The goal of this essay is to reexamine Garrett Hardin’s concerns regarding population growth and its increasing demands on the environment as he characterized them in his seminal 1968 paper: The Tragedy of the Commons. I briefly review the original essay and consider some of the more contemporary responses to it by other commentators. Ultimately, a specific objective of this paper is to consider the state of his theory in view of globalization, which has been attempted in a few recent papers. I argue that these recent papers fail to take into consideration recent trends in Human Evolutionary Psychology, an interdisciplinary outgrowth of both evolutionary biology and psychology. The assumptions used by detractors of Hardin’s theory diminish the biological forces as root causes, i.e., motivations, behind universal behaviors like consumption, reproduction, competition and cooperation, in favor of social and cultural forces, e.g., governmental policy and other forms of social control. Revisiting Hardin’s concerns are relevant today more than ever because his examples and characterizations 40 years ago were couched at the regional level. Because of the global community we now live in, the effects of overpopulation, excessive consumption, habitat loss and environmental decay that exist in one region, now conspicuously impact all other regions. The present paper also takes into consideration Game Theory models such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the moral factors that are subsumed when individuals competing for limited resources must make difficult choices between short-term personal gain and the long-term consequences (i.e., costs) to the global community.2
Almost 40 years ago and prior to the digital/communications revolution, a monumental paper appeared in Science magazine that would become one of the most oft cited and hotly debated in the years that followed. The paper bore a simple title: “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Its sole author, Biologist Garrett Hardin sought to raise the awareness of both the scientific and lay communities about the mechanics and consequences of continued unrestricted population growth and the mismanagement of limited natural resources (Hardin, 1968). He issued the warning that the unrestricted individual or personal freedom to access, use and consume resources shared by all, would ultimately lead to a tremendous cost that would be borne by all, rather than by the individual user of the Commons. What came to be known as a metaphor for environmental decay and overpopulation, and to some, even the ultimate collapse and extinction of our species, the “Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons” appeared to capture the essential elements of Malthusian theory with respect to the relationship between people and their subsistence base (p.1244). Thomas Malthus (1798) had shown over 200 years ago that populations grow “geometrically”, i.e., exponentially, until the cost of their growth overcomes them when they exceed the carrying capacity of the geographic region from which they draw their subsistence. When that happens, many of the weakest would perish first, while others would aggress against peoples of a neighboring region in an effort to acquire their resources in order to survive. The reverse is equally applicable to the invaded neighbor; they will resist the incursion either by blocking entry or protecting their resources.
Without specifically addressing the issues of “misery and vice”, which Malthus had argued were the natural outcomes of overpopulation and a strained or depleted subsistence base, Hardin described a scenario borrowed from William Lloyd’s early 19th century characterization of the overgrazing of “pasturelands” in England held in “common” by a community of herdsmen. He described the tragedy of unrestricted freedom by herdsmen to use the commons 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 anotherÃÂ . 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. (Hardin, 1968, p.1244) (emphasis added)
Without citing him specifically, Hardin had touched on Thomas Malthus’ notion of “misery and vice” in the last sentence of this quote. This was Malthus’ conclusion for the effects of overpopulation; as stress is placed on the subsistence base, members of the population would experience shortages and turn to corruption in order to cope. Although criticisms of Malthus’ views still circulate, the general spirit of his theory has never been disproven. In fact, no field biologists and very few social scientists have dared to argue that an exponential growth in population does not in fact stress the resource base. Years later, the preeminent ethologist Konrad Lorenz demonstrated that various forms of aggression were simply a natural and predictable result of intra-species competition when resources are strained (1963). Thus, the debate about Malthusian theory has more to do with his predictions of societal collapse and neglecting to include the notion of economic adjustments by cooperators in a community.
More importantly for our present concerns, Hardin was addressing part of the fundamental nature of all human beings to pursue what is in an individual’s own best interest. This is Charles Darwin’s monumental contribution to natural and biological sciences. It is summarized by the notion of personal fitness. An individual, being the vehicle for passing on a representative set of genes of a given species, must rely on its phenotypic collection of physical and behavioral traits in order to live long enough to reproduce itself and then insure that its offspring do the same. The fittest survive because they insure that more energy is spent on themselves than on others. In Hardin’s model of the Commons, the individual herdsman looks out for and expends more energy on himself and offspring than on others.
The neodarwinian explanation of fitness extends the natural drive of the individual herdsman to the family he was helping to support. This extension to Charles Darwin’s general principle of personal fitness to survive is better known today by the term “inclusive fitness” (Hamilton, 1964). The motivation for all individuals to act first in their own best interest and to extend those actions to the interests of their kin is also observed by biologists in countless other species. Thus, the genetic (or biological) origins of the motivation to seek out and acquire resources evolved, i.e., mutated into existence, in an ancient common ancestor shared by virtually all species from the single-cell organism to human beings.1 It is axiomatic that an organism lacking the motivation to seek out and acquire resources and then consume them, lacks the ability to thrive. Similarly, one who expends most or all their energy on helping others would also likely perish in the absence of reciprocity.
By his own admission (in a subsequent essay he published in the same journal exactly 30 years later), Hardin noted that he had omitted an important condition to his theory of the Commons (1998). He qualified the original work by suggesting it applied best to an “unmanaged” commons. That is, one free of laws and oversight by a governing body or other such institution wielding power and authority over an individual’s use of the Commons. Taking the essentialist approach, Hardin argued in the original 1968 essay that (1) the Commons were limited because of the finite nature of the planet, (2) unrestricted freedom to use the Commons minimized the cost to the individual, but distributed that cost to all users of the Commons, (3) technical solutions to the tragedy of overuse are not possible, but depend instead on changes in morality, and (4) individuals act (i.e., make their consumption decisions) on the basis of self-interest. Hardin concluded that “the more the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, the more freedoms must be given up. On a global scale, nations are abandoning not only the freedom of the seas, but the freedom of the atmosphere, which acts as a common sink for aerial garbage.” (Hardin, 1998, p.683)
In the interest of completeness, two subtle but necessary distinctions to Hardin’s four conditions must also be addressed. One was raised by Crowe (1969) who explained why political solutions were also not likely to solve the problem of the Commons. The difficulty lay in the public administration, oversight and enforcement of laws by government. The second is concerned with Hardin’s emphasis (like Malthus’ before him) on regional rather than global examples. That is, the Commons were viewed more narrowly, which was appropriate for both Hardin and Malthus’ respective times. However, our present concern is with a modification of the Tragedy of the Commons as applied to 21st century globalization. Neither Hardin nor Malthus was able to imagine a homogenized global community dependent on itself for cheap labor and a worldwide market for the sale of goods.
Hundreds of studies and critical reviews were spawned over the next 30 years by Hardin’s original essay (cf., Deitz et al., 2002; McCay, 1995; Rappaport, 1984; Sober & Wilson, 1998). The logic of most of these criticisms hinges on the notion that altruism and cooperation supercede our deeper and more ancient motivation toward self-interest. Individuals in a Commons will mutually agree to cooperate thereby averting any Tragedy. Most of these arguments are set back by two pieces of evidence. First, Hardin in fact took into consideration the issue of cooperation for mutual gain. He specifically referred to a system of “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon” to show that groups who agree to set laws that effectively limit individual freedoms can overt disaster; the smaller the group, the greater the likelihood. Second and more importantly, a larger problem with the logic of Hardin’s detractors is that they fail to appreciate that the foundation of all individual behavior relies more heavily on self-interest than on cooperation. Again, an individual who expends more energy on others without guaranteed reciprocity is statistically likely to be duped into poverty or worse. Thus, the probability of survival of a selfless individual who gives more to others than to him or herself, is comparatively low. Such genes would naturally select against survival, which is why we see such behavior as rare exceptions in all modern cultures. Self-serving behavior insures that an individual is statistically more likely to pass on its genes; the gullible and selfless individual whose life is dedicated to charity and support of others is statistically likely to be cheated.
A recent study by Stone et al., (2002) revealed what appear to be brain centers that monitor and evaluate social exchanges for cheating; a cheater-detection module as it has come to be known. Her research further validates what psychologists and sociologists have inferred from countless observational studies. People have the capacity to cooperate as well as some degree of ability to monitor their environment for threats. Thus, no one discounts that cooperation and altruism exist, but these behaviors neither supercede nor replace individual self-interest. Conditions in which individuals agree to cooperate are always encumbered or compromised because every participant knows and remembers they are ultimately looking out for themselves and their kin. This translates most often into the observation that an individual will defect when they find defection from the cooperative venture to be in their best interest.
In February of 2005, the United Nations Population Division announced their updated predictions for population growth over the next few decades (BBC News, 2005). The revised estimate based on the most recent research and updated statistical trends projected that 9.3 billion people would be competing for the limited space and resources of planet Earth by 2050; not surprisingly, most of that growth is expected in developing countries. This is effectively a 30 percent increase globally in the number of consumers that presently exist. An impromptu poll of students in my courses just after the UN announcement revealed that practically anyone could look around their own community and imagine 30 percent growth without too much concern. It was only a minority of students2 who cited any negative consequences of adding 30 percent more people to their community.
But most people do not live in a town of 120,000 with open rangeland available for expansion in all directions. In fact, ‘For Sale’ signs advertising property for commercial or housing development pepper the landscape and send the message of prosperity rather than blight. The critical issue is that the overwhelming majority of citizens does not perceive or have any sense of imminent danger to themselves, their immediate family, or their community. Moreover, most of these individuals (not surprisingly, none of the students in the classes sampled) ever report having visited a poverty stricken area where overpopulation was the principal factor in the community’s blight. To their credit, however, every student admitted having seen a photograph or video clip in the news of shantytowns or blighted communities in far off distant countries. Given their lack of concern for issues of growth, such reports have little or no apparent influence on their perceptions of the impact that 30 percent more people would have on their own community.
It surprises no one that the context of the moment has an important influence on the perceptions, choices or decisions individuals will have or make on any given subject. Cognitive psychologists have demonstrated this behaviorally and neurologically. In other areas of the social sciences, the influence of context includes the effect of bias. Thus, the local bias in a community, such as the one my particular students live in, clearly influences their perception that 30 percent growth has few if any negative consequences. Any concern they might have for 30 percent growth on a global level, however, is even less detectable. They appear to generalize from local to global without any difficulty. Whatever the causal factors may be that drives their lack of concern or perception of imminent danger, there is no understanding, colloquial, academic, or scientific, that 30 percent growth globally will affect all users of the global Commons. That is, air and water quality, soil conditions, biodiversity, waste disposal and pollution, etc., will continue to suffer along with a growing number of people living without access to adequate shelter, health care, education, nourishment and other basic necessities. The avoidance of such evidence and the denial that it poses as great a threat to human prosperity as a meteoric impact had for the dinosaurs is also worthy of attention.
In psychology, the logic behind avoidance and denial is directly attributable to a generalized fear of change, i.e., altering what already appears to be working satisfactorily. The students in the sample I surveyed are not concerned about 30% growth in their community because all the resources they need are presently available. Moreover, there is no compelling evidence to them that a shortage of any of their resources is imminent. The historical record shows us that when a shortage occurs or is imminent, people rush to acquire as much as possible in order to weather the lean times ahead. Gas shortages of the 1970s are an excellent case in point, as was the single afternoon on September 11 th , 2001 when mass fear/hysteria gripped many Americans who believed a gasoline shortage was imminent and they (1) waited in long lines to top off their gas tank, and (2) in certain cases paid exorbitant prices of up to four dollars per gallon. People are reluctant to prepare or anticipate problems because it means having to first accept that a problem with their behavior presently exists. In fact, the research in this area shows people are far better at identifying bad or risky behavior in others, than they are in identifying it in themselves (Weinstein, 1984). Like many non-human animals, people can anticipate change. People winterize their homes and their vehicles, etc., because they accept that a harsher climate is imminent. Winterizing is a comparatively easy change to accept because the consequences of not doing so are profound and directly affect survival. Thus, for the students in my sample, like the culture and species they represent, there is not sufficient information/evidence available to compel them to change their present behavior.3 This avoidance or denial of an imminent problem is what will lead to their individual contributions to the 30% growth (Pratarelli, 2003). The problem of changing is simply postponed to a forthcoming generation, and the nextÃÂ
It has also been amply demonstrated in the historical records that communities, large and small, grew so much that they were functionally unable to cope with unexpected environmental or political upheavals that resulted in their collapse. Jared Diamond’s most recent historical review of societies that suffered major or complete collapses of their infrastructure shows that it is both a regular occurrence and possibly even inevitable (2005). What precipitates a societal collapse is understood far better than what forestalls it. Certainly, the immediate and ample supply of all resources demanded by a community is a critical factor as Hardin represented in the above quote. So long as all the herdsman had enough pastureland to accommodate their combined cattle, there was no concern about overgrazing. But again, as compared to the historical times when Hardin and Malthus wrote, the Commons has taken on new meaning because in every community on our planet exists some form of evidence that its carrying capacity may already have been exceeded. The forms, however, are many and often subtle in their appearance.
Former urban dwellers who escaped large cities where one or more forms of blight were evident are fleeing to less populated areas. In my own community, several miles from the city of 120,000 that hosts the university where I work, every person or family I have met can be easily classified into three narrowly defined categories. A small minority are residents who were born, raised and continue to reside there. A slightly larger number, but still a minority, have second homes or recreational cabins to which they retreat when they choose, but otherwise still live in larger communities. By far the overwhelming majority, however, are those permanent escapees from large urban communities. Escape is the attribute they most share in common because they cite specific living or environmental conditions in their former urban communities that strongly influenced or wholly motivated their choice to leave. Moreover, rather than seek out a different urban community, they selected a smaller less urbanized or semi-rural community to live in. Not everyone on the planet can afford to do so, however. But what is even more conspicuous in most developed societies (according to the census data) is that so many people actually prefer the blight to living without easy and immediate access to theatres, shopping, and other forms of entertainment. This standard is increasingly becoming the norm in the developing nations.4
Further validation of Hardin’s Tragedy has appeared recently from an unlikely source. One branch of mathematics is dedicated to examining the statistical probabilities of variations in choice decision-making that result in positive, negative or zero-sum outcomes (see Barash, 2003, for a recent overview of Game Theory). A simple but compelling example reveals its working logic.
“Given that successful reproduction is the biological bottom line, why should redwoods grow so tall? After all, you don’t have to be two hundred feet in height, and bother piling up hundreds of tons of wood, just to make some tiny seeds. But a redwood that opted out of the big-and-tall competition fray would literally wither in the shade produced by other trees that were just a bit less restrained. And so, redwoods are doomed by their own unconscious selfishness to be “irrationally large, for no particular reason other that the fact that other redwoods are doing the same thing.” (Barash, 2003, p.4-5)
What is so provocative about Barash’s example is the demonstration of a successful intraspecies competitive strategy that transcends all organic life. The fundamental principle that comes as close as any behavioral one can to warranting status as natural-law is this: “unconscious selfishness” that drives (motivates) the competitive urge is fundamental to all living things. Under normal circumstances there is little reason for concern, if and only if, a particular species requires a very narrow set of environmental conditions to support life and successful reproduction. The redwoods example is an excellent case in point; Giant Sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are found in only one remote geographic region of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains and nowhere else in the world. Other organisms have slightly better adaptive traits that allow them to prosper across a wider variety of climatic and geographic zones. Among raptors, for example, the common red-tail hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) has one of the broadest ranges across North America because it adapts quickly when it encounters a strain on its subsistence base. Even though land development has encroached on the red-tail hawks’ natural habitat, they are seen most frequently now along Interstates and Highways hunting along the undisturbed frontage land on either side of the pavement. Their prey base lives there undisturbed by earthmovers and developers.
At the other end of the continuum of intraspecies competition lie highly adaptive species such as the common housefly, cats, dogs, and human beings. Among mammals their proportionately larger brains support a far more complex array of behaviors, but still built upon the same unconscious selfish drives to succeed (Pratarelli, 2003). Yet, houseflies are not mammals and they do not have a large or complex central nervous system. Their unique strategy for competition include enhanced maneuverability, flexibility in their scavenging behaviors and diet, an ability to exploit the waste products of other prolific organisms, like humans, and finally, their extremely high reproductive rate. Whereas human beings normally produce one and sometimes two offspring per successful mating, flies produce thousands. The general message is that in the absence of a large, complex and innovative brain, a species had better have large numbers on their side or extreme flexibility to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Human beings, of course, survive to compete as well as they have solely because of their proportionately large convoluted brain. We are not fast runners, swimmers, or well adapted for thermoregulation as hairier animals seem to be. But we have made most of these specialized adaptations obsolete with the demonstrated ability to alter our immediate environment by building shelters, irrigating fields and maximizing agricultural output, harnessing the ability to capture energy, store it, and inject it on demand in order to manufacture goods. We transform biomaterials into homes, paper, insulation, clothing, or use fossil fuels to produce synthetic products like plastic used in everything from telephones to automobiles. Collectively, the behavior that best describes this adaptive trait is called innovation. The problem, however, is what happens to such a prolific species if its ability to innovate is yoked to its “unconscious selfishness,” so deep in its neural circuitry that it shares the competitive motivation even with giant redwoods? As Garrett Hardin suggested, the long term consequence is likely to be our elimination as a species owing to a host of factors, all of which sum to impose severe costs on the global ecosystem. Evidence of such pressures can be seen from the increasing rate of loss of biodiversity, the rate of depletion of nonrenewable natural resources, and even events like 9/11, Rwanda, Kosovo, or the handling of the AIDs epidemic. Whether a catastrophic global ecological collapse brings complete ruin and extinction to our species—much as it did to the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when a 2 kilometer-wide meteor struck the planet—is impossible to predict. What can be said, however, is that all the physical earth science and environmental decay evidence points in that same general direction. While there are no doubt small victories and improvements at regional levels, the global indicators of the integrity of the ecosystem are showing detrimental changes, and these are consistent with the increasing frequency of habitat loss and species extinctions.
Opponents of this model have argued that human innovation will compensate for depleted resources and the loss of natural habitats and biodiversity by producing artificial replacements (cf., Simon, 1998; Deitz et al., 2002). One problem with the “adjustment” models popularized most by economists is that virtually all the evidence on consumption trends, pollution, depletions and overpopulation contradicts them. Most of the rhetoric confuses or substitutes the word development of resources for growth (Daly & Townsend, 1993). Developing resources or a population refers to a qualitative change that can be sustained almost indefinitely. In contrast, growth is purely quantitative and since the planet and useable land and resources are finite variables, an upper limit carrying capacity must eventually be reach, resulting in collapse when it is exceeded.5 The main weakness in the adjustment models is the failure to use rational-empirical assumptions of human behaviors like choice decision-making; they also either neglect or minimize the influence of unconscious motivations and drives. Moreover, an important working assumption in such models is that all humans, theoretically, are capable of making the kinds of rational decisions that make their models work. Returning to Hardin’s pastureland example, the economic adjustment model would predict that the community of herdsmen would measure and recognize their dilemma, then agree on laws structuring their family size and thus the number of cattle to no more than what the Common pasture could support. The problem is that no successful example of such radical changes in politics and human performance as yet exists on this planet. Because we can conceive of such changes, it is theoretically possible; the growing evidence, however, suggests that such changes are not probable, catastrophic events notwithstanding.
Consider, for example, the unquestionable fact/observation that genius levels of intelligence exist in humans, yet not all humans achieve such levels of intellectual performance. In fact, it is the rare exception that an individual becomes as insightful and innovative as an Albert Einstein. If motivation alone were capable of actualizing genius, there would be far more geniuses in our midst. Thus, economists are most guilty of substituting what is possible for what is probable. The probabilities are revealed in the high statistical likelihoods seen as the normative emergent behaviors, while the possibilities are seen as statistical outliers. Couple such irrational substitutions with unmitigated exuberant hope; the result is denial or self-deception. It is the single most effective psychological strategy known to clinicians and scientists for avoiding the negative feelings and emotions that would otherwise compromise if not control morally objectionable actions (Fingarette, 1969; Pinker, 2002; Pratarelli, 2003).
Enter the Prisoner’s Dilemma as articulated most recently by Poundstone (1992) and others. Game theorists have argued for some time that a case can be made for cooperation under certain narrow circumstances (Axelrod, 1984). Although cooperation is popular, the basis of the prisoner’s dilemma reminds us of the essentialist character of acting out of self-interest. Prisoner’s Dilemma is the generic name for a class of competitive social exchanges between parties in which each seeks to achieve maximum gain while gambling that mutual noncooperation (called defection) would result in a greater loss to both. The prototypical example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma involving two prisoners who must elect to cooperate or defect is somewhat unwieldy. A simpler and more ecologically valid example for most of us is the classic case of politicians and negative campaign advertising (Barash, 2003).
Two politicians may agree in principle that negative campaign advertising is not favored by the public and may result in a negative perception of the promoter of a negative ad. However, each politician recognizes that being the first to defect from the agreement not to use negative campaign ads, while the opponent agrees to cooperate, can result in a major advantage. The historical record confirms this rationale. Each politician has to rely on faith and trust in their adversary that he or she will not defect and resort to negative campaign ads. We do not need statistical evidence to convince us that the lure of an overwhelming personal victory is difficult to resist, for most. This is why negative campaign advertising (and “dirty tricks” of the sort popularized recently by Karl Rove) is as old as records that exist, and will remain with us indefinitely unless specific enforceable laws are passed and implemented with severe penalties for defectors. But the likelihood that those who have benefited most from negative campaign advertising will voluntarily enact such laws is extremely small. Thus, a mutual agreement not to use negative ads against each other, if successful, only levels the playing field by eliminating the advantage to both parties that comes from a well-timed attack. Each politician reasons the same way. Since neither politician trusts the other, yet understands the irresistible urge that the other may succumb to first, compels each to attempt a preemptive attack. The worst case scenario, however, is that if both succumb to the same urge, both have to endure less benefit than what each would have gained from mutual cooperation, but more than had they allowed their opponent to attack first.
By rereading Hardin’s brief vignette of the Tragedy of the Commons I quoted earlier in this essay, the mechanism of the Prisoner’s Dilemma clearly emerges when he says “freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” Such is the case between 6.6 billion individuals at present all vying to succeed in an ever-increasing competitive global community/ecosystem. The extant data on consumption trends and population growth, especially in developing countries shows unequivocally that defection is the rule rather than the exception. Moreover, having a developed economy, even the most developed one as in the case of the U.S., does not always predict that cooperation is more likely than defection. One recent example is the current Bush Administration’s decision to opt out of the Kyoto Protocol. Again, the lure of maximizing personal benefit is so irresistible that the administration (on behalf of American corporations) elected to turn its back on the other participating countries that must now share the cost of America’s pollution and expanding exploitation of international resources and other peoples. Nevertheless, an allied group of countries recently elected to cooperate by agreeing to voluntarily cap their toxic emissions despite the fact that their collective impact is minimal, inasmuch as the largest polluter and consumer is the defecting U.S. This strategy doubles the cost to the cooperating parties by (1) raising their cost of doing business and thus reducing their competitiveness globally against the U.S. and other defectors, and (2) having to absorb the costs of U.S. pollution in increased medical care, poverty and malnutrition among their people. This strategy is for naught without compulsory participation, which the U.S. and other defectors have organized to prevent.
On a global scale, multiple defections can only have a single ultimate outcome, “ÃÂ ruin to all.” We may continue to hope that international agreements will be honored, new laws will be enacted and enforced, and that they will be equitable for both developed and developing societies. Although we can find exceptional cases that demonstrate an ability as a species to cooperate with one another on environmental matters, they will remain exceptions rather than the rule as is presently the case. There is no shortage of prognostications and pleas for change in people’s values and attitudes toward consumption and childbirth (Diamond, 2005; Ehrlich, 2000; Pinker, 2002; Wilson, 2002). There are also many prescriptions for change in the environmentalism literature from writers claiming they have a basic insight and understanding of human nature. Yet, what they all share in common is the same failure to keep our deep “unconscious selfishness” in proper perspective relative to our ability and willingness to cooperate. What is missing most is the admission that the prima facia evidence from earth sciences on consumption patterns and population growth is explained best only by a model grounded in the biological predispositions to act first on the basis of self-interest. We are not in need of new theories and models of economic decision-making among rational actors, etc., but rather a refocusing of our existing, but minimized and neglected understanding of our ancient motivations toward self-interest. We share these in common even with redwood trees, so we cannot attribute those motivations necessarily to possession of a large brain, let alone a superior brain among brains. If it is truly such a superior brain, it will reveal itself in self-imposed changes that appear as the new rule rather than exceptions.
Given the consumption and population statistics that exists and the continuing trends in detrimental human activity, we cannot invalidate the popular axiom from psychology that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Garrett Hardin’s representation of the ‘Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons’ is as consistent viewed on a global scale as it is on a small regional pasture shared by a few herdsmen. Moreover, his conclusion that the greater the tragedy the more freedoms we will have to surrender is also still salient. An excellent recent example is what has happened to the freedoms enjoyed by that torchbearer of freedom, the United States, in response to the 9/11 attack. International and domestic travel have become less convenient and more time consuming because of the increased safety precautions made necessary to protect travelers. A host of new invasive regulations that permit government agencies to access and collect information about individuals in their private life, e.g., what books were checked out or requested from a public library or sites accessed through the World-Wide-Web, etc., were recently imposed in record time with virtually no dissention or debate in the legislative bodies. Although it is still unpopular to suggest that 9/11 was merely a retaliatory attack against a long history of unfair trade practices, exploitation of foreign peoples and their labor, cultures and customs (in particular, Islam) through global homogenization, etc., (Sardar & Davies, 2002), such acts of terrorism have increased in frequency. The increase is consistent with Malthus’ theory for precisely the reasons he described. Nonetheless, the developed countries still enjoy considerable freedoms in commerce, consumption and childbirth. If theory holds, these in time will also erode.
The question remains, who will give up those freedoms first if not the leader who set the standards of behavior and decision-making that underlie what has come to be known as globalization. It is precisely because of the standards of excessive consumption and greed, individualism and self-reliance, that the spread of this Western cultural archetype will grow and ultimately lead to even more catastrophic events. With a finite useable land mass and natural resources, globalization will have to reach its upper limit that will raise the probability of both environmental and societal types of collapse. One can only hope that our species sets aside its denial of human nature and recognizes the need for “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.”
Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
BBC News (2005). Nine billion people by 2050. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1194030.stm
Crowe, B.L. (1969). The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited. Science, 166(3909), 1103- 1107.
Daly, H.E., & Townsend, K.N. (1993). Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem. IN: Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3621/DALY1.htm
Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Survival. London: John Murray.
Dietz, T., Dolsak, N., Ostrom, E., & Stern, P.C. (2002). Introduction: The Drama of the Commons. In: Drama of the Commons. Ostrom, E., Dietz, T., Dolsak, N., Stern, P.C., Stonich, S., & Weber, E.U. (Eds.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. (E-book).
Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. New York: Viking Press.
Ehrlich, P. (2000). Human Natures: Genes, Culture, and the Human Prospect. Washington, D.C.: Island Press (for) Shearwater Books.
Fingarette, H. (1969). Self-deception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hamilton, W.D. (1964). The genetical evolution or social behavior, I, II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1-52.
Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162, 1243-1248.
Hardin, G. (1998). Extensions of ‘Tragedy of the Commons’. Science, 280(5364), 682- 683.
Lorenz, K. (1963; 1966). On Aggression. New York: Bantam Books.
Malthus, T.R. (1798/1966). An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
McCay, B.J. (1995). Common and private concerns. Advances in Human Ecology, 4, 89- 116.
Ostrom, E., Burger, J., Field, C.B., Norgaard, R.B., & Policansky, D. (1999). Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges. Science, 284, 278-282.
Ostrom, E., Dietz, T., Dolsak, N., Stern, P.C., Stonich, S., & Weber, E.U. (2002). The Drama of the Commons. (Eds.) Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. (E- book).
Poundstone, W. (1992). Prisoner’s Dilemma. New York: Doubleday Books.
Pratarelli, M.E. (2003). Niche Bandits: Why Big Brains Consumed an Ecosystem. Colorado: Medici Publishing, Inc.
Pratarelli, M.E., & Mize, K. (2002). Biological determinism/fatalism: Are they extreme cases of the use of inference in evolutionary psychology? Theory and Science, 3(1), Online: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?105.3.1.x
Rappaport, R.A. (1984). Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sadar, Z., & Davies, M. (2002). Why do People Hate America? New York: The Disinformation Company.
Simon, J.L. (1998). The Ultimate Resource 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sober, E., & Wilson, D.S. (1998). Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Stone, V., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Krosll, N., & Knight, R. (2002). Selective impairment of reasoning about social exchange in a patient with bilateral limbic system damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 3526.
Weinstein, N.D. (1984). Why it won’t happen to me: Perception of risk factors and susceptibility. Health Psychology, 3, 431-458.
Wilson, E.O. (2002). The Future of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publishing.
1. Animals with highly specialized and rigid social structures such as ants and bees are exceptions rather than rule. Moreover, when such adaptations are seen, the organisms have quantitatively smaller brain to body ratios.
2. Of 118 participants sampled, 6% (n = 7) responded that 30% growth in their community would cause problems; 87.3% (n = 103) responded there would be no problems; and 6.7% (n = 8) responded with “not sure” or “don’t know.”
3. It should become immediately apparent to the interested reader that herein lies a possible solution to the problem of human denial and avoidance of having to deal with the imminent consequences of their consumption. By example, the history of the media’s coverage of the Vietnam War was sufficient to bring about so much public outrage that it led to protests and the American withdrawal of its troops. The military seized on that lesson and have since prevented the same kind of nightly reporting that is common still in European countries, but no longer permitted in the American mainstream media. Fearing a loss of corporate revenue, advertisers are still reluctant to convey messages that would reduce consumption rather than increase it.
4. Recent growth and development statistics in mainland China reveal a pattern of migration toward urban centers and increased demand and ownership of personal property. As one example, the per capita ownership for automobiles changed from 1 per 100 families in 1990, to 1 in 4 families in 2004. That rate of increase adds about 1.7 percent more families to the car registry in China each year assuming that the population in China had a zero net growth, which it does not. Since the population in China has been growing for the past 14 years, the increase from 1 to 25 percent of families owning a car is considerably greater. This growth pattern is seen consistently in all developing nations, although the specific rate of growth varies with local constraints.
5. Jared Diamond produced an interesting collection of such collapses in small regional societies in his most recent book (2005).
Copyright remains exclusively with the author.