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Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues, 3rd Edition

Hardin, Garrett

by Gary E. Dolph

Fields of Study: Ethics, Advocacy, Policy, Protest; Ecology, Environment, Environmentalism; Philosophy and History of Science; Public Policy, Debates, Controversies; Authors, Writers; Journalism, Publishing, Literature

Categories: Activism and advocacy; population issues; resources and resource management

Identification: American ecologist

Through his writings—in particular his widely read 1968 article “The Tragedy of the Commons”—Hardin raised awareness of the environmental problems caused by human overpopulation and overexploitation of resources.

Garrett Hardin was an ecologist who argued strongly for the need to control human population growth. He first received public attention for his ideas in 1968 with the publication of his article “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science. The title of the article came from the concept of the English commons. In a typical medieval English community, all inhabitants could graze their animals on pasture that was held in common by all. The nature of the commons made it possible for users to overexploit the pasture, because any extra animals that one person raised were available for that user’s benefit alone, while the grazing resources would be lost to all users of the commons. When the total population is low, any misuse of a commons can be compensated for by a move to a new area. When the total population has increased to the point where no new land is available, the resource held in common will be depleted. The results can be seen in acid rain and ozone depletion (in which the air is treated as a commons), overgrazing (in which the land is treated as a commons), and the whaling and commercial fishing industries (in which the resources of the sea are treated as a commons).

Hardin noted that each problem could be treated as though it were separate and distinct from every other, but he believed that this approach would simply hide the underlying cause of these problems. The pivotal commons is the freedom to breed, particularly when the costs of having children are spread over the entire population and are not restricted to the parents. According to Hardin, human overpopulation is the single root cause that lies behind problems such as excessive resource consumption, war, starvation, so-called ethnic cleansing, poverty, noise pollution, foreign aid, and simple traffic jams.

As explained in his book The Limits of Altruism (1977), Hardin believed that every nation has the responsibility to reduce its population to the level it can support using its own resources. Special privileges enjoyed by a few people today should be tolerated if they contribute to national self-reliance in the future. If all nations do not become self-reliant, the resulting population crash will be so devastating that civilization may never recover even if small enclaves of humans survive.

In one of his last books, Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos (1993), Hardin compared the United States to a lifeboat in a sea of human misery and concluded that the nation would be able to survive the coming era of resource scarcity only by banning immigration and stabilizing its population. Hardin denied the workability of the “global village” and offered no apology for his apparent lack of compassion. In the absence of human moderation, he believed, nature will once more assert dominance in controlling human population size through disease, starvation, and war.

Further Reading

1 

Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (December 13, 1968): 1243-1248.

2 

Pepper, David, ed., with Frank Webster and George Revill. Environmentalism: Critical Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2003.

3 

Sooros, Marvin S. “Garrett Hardin and Tragedies of Global Commons.” In Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, edited by Peter Dauvergne. Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2005.

See also:

Ehrlich, Paul R.; Malthus, Thomas Robert; Population-control and one-child policies; Population-control movement; Population growth; Tragedy of the commons

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Dolph, Gary E. "Hardin, Garrett." Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues, 3rd Edition, edited by Richard Renneboog, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=ENVIs2e_0354.
APA 7th
Dolph, G. E. (2019). Hardin, Garrett. In R. Renneboog (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues, 3rd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Dolph, Gary E. "Hardin, Garrett." Edited by Richard Renneboog. Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues, 3rd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2019. Accessed September 17, 2025. online.salempress.com.