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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.

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
Growth
Support
Must
Finite
World
Zero
Eventually
Population
Therefore
Equal

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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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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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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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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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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 finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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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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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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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 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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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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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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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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