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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
General
Public
Ecologists
Part
Environmentalists
Always
Alarming
Environmentalist
Feared
Hated
Environmental

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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.
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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
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However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.
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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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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
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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.
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Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
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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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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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