danger. They believe that as technology advances, we do not need to worry about renewing natural resources, recycling, and finding new ways to produce energy. They state that one person in the world does not make a large difference. In reality, each individual's contribution greatly affects our environment. Our natural resources are slowly disappearing, and we must work together to save them and the Earth from ruin.
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
By showing the world the severity of our need for conservation, we will be able to save the earth and get the most out of our resources. We need to fix this problem before it becomes uncontrollable to the point of having no resources to supply our needs. By reducing our consumption of resources, we will be able to become closer to fixing the problem of global warming, high gasoline prices and pesticide filled meats. The outcome of respecting our world and “going green” will better how we live our lives, our communities and the environment. The concept of “going green” is a necessity for the future because “our children deserve cities as beautiful as they are.
We all belong to the same world and all of us have the same responsibilities towards the world and its environment. This fact might be hard to digest, but if we continue to pollute the Earth at the current rate, all of the world’s ocean waters will become one-hundred-thirty percent acidic. This means that the ocean will be unable to sustain most of its marine life and only a few creatures will be able to survive in the water. A big population of people think that they do not or have few responsibilities towards the environment. People think that the governor of a country should take steps to help the environment. They leave it to scientists since they have the technology to prevent pollution, or that is what most people think. There are more responsibilities to the world each individual has than most of realize. The amount of negligence and ignorance of humans towards the Earth is taking a heavy toll.