Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.
Garrett Hardin Quotes
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.
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| Birth: | 21st April, 1915 |
| Death: | 14th September, 2003 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Profession: | Environmentalist |
About
Hardin received a B.S. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and a PhD in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941. Moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1946, he served there as Professor of Human Ecology from 1963 until his retirement in 1978. He was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. In 1963, Harden drew heavy criticism from the left for his occasional indulgence in theories that may justify genocide on the grounds of ecological balance. In September of 1974, he published the article "Living on a Lifeboat" in BioScience magazine, arguing that contributing food to help the Ethiopian famine would add to overpopulation, which he considered the root of Ethiopia's problems. Despite his lifelong insistence that population must be curbed to avoid disaster, Hardin himself had four children. In 1993, Hardin published Living Within Limits, which he described at the time as a summation of all his previous works. In this book he argues that natural sciences are grounded in the concept of limits, while social sciences such as economics are grounded in concepts that have no limits. He notes that most of the more notable scientific arguments concerning environmental economics are between natural scientists, such as Paul Erhlich, and economists, such as Julian Simon. In 1994, he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which declared the consensus of the signing scholars on issues related to race and intelligence following the publication of the book The Bell Curve. Hardin, who suffered from a heart disorder, and his wife Jane, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, were members of End-of-Life Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society, and believed in individuals choosing their own time to die.
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