Garrett Hardin
Garrett Hardin
Garrett James Hardinwas an American ecologist and philosopher who warned of the dangers of overpopulation. His exposition of the tragedy of the commons, in a famous 1968 paper in Science, called attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment". He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Human Ecology: "You cannot do only one thing", which "modestly implies that there is at least one unwanted consequence"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEnvironmentalist
Date of Birth21 April 1915
CountryUnited States of America
People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.
Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?
But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.
A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.
Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.
An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.
Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.
The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience.
Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.
Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.