| Garrett Hardin | |
| Birth Name: | Garrett James Hardin |
| Birth Date: | April 21, 1915 |
| Birth Place: | Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Santa Barbara, California, U.S. |
| Field: | Ecology |
| Alma Mater: | University of Chicago (BS) Stanford University (PhD) |
| Known For: | "The Tragedy of the Commons" (essay) |
Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was an American ecologist and microbiologist. He focused his career on the issue of human overpopulation, and is best known for his exposition of the tragedy of the commons in a 1968 paper of the same title in Science,[1] [2] which called attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment". He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Human Ecology:[3] "We can never do merely one thing. Any intrusion into nature has numerous effects, many of which are unpredictable."[4]
Hardin held hardline anti-immigrant positions as well as positions on eugenics and multiethnicism that have led multiple sources to label him a white nationalist. The Southern Poverty Law Center described his publications as "frank in their racism and quasi-fascist ethnonationalism".[5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Hardin received a BS in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and a PhD in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941 where his dissertation research addressed symbiosis among microorganisms.[10] Moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1946, he served there as Professor of Human Ecology from 1963 until his (nominal) retirement in 1978. He was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.
A major focus of his career, and one to which he returned repeatedly, was the issue of human overpopulation. This led to writings on controversial subjects such as advocating abortion rights,[11] which earned him criticism from the political right, and advocating strict limits to all immigration, which earned him criticism from the political left. In his essays, he also tackled subjects such as conservation[12] and creationism.[13] He was also a proponent of eugenics; his membership in the American Eugenics Society dates to 1956, and Hardin served as a director from 1971-1974 (the American Eugenics Society changed its name to the Society for the Study of Social Biology in 1973).[14]
In 1968, Hardin applied his conceptual model developed in his essay "The Tragedy of the Commons" to human population growth, the use of the Earth's natural resources, and the welfare state. His essay cited an 1833 pamphlet by the English economist William Forster Lloyd which included an example of herders sharing a common parcel of land, which would lead to overgrazing.
Hardin blamed the welfare state for allowing the tragedy of the commons; he claimed that where the state provides for children and supports large families as a fundamental human right, Malthusian catastrophe is inevitable. Hardin stated in his analysis of the tragedy of the commons that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all." Environmental historians Joachim Radkau, Alfred Thomas Grove and Oliver Rackham criticized Hardin "as an American with no notion at all how Commons actually work".
In addition, Hardin's pessimistic outlook was subsequently contradicted by Elinor Ostrom's later work on success of co-operative structures like the management of common land, for which she shared the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Oliver E. Williamson. In contrast to Hardin, they stated neither commons or "Allmende" in the generic nor classical meaning are bound to fail; to the contrary "the wealth of the commons" has gained renewed interest in the scientific community. Hardin's work was also criticized as historically inaccurate in failing to account for the demographic transition, and for failing to distinguish between common property and open access resources.[15] [16]
Despite the criticisms, the theory has nonetheless been influential.[17]