Tragedy of the Commons The “Tragedy of the Commons” is the title
of a famous venture by a biologist into the field of ethics. In
1968 Garrett Hardin published an essay thus entitled in Science.
Its basic thesis is that population growth is a problem which
requires radical moral solutions, because it is a situation in
which individual self-interest will inevitably lead to
catastrophic consequences due to an unchecked population
explosion. Why revisit this essay 30 years down the track? Well,
for one thing, I wasn’t born until 1975, hence my opportunity to
engage in the debate that ensued was somewhat limited. More
importantly though, the late 1960′s saw the beginning of our
contemporary ecologist movement, and this movement still rests
upon the shoulders of its pioneers. Though Hardin was
overshadowed in 1968 by Paul Erlich’s doomsaying book – The
Population Bomb, I intend to focus on Hardin’s essay, as it is
much shorter. Why is Population Growth a Problem? Hardin’s
argument runs like this : As Malthus pointe