Garett Hardin - Economics and Ecology

Limits to Growth Pearlman Is growth progress? Is growth wonderful and something that we should be striving for? Do you support such a position?

Hardin "No. I wouldn't be an ecologist if I did. The ecologist says basically that growth presents terrible problems, and we've had 400 years of a drunken brawl, you might say, in which we have turned more and more of the earth's wealth, accumulated over millions of years - oil, gas, things like that, into our usage, but we can only spend that material - that quantity of wealth - once. It turns out that atomic energy is no escape, and solar energy is definitely limited. So we have not gotten rid of all limits; we merely have pushed many of them back. We're getting closer and closer to the point where we can't go much farther."

Garrett Hardin on Population, Demand, Sovereignty, Shortages
Why do you believe the world is overpopulated?
Biologist have long believed the world is overpopulated. More people have to share the same resources.
Economist don't agree. They see expanding populations as increasing the size of markets.
Biologists want to match resources and population. Economists want to maximize resources and population.
I believe we should try to slowly reduce the population of the USA.
Many people wonder how many people the world will sustain. I say "It depends how you want to live".

Hardin argues that in biology you cannot cure a shortage by increasing supply, and that this principle has general application.
Hardin's view would once again not be supported by most economists.

Garrett Hardin on the Tragedy of the Unregulated Commons
Other nations cannot expect to have a standard of living as enjoyed in the USA.
Nor can the USA expect the present high standard of living to long endure.
The Tragedy of the Commons, is about solving the problem of how the resources of a community should be best shared.
Ecology teaches us a lot about that, but it's knowledge most people choose not to know.
We do a poor job of responding to dangers that are not obvious or immediate.
We need a reward system that encourages the desired behaviour.
Too often the incentives we create encourage exactly the opposite behaviour to that which nature demands. (Perverse tax incentives and subsidies)
We should always favour people in a democracy having quality information.

Garrett Hardin on Standard of Living and Immigration
I believe each nation is responsible for managing it's own affairs.
If there is excess population growth in any nation, one day there will be a reversal.
Emigration is not a practical solution to that problem. Change inside the country is necessary.
We manage our resources very badly.

Garrett Hardin on Overpopulation and Carrying Capacity
We have to educate people so the understand that a smaller population is desirable.
Governments encourage larger populations. That's a hangover from the time when more people provided cannon fodder and created military strength. That's no longer true.
There is enough food for people, but that's not the problem.
Congestion, pollution and energy supply are the real problems.
You can't have everything you want. There must be trade offs.
You can choose to have a larger population, and live poorly, or a smaller population and live well.

Garrett Hardin on Malthus, Darwin and Natural Selection
Most people have never read what Malthus wrote. He argued the natural control existed. Population always expand more quickly than it's possible to expand the resources need to feed and sustain that population.
He wasn't to know about the industrial revolution that was just beginning.
Still his essential idea was correct.
Darwin had two key ideas, evolution and natural selection.
Evolution is controversial in the USA, but not in Europe or anywhere else. Evolution is about history, and proof is difficult.
Natural selection on the other hand is science. Well proven science.
Nature always overproduces and relies on the high death rate of individuals to select those best adapted for survival.
By disease control mankind has altered that process.
Man tries to get the maximum development possible and thinks that more is good.
In nature the optimum is never the maximum possible.
A little may be good. A lot of the same thing may kill you.

Garrett Hardin on Overpopulation and Natural Selection
The Romans saw that pestilence, disease, war and famine could be a blessing. For millions of years that kept the human population small.
In the last 200 years disease, as a population control, has largely disappeared.
Nature by design produces far more offspring than are needed to maintain the population.
Without disease as a control, the human race has a serious problem. People are reluctant to face the fact that control is necessary.

Garrett Hardin on Growth, Limits, and a Better World
Most people think of growth as progress.
We live with limited resources, and the ability to use accumulated reserves.
If we draw on those accumulated reserves too fast the crash when it comes will be unbearably painful.
All government is restrictive, and we don't like that. However, we're discovering that more restriction is necessary.
Ownership doesn't give one unlimited rights. Certain activities ought to be restricted.
The time is coming when we will live in a much more restricted world. We should seriously prepare for that now.

Garrett Hardin on Energy and Consumption
Ecologists know that all resources have limits.
The "production" of 20 million barrels of oil is really the destruction of 20 million barrels of oil.
Solar energy is the basic limit on life on Earth.
We're finding the production of waste also imposes limits on us.