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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
Population
Less
Optimum
Maximum

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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 finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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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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We see only what we have names for.
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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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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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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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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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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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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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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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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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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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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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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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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