Dr. Garrett Hardin: Overpopulation, Survival and Morality

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Of course, this doesn't present a serious problem in a country like the United States ... at least not at the present time. But the humanitarian organizations that want to make the whole world, in effect, a Commons—by pledging that we'll prevent the starvation of children anywhere on earth—are following a course that could lead to serious consequences.

Consider this: There are—using a loose definition of the term "poor"about four times as many impoverished people in the world as there are men and women who have adequate food, clothing, etc. And the rate of increase of these poor populations—which are mostly centered in technologically impoverished countries—is about three times as great as the growth of population in "rich" lands. This means that—in effect—poor people are increasing their numbers 12 times as rapidly as are those folks who are well off. And—as long as we continue to accept responsibility for children whose parents are unable to support them—that rate of increase can only go up.

The solution, of course, sounds somewhat harsh: We must simply decide that the right to bear children hinges upon me ability to care for those children. Therefore, a couple should not produce any child that the family cannot support. If too many poor babies are born , we—as individuals or as a country—c an It accept responsibility for them.

As I said, this may seem cruel, but I mink me time has come when we must direct our humanitarianism toward future generations ... even at the expense of poor children today.

There's another, less obvious, factor that enters into this problem, too. The impoverished countries of the world are—by and large—already overdevelop from an ecological, rather than a technological, point of view. There are exceptions, of course, but all around the Mediterranean basin, and throughout southeast Asia, we see poor lands that have been deforested ... in some cases the damage was done thousands of years ago The people living in these areas have already surpassed the "carrying capacity" of the land ... which can be defined as the number of beings that an area can support, year after year, without degrading its environment. Now, when you exceed that number—as did the farmer in our example, who put an extra cow on the public pasture—you do damage the environment and thus reduce its capacity! So, by saving the lives of children in these areas, we increase the overload and insure that the ability of the land to support human life will decrease more rapidly.

The situation is even worse in the tropical highlands, as Erik Eckholm has pointed out. Such areas only contain about 10 percent of the world's population, yet the events that transpire in the highlands affect 30 percent of the people on this earth! The deforestation that took place in the foothills of the Himalayas, for example, resulted in a loss of topsoil. That soil ran down to the lowlands, where it clogged irrigation systems and caused flooding. So the folks in the lowlands suffer for the sins of the highlands. And the greater the populations in those mountainous areas grow, the more serious and far-reaching that lowland suffering will become. Which is another good reason for not keeping people alive beyond their own ability to survive ... especially in the highlands of the world.

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