American - Environmentalist | April 21, 1915 - September 14, 2003
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.
Garrett Hardin
GoodFireLieRealReasonOut
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?
FamilyFearTrustBibleMorality
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.
EnvironmentalNewSayWhyAlways
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.
RootsEconomicsThinkValuesMust
An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.
ValuesActSeenAttackInevitably
A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
FutureObligationMakeHeDenyAny
The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
PopulationThanThenLessMaximum
Incommensurables cannot be compared.
CannotCompared
Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
PositiveGrowthEvidencePopulation
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.
TimeReal EstateLogicAgriculture
The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.
ManCostRationalShareThanHe
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.
BehaviorSameFrontierBecauseHarm
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