Challenging a Narrative: A Common Tragedy in Environmental Education

作者:瑞安·诺瓦克

Most students being educated about the environment are familiar with “The 公地悲剧,”¹ a term coined by Garrett Hardin. In his 1968 article of the same name, Hardin urges the necessity of population control as a solution to prevent the destruction of open-access common pool resources.

“…That this idea of a multiethnic society is a disaster.”

The publication continues to act as a model for the discussion over the efficiency of resource management methods— but how many students are familiar with Hardin’s position “…that this idea of a multiethnic society is a disaster.”² Granted, most things taken out of context can seem pretty bad.  In this case however, even in context, Hardin’s words sound alarmingly racist.

The core message to come from Hardin’s ambiguously ill-defined idea of the commons is that “the freedom to breed is intolerable.哈丁还说:

“There seems to be little danger of society’s being deprived of something valuable by the sterilization of all feeble-minded individuals.”³

取下裹尸布时, 和 shining a light on Hardin’s racist ideologies, the motivations of his poorly laid argument surrounding the commons begin to come into question. The sinister nature of Hardin’s work becomes ever more apparent when learning that Hardin was a signatory of “Mainstreet Science on Intelligence,” an editorial published in the Wall Street Journal in 1994. The editorial “…concludes, 例如, that differences in intelligence exist, 可以公平地衡量, are partly genetic (within races), 和 influence life outcomes.” 

Now begs the question, “Who’s freedom to breed is intolerable?”

I am not one to suggest that any scientific contribution be discounted solely on the questionability of morality… or obvious lack thereof. Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes said is best when speaking of American abolitionists: “[They] wore clothes made of cotton picked by slaves. But that did not make them hypocrites … it just meant that they were also part of the slave economy, 他们知道这一点. That is why they acted to change the system, not just their clothes.”

既然如此, I believe Hardin’s argument surrounding the commons is a poorly laid straw man argument. “Hardin’s argument is sociologically naive. He ignores the emergent 和 self-regulating nature of social organizations in response to such challenges.”⁵ 阿佩尔博士说， . He goes on to suggest that Hardin’s article “has been embraced as a sacred text by scholars 和 professionals in the practice of designing futures for others 和 imposing their own economic 和 environmental rationality on other social systems of which they have incomplete underst和ing 和 knowledge.”⁵ Not only is the author of “The 公地悲剧” recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a well-documented white supremacist, but his arguments don’t even hold up to the st和ards of peer reviewed scientific literature.

此外, in 2009, Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize in economics by demonstrating how local property can be successfully managed by local commons without any regulation by central authorities or privatization. In her publication “Revisiting the Commons: 当地的 Lessons, Global Challenges;”⁶ Ostrom illustrates the old viewpoints surrounding the commons, addresses their shortcomings, 和 advances the discussion on the management of common-pool resources.

So, why is Hardin’s work still used to facilitate discussion in environmental education?

1. 哈丁,G. (1968) 公地悲剧. 科学, 162(3859), 1243-1248.
2. 斯桃波C. (1997) Living in a World of Limits. The Social Contract Press, 8(1)
3. 麦克拉伦,. (1986). The creation of a haven for “human thoroughbreds”: the sterilization of the feeble-minded 和 the mentally ill in British Columbia. Canadian Historical Review, 127.
4. 哥,我. S. (1997). Mainstream 科学 on intelligence: An editorial with 52 signatories, history, 和 bibliography.
5. 阿佩尔G. N. (1993). Hardin’s Myth of the Commons: The Tragedy of Conceptual Confusions. Social Transformation 和 Adaptation Research Institute.
6. 奥斯特罗姆,E.汉堡，J.， Field, C. B.诺加德，R. B., & Policansky D. (1999). Revisiting the commons: local lessons, global challenges. 科学, 284(5412), 278-282.