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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
Environmental
General
Public
Ecologists
Part
Environmentalists
Always
Alarming
Environmentalist
Feared
Hated

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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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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
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A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.
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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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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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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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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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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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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 an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.
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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.
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To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.
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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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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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