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
Garrett Hardin quotes about
The National Parks present another instance of the working out of the tragedy of the commons. At present, they are open to all, without limit.
To many, the word coercion implies arbitrary decisions of distant and irresponsible bureaucrats; but this is not a necessary part of its meaning.
Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.
Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.
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?
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.
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.
Ecological differentiation is the necessary condition for coexistence.
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.
In the specific case of abortion, the matter is particularly easy in that no woman wants a late abortion. Once abortion was made legal, the age of the aborted fetus went down. The slope slipped in the other direction. If we legalize RU-486 and other similar new drugs, the age will fall to one week or less and start approaching zero. The slippery slope will slide in the other direction. The only reason we have late abortions is because we make early abortion difficult.