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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.

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
Optimum
Maximum
Population
Less

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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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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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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
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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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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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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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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.
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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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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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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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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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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
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