Climate Crisis and the Tragedy of the Commons: a Matter of Racism?

In 1968, American ecologist and philosopher Garret Hardin (1915-2003) published a famous article, “The tragedy of the commons”, in which he argued the necessity of controlling the world population’s growth since “a finite world can support only a finite population” (p. 1243). Hardin pointed out that, in a pasture open to all, where every single herdsman can do whatever he wants, a rational behaviour based on self-interest will lead him to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons: in such a deregulated context, the marginal utility of an additional animal is always positive because while gain (profit) is private, loss (overgrazing) is shared with the entire community. In the long term, such a trend can lead to resources’ exhaustion and, ultimately, to disaster.

Over the last 50 years, Hardin’s paper has been widely cited by scholars of different disciplines, from ecology to political science. But in a recent article published by Scientific American, an assistant professor of environmental politics at the University of California vehemently states that it is time to reject Hardin’s misleading ideas. After acknowledging Hardin’s impact on modern environmentalism, Matto Mildenberger attacks him in a not-so-fair manner. Instead of proposing a series of solid, convincing, arguments, he starts by labeling Hardin as racist, white nationalist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamophobe. The only source quoted to back such compliments is the Southern Poverty Law Center, dedicated to “fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society”.

The Finger and the Moon

One of the most daunting aspects about technology is represented by the highly unpredictable consequences it always implies. Mankind creates and shapes technology, but we may argue that the latter tends to produce – as we are reminded by Newton’s Third Law of physics – an almost “equal and opposite reaction”. Sometime, the outcomes are better than expected; sometimes, they are worse; sometimes, they are not expected at all, and they may even turn out to reverse the effect initially meant to be obtained. We could say, by using the own words of French poet Paul Valery, that we are increasingly embedded into a very complex ICT-led system “that is leading us… we do not know and can by no means imagine where”.

Take the internet, for instance. It was initially conceived to connect electronic devices and people by creating a horizontal network: the core idea was to communicate and share data and information in a simpler and faster manner. Economic elements appeared to be secondary, if not irrelevant at all. With the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, this idea was brought to the entire globe and gradually spread to a massive scale, ending up involving billions of people. After more than 25 years, many people are enjoying the advantages brought by the internet. But the incoming revolution so widely praised in the 1990s seems to be producing also unexpected and unintended outcomes.