Garrett Hardin

The Ostrich Factor (eBook, PDF)

Our Population Myopia

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Garrett Hardin, one of our leading thinkers on problems of human overpopulation, here assails the recklessness and basic ecological ignorance of economists and others who champion the idea of unbounded growth. Hardin delivers an uncompromising critique of mainstream economic thinking. Science has long understood the limits of our environment, he notes, and yet economists consistently turn a blind eye to one feature we share with all of our planet's inhabitants--the potential for irreversible environmental damage through overcrowding. And as humankind draws ever closer to its goal of conquering our final natural enemy--disease--the fallacy of sustainable unchecked population growth becomes more and more dangerous. Moreover, Hardin argues, rampant growth will soon force us to face many issues that we will find quite unpalatable--most notably, that since volunteer population control will not work, we will have to turn to "democratic coercion" or "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" to limit growth, a policy that directly threatens long cherished personal rights. Challenging an array of powerful taboos, Hardin takes aim at sacred cows on both sides of the political fence--affirmative action, multiculturalism, current immigration policies, and the greed and excess of big business and "growth intoxicated industrialists." Hardin's forceful and cogent argument for the union of ecology and economics is a must for anyone concerned with the goal of a bountiful, yet sustainable world. Sure to spark controversy, this book underscores the urgency of our situation and reveals practical steps we must take to ensure the long term survival of humankind.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. April 1999
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780195352702
• Artikelnr.: 38138716

Autorenporträt

Garrett Hardin is Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The founder of the field of human ecology, he is the author of the seminal essay "The Tragedy of the Commons," which has been reprinted in over 100 anthologies, and the book Living Within Limits (Oxford), which won the 1993 Award in Science from the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He lives in Santa Barbara.

Inhaltsangabe

1: The Pursuit of Objectivity
2: Tertullian's Blessing
3: How to Lie with Learned Words
4: Foundations of Science: By Right, or By Default?
5: The Stormy Marriage of Economics and Ecology
6: Consequentialism: Nature's Morality
7: Natural Selection: God's Choice
8: Altruism
9: Coercion
10: Diseconopmies of Scale: Ostrich Myopia
11: The Dream of One World
12: Russell's Theorem
13: A Martian View of Malthus
14: Equity, Equality and Affirmative Action
15: Multiculturalism: For and Against
16: Ambivalent Value of Growth
17: The Extended Reach of Gresham's Law
18: Summary: Can Our Ostriches Find the Will?