The Tragedy of the Commons

What process limits the populations of plants and animals in the natural world? How do humans get around that limitation?

Explain how individuals using an unregulated common resource can gradually overuse that resource until it collapses.

A new highway, free to use by all, opens at the edge of a city, and at first it relieves traffic congestion in the region. How might this highway eventually cause more congestion than it initially relieves?

Choose either air, water, ocean fisheries, rangelands, or forests, and explain how your selection behaves as a commons. How does overuse of that resource lead to a “tragedy of the commons”?

How does improved technology lead to an increase in human population? How does the increase in number of people defeat the technological improvement?

Explain how attempts by conscientious families to limit their size might lead to an increase in population.

The author believes that technology can’t fix the population problem. What does he suggest instead, and how might that solution work to limit population growth?

Hardin’s critics argue that “demographic shift” slows or reverses human population growth and therefore resolves that problem. How does such a shift work? Can it, by itself, completely resolve the population problem?