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Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

Garrett Hardin

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Garrett Hardin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1915
Born: April 21
Died: 2003
Died: September 14
Biologist
Demographer
Ecologist
Statistician
University Teacher
Dallas
Texas
Garrett James Hardin
Garrett J. Hardin
Public
Ecologists
Part
Environmentalists
Always
Alarming
Environmentalist
Feared
Hated
Environmental
General

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Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.
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Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?
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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
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Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
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Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms skyhooks. Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.
Garrett Hardin
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.
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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
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A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.
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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
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But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.
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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.
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We see only what we have names for.
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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
Garrett Hardin