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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.

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
Humans
Produced
Throughout
Destroy
Move
Moving
History
Colonize
Earth
Progression
Human
Exploitation

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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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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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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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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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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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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 social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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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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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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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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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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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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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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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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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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