Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition

Document 108: Garrett Hardin on Controlling Access to the Commons (1968)

Every community has commons—resources such as parks, fresh air, waste disposal sites, water, and waterways to which all members of the community have equal access or right. As a community’s population increases, the demand for these commons also increases. It is inevitable that, if the population continues to increase, eventually the demand for the common resources will exceed the supply.

According to the human ecologist Garrett Hardin, the time has come to do away with unfettered human access to the commons in four areas: (1) food gathering, (2) waste disposal and pollution, (3) use of open space for pleasure and free expression (limits must be placed on the right to make noise, set up billboards, etc.), and (4) procreation at will. Limits on liberty, he believes, are better than total environmental ruin. Hardin has no faith in the ability of humans to prevent environmental degradation without the imposition of strict controls on human activity.

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?” This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.

2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

. . . [N]atural selection favors the forces of psychological denial. The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers.

* * *

The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it. But the air and waters surrounding us cannot readily be fenced, and so the tragedy of the commons as a cesspool must be prevented by different means, by coercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter to treat his pollutants than to discharge them untreated. We have not progressed as far with the solution of this problem as we have with the first. Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution. The owner of a factory on the bank of a stream—whose property extends to the middle of the stream—often has difficulty seeing why it is not his natural right to muddy the waters flowing past his door.

* * *

The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste. . . . But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

* * *

The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.

Source: Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 1243 (December 13, 1968): 88, 89, 92.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Document 108: Garrett Hardin On Controlling Access To The Commons (1968)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0118.
APA 7th
Document 108: Garrett Hardin on Controlling Access to the Commons (1968). The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, In P. Neimark & P. R. Mott (Eds.), Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0118.
CMOS 17th
"Document 108: Garrett Hardin On Controlling Access To The Commons (1968)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, Edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott. Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0118.