• World population growth (a look back)

Note from the above that though the growth rate drops, the numbers still go up (remember the doubling formula–take the percent growth rate and divide it into 70, so at current rates around 1.2%, that’s a 60-year doubling rate).

• Who’s contributing the most people?
  • The tragedy of the commons — what are ‘commons?’ What is the ‘tragedy?’ Who is Thomas Malthus?
  • What is causing the ‘tragedy?’ (the prisoner’s dilemma)–rational decisions may lead to irrational outcomes — ‘everyone’s property is no one’s property’ and the concept of ‘free riding’–common property ownership leads to overuse
  • Hardin says that countries with high birth rates are free riding on the world’s resource base
  • What causes birth rates to decline?
    • Demographic transition and ‘development‘
    • Decreased mortality (over lifespan, across ethnicities)
• What to do? No ‘technology fix,’ sez Hardin–‘intolerable freedom to breed;’
  • Private property as solution
  • What about ‘peak oil?‘
  • Does private property lead to good stewardship, or are many valuable resources been privatized? What is the US example (e.g., topsoil, food production)?
  • How has Hardin ‘framed’ the problem?
    • People in poor countries with high fertility rates.
    • Like the prisoners’ dilemma, the rational pathway for the individual (in this case, high birth rates and plentiful farm labor) can produce irrational outcomes at the collective level.
  • Alternative framings–Population growth versus resource consumption — wealthy countries with high consumption rates
    • ‘Ecological footprint’ —what’s yours?
    • Jared Diamond’s ‘consumption factor‘: Yes, Kenya has high birth rates, but average US citizen consumes 32 times more than a Kenyan.
  • Who’s using resources? Who’s benefiting? Who’s paying the price (Serra Pelada)?
    • Resource wars
      • throughout history
      • DRC
      • Iraq
    • What’s Hardin’s solution?
      • -address ‘intolerable freedom to breed;’
      • privatize the ‘commons’
    • Alternative view of solution–sustainable development: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need.”
      • Hardin’s misreading of the ‘commons‘
        • continuum: state ownership … private … communal … open access (the last is what Hardin refers to as ‘everybody’s property’)
        • ‘Common property resource’ management and sustainable development (how did industrialization and demand for resources change things?)
      • Other issues
      • • Technology (birth control? What other technology issues?)
        • Political and social issues (think of week 4 and drivers of climate change )
        • Education? ‘Ecological literacy? Who/where are ‘target audiences?
        • Capitalism 
        • Consumption–reduce, reuse, recycle, upcycle, etc. 
  • Carrying capacity: “The maximum number of individuals of a particular species that a given area can maintain indefinitely”
    • What impacts carrying capacity? longevity, technology, consumption, ecosystem and its ‘resilience;’
    • Have humans overshot?
    • If so, why haven’t we ‘felt’ it?
    • Who or what has felt it?

  The role of stuff