Dr. Garrett Hardin: Overpopulation, Survival and Morality

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Yes, a lack of concern for the past may well be one of our failings—a kind of catalyst that aggravates many of out-social problems—but I'm afraid there isn't much we can do about this one.

PLOWBOY: Perhaps, if we can learn to live within our energy "budget'', we will find ourselves in a world that allows for more contact between the generations.

HARDIN: That may well be the case. When we have to make do on reduced amounts of energy, we will certainly become a less mobile society ... if for no other reason than the fact that travel will be expensive enough to negate many of the now common reasons for changing one's location.

PLOWBOY: There is, as you know, a growing "back to the land" movement in the United States, and in other nations as well. Do you feel that this trend could lead to a greater concern for the future?

HARDIN: It could ... at least it offers that potential. The course of history, though, is so unpredictable that it's hard to guess what the hell will happen even in the next 10 years. But large numbers of people are opting to live in more rural locations, and that change in itself is important.

PLOWBOY: And, if you also consider the increasing numbers of Americans who are attempting to produce some of their own food-even in limited quantities with backyard gardens and so forth, it does seem that we might be moving away from the ''milk comes from the store'' mentality.

HARDIN: I think that this trend is, at least, providing many people with valuable experience. After all, one of the first tasks that a beginning gardener has to face is crop thinning. He or she sees all those wonderful seedlings come up and wants to raise every single one of them. Yet if the garden is to thrive, the novice ''farmer" has to learn to destroy some life in order to allow other life to flourish. Should that lesson not sink in, the garden will produce—for example—radishes the size of pinheads of the plants survive at all.

PLOWBOY And raising a crop no matter how small, can also give a person a gut understanding of such otherwise abstract phrases as ''carrying capacity''.

HARDIN: That's true ... many of the ecological concepts that seem vague to a city dweller can become very clear-cut when that individual tries his or her hand at raising food. Farming—or gardening—tends to force one to look to the future ... to accept responsibility for the longterm results of his or her actions.

PLOWBOY: You've used the word ''responsibility" several times, Dr. Hardin, Can you give me a precise definition of this somewhat vague term?

HARDIN: Put in the simplest way possible, responsibility is accountability. Or, as Charles Frankel has defined it, "A decision is responsible when the man or group that makes it has to answer for it to those who are directly or indirectly affected by it.'' There is, Of Course. another interpretation of responsibility, which relates to an inner feeling ... almost a private religion. That second definition often determines how a person lives his or her life, but the first meaning—that of responsibility as accountability—should be a matter of public policy ... especially when we're dealing with a Commons, or with actions that could limit the carrying capacity of the planet.

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