David Pimentel is a professor of ecology and agricultural science
at Cornell University. Here are excerpts from his
article:
"More than 3 billion people worldwide are already malnourished,
and 3 billion are living in poverty; grain production per capita
started declining in 1984 and continues to decline...
Fifty-eight academies of science, including the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences, point out that humanity is approaching a
crisis point with respect to the interlocking issues of population,
natural resources, and sustainability..."
Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his
contribution to the Green Revolution. He is the only
agricultural scientist ever to win the Nobel Prize.
"There can be no lasting solution to the world food
problem until a more reasonable balance is struck between
food production and human population growth," Borlaug said.
"The efforts of those on the food-production front
are, at best, a holding operation which can permit others
on the educational, medical, family planning and political
fronts to launch an effective, sustainable and humane
attack to tame the population monster."
Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey estimates that most wild
species will be exterminated in the next 50 to 100 years.
The Tragedy of the Commons
by Garrett Hardin
Source: Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons,"
Science, Vol. 162, 1968, pp. 1243-1248.
At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war,
J.B. Wiesner and H.F. York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms
race are…confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing
military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is
our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no
technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for
solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will
be to worsen the situation." [1]
I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the
article (national security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of
conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solution
to the problem. An implicit and almost universal assumption of
discussions published in professional and semipopular scientific
journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical
solution. A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a
change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding
little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of
morality.
In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are
always welcome. Because of previous failures in prophecy, it takes
courage to assert that a desired technical solution is not possible.
Wiesner and York exhibited this courage; publishing in a science
journal, they insisted that the solution to the problem was not to be
found in the natural sciences. They cautiously qualified their
statement with the phrase, "It is our considered professional
judgment...." Whether they were right or not is not the concern
of the present article. Rather, the concern here is with the
important concept of a class of human problems which can be called
"no technical solution problems," and more specifically,
with the identification and discussion of one of these.
It is easy to show that the class is not a null class. Recall the
game of tick-tack-toe. Consider the problem, "How can I win the
game of tick-tack-toe?" It is well known that I cannot, if I
assume (in keeping with the conventions of game theory) that my
opponent understands the game perfectly. Put another way, there is no
"technical solution" to the problem. I can win only by
giving a radical meaning to the word "win." I can hit my
opponent over the head; or I can falsify the records. Every way in
which I "win" involves, in some sense, an abandonment of
the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course,
openly abandon the game -- refuse to play it. This is what most
adults do.)
The class of "no technical solution problems" has
members. My thesis is that the "population problem," as
conventionally conceived, is a member of this class. How it is
conventionally conceived needs some comment. It is fair to say that
most people who anguish over the population problem are trying to
find a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without relinquishing
any of the privileges they now enjoy. They think that farming the
seas or developing new strains of wheat will solve the problem --
technologically. I try to show here that the solution they seek
cannot be found. The population problem cannot be solved in a
technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of
tick-tack-toe.
What Shall We Maximize?
Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow
"geometrically," or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a
finite world this means that the per-capita share of the world's
goods must decrease. Is ours a finite world?
A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is
infinite or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the
practical problems that we must face in the next few generations with
the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase
human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that
the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite.
"Space" is no escape. [2]
A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore,
population growth must eventually equal zero. (The case of perpetual
wide fluctuations above and below zero is a trivial variant that need
not be discussed.) When this condition is met, what will be the
situation of mankind? Specifically, can Bentham's goal of "the
greatest good for the greatest number" be realized?
No -- for two reasons, each sufficient by itself. The first is a
theoretical one. It is not mathematically possible to maximize for
two (or more) variables at the same time. This was clearly stated by
von Neumann and Morgenstern, [3] but the principle
is implicit in the theory of partial differential equations, dating
back at least to D'Alembert (1717-1783).
The second reason springs directly from biological facts. To live,
any organism must have a source of energy (for example, food). This
energy is utilized for two purposes: mere maintenance and work. For
man maintenance of life requires about 1600 kilocalories a day
("maintenance calories"). Anything that he does over and above
merely staying alive will be defined as work, and is supported by
"work calories" which he takes in. Work calories are used
not only for what we call work in common speech; they are also
required for all forms of enjoyment, from swimming and automobile
racing to playing music and writing poetry. If our goal is to
maximize population it is obvious what we must do: We must make the
work calories per person approach as close to zero as possible. No
gourmet meals, no vacations, no sports, no music, no literature, no
art… I think that everyone will grant, without argument or proof,
that maximizing population does not maximize goods. Bentham's goal is
impossible.
In reaching this conclusion I have made the usual assumption that
it is the acquisition of energy that is the problem. The appearance
of atomic energy has led some to question this assumption. However,
given an infinite source of energy, population growth still produces
an inescapable problem. The problem of the acquisition of energy is
replaced by the problem of its dissipation, as J. H. Fremlin has so
wittily shown. [4] The arithmetic signs in the
analysis are, as it were, reversed; but Bentham's goal is
unobtainable.
The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum. The
difficulty of defining the optimum is enormous; so far as I know, no
one has seriously tackled this problem. Reaching an acceptable and
stable solution will surely require more than one generation of hard
analytical work -- and much persuasion.
We want the maximum good per person; but what is good? To one
person it is wilderness, to another it is ski lodges for thousands.
To one it is estuaries to nourish ducks for hunters to shoot; to
another it is factory land. Comparing one good with another is, we
usually say, impossible because goods are incommensurable.
Incommensurables cannot be compared.
Theoretically this may be true; but in real life incommensurables
are commensurable. Only a criterion of judgment and a system
of weighting are needed. In nature the criterion is survival. Is it
better for a species to be small and hideable, or large and powerful?
Natural selection commensurate the incommensurables. The compromise
achieved depends on a natural weighting of the values of the
variables.
Man must imitate this process. There is no doubt that in fact he
already does, but unconsciously. It is when the hidden decisions are
made explicit that the arguments begin. The problem for the years
ahead is to work out an acceptable theory of weighting. Synergistic
effects, nonlinear variation, and difficulties in discounting the
future make the intellectual problem difficult, but not (in
principle) insoluble.
Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the
present time, even on an intuitive level? One simple fact proves that
none has: there is no prosperous population in the world today that
has, and has had for some time, a growth rate of zero. Any people
that has intuitively identified its optimum point will soon reach it,
after which its growth rate becomes and remains zero.
Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that
a population is below its optimum. However, by any reasonable
standards, the most rapidly growing populations on earth today are
(in general) the most miserable. This association (which need not be
invariable) casts doubt on the optimistic assumption that the
positive growth rate of a population is evidence that it has yet to
reach its optimum.
We can make little progress in working toward optimum population
size until we explicitly exorcise the spirit of Adam Smith in the
field of practical demography. In economic affairs, The Wealth of
Nations (1776) popularized the "invisible hand," the
idea that an individual who "intends only his own gain,"
is, as it were, "led by an invisible hand to promote…the
public interest." [5] Adam Smith did not
assert that this was invariably true, and perhaps neither did any of
his followers. But he contributed to a dominant tendency of thought
that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational
analysis, namely, the tendency to assume that decisions reached
individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire
society. If this assumption is correct it justifies the continuance
of our present policy of laissez faire in reproduction. If it
is correct we can assume that men will control their individual
fecundity so as to produce the optimum population. If the assumption
is not correct, we need to reexamine our individual freedoms to see
which ones are defensible.
Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons
The rebuttal to the invisible hand in population control is to be
found in a scenario first sketched in a little-known Pamphlet in 1833
by a mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852).
[6] We may well call it "the tragedy of the
commons," using the word "tragedy" as the philosopher Whitehead
used it [7]: "The essence of dramatic tragedy is
not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless
working of things." He then goes on to say, "This inevitableness of
destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents
which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the
futility of escape can be made evident in the drama."
The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture
open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep
as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may
work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars,
poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well
below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the
day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of
social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic
of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain.
Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "
What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my
herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive
component.
1. The positive component is a function of the increment of one
animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of
the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly + 1.
2. The negative component is a function of the additional
overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects
of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility
for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.
Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational
herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is
to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the
conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a
commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system
that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world
that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush,
each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the
freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
Some would say that this is a platitude. Would that it were! In a
sense, it was learned thousands of years ago, but natural selection
favors the forces of psychological denial. [8] The
individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the
truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers.
Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing,
but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis
for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.
A simple incident that occurred a few years ago in Leominster,
Massachusetts shows how perishable the knowledge is. During the
Christmas shopping season the parking meters downtown were covered
with plastic bags that bore tags reading: "Do not open until
after Christmas. Free parking courtesy of the mayor and city council."
In other words, facing the prospect of an increased demand for
already scarce space, the city fathers reinstituted the system of the
commons. (Cynically, we suspect that they gained more votes than
they lost by this retrogressive act.)
In an approximate way, the logic of the commons has been
understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of
agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate. But
it is understood mostly only in special cases which are not
sufficiently generalized. Even at this late date, cattlemen leasing
national land on the Western ranges demonstrate no more than an
ambivalent understanding, in constantly pressuring federal
authorities to increase the head count to the point where overgrazing
produces erosion and weed-dominance. Likewise, the oceans of the
world continue to suffer from the survival of the philosophy of the
commons. Maritime nations still respond automatically to the
shibboleth of the "freedom of the seas." Professing to
believe in the "inexhaustible resources of the oceans,"
they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to
extinction. [9]
The National Parks present another instance of the working out of
the tragedy of the commons. At present, they are open to all, without
limit. The parks themselves are limited in extent -- there is only one
Yosemite Valley -- whereas population seems to grow without limit.
The values that visitors seek in the parks are steadily eroded.
Plainly, we must soon cease to treat the parks as commons or they
will be of no value to anyone.
What shall we do? We have several options. We might sell them off
as private property. We might keep them as public property, but
allocate the right to enter them. The allocation might be on the
basis of wealth, by the use of an auction system. It might be on the
basis of merit, as defined by some agreedupon standards. It might be
by lottery. Or it might be on a first-come, first-served basis,
administered to long queues. These, I think, are all objectionable.
But we must choose -- or acquiesce in the destruction of the commons
that we call our National Parks.
Pollution
In a reverse way, the tragedy of the commons reappears in problems
of pollution. Here it is not a question of taking something out of
the commons, but of putting something in -- sewage, or chemical,
radioactive, and heat wastes into water; noxious and dangerous fumes
into the air; and distracting and unpleasant advertising signs into
the line of sight. The calculations of utility are much the same as
before. 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. Since this is true for
everyone, we are locked into a system of "fouling our own nest,"
so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free
enterprisers.
The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private
property, or something formally like it. But the air and waters
surrounding us cannot readily be fenced, and so the tragedy of the
commons as a cesspool must be prevented by different means, by
coercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter
to treat his pollutants than to discharge them untreated. We have not
progressed as far with the solution of this problem as we have with
the first. Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which
deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors
pollution. The owner of a factory on the bank of a stream -- whose
property extends to the middle of the stream -- often has difficulty
seeing why it is not his natural right to muddy the waters flowing
past his door. The law, always behind the times, requires elaborate
stitching and fitting to adapt it to this newly perceived aspect of
the commons.
The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not
much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste.
"Flowing water purifies itself every ten miles," my grandfather used
to say, and the myth was near enough to the truth when he was a boy,
for there were not too many people. But as population became denser,
the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became
overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
How to Legislate Temperance?
Analysis of the pollution problem as a function of population
density uncovers a not generally recognized principle of morality,
namely: the morality of an act is a function of the state of the
system at the time it is performed. [10] Using
the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under
frontier conditions, because there is no public; the same behavior in
a metropolis is unbearable. A hundred and fifty years ago a plainsman
could kill an American bison, cut out only the tongue for his dinner,
and discard the rest of the animal. He was not in any important sense
being wasteful. Today, with only a few thousand bison left, we would
be appalled at such behavior.
In passing, it is worth noting that the morality of an act cannot
be determined from a photograph. One does not know whether a man
killing an elephant or setting fire to the grassland is harming
others until one knows the total system in which his act appears.
"One picture is worth a thousand words," said an ancient
Chinese; but it may take ten thousand words to validate it. It is as
tempting to ecologists as it is to reformers in general to try to
persuade others by way of the photographic shortcut. But the essence
of an argument cannot be photographed: it must be presented
rationally -- in words.
That morality is system-sensitive escaped the attention of most
codifiers of ethics in the past. "Thou shalt not…" is
the form of traditional ethical directives which make no allowance
for particular circumstances. The laws of our society follow the
pattern of ancient ethics, and therefore are poorly suited to
governing a complex, crowded, changeable world. Our epicyclic
solution is to augment statutory law with administrative law. Since
it is practically impossible to spell out all the conditions under
which it is safe to burn trash in the back yard or to run an
automobile without smog control, by law we delegate the details to
bureaus. The result is administrative law, which is rightly feared
for an ancient reason -- Quis custodies ipsos custodes? -- Who
shall watch the watchers themselves? John Adams said that we must
have a "government of laws and not men." Bureau administrators,
trying to evaluate the morality of acts in the total system, are
singularly liable to corruption, producing a government by men,
not laws.
Prohibition is easy to legislate (though not necessarily to
enforce); but how do we legislate temperance? Experience indicates
that it can be accomplished best through the mediation of
administrative law. We limit possibilities unnecessarily if we
suppose that the sentiment of Quis custodiet denies us the use
of administrative law. We should rather retain the phrase as a
perpetual reminder of fearful dangers we cannot avoid. The great
challenge facing us now is to invent the corrective feedbacks that
are needed to keep custodians honest. We must find ways to legitimate
the needed authority of both the custodians and the corrective
feedbacks.
Freedom to Breed Is Intolerable
The tragedy of the commons is involved in population problems in
another way. In a world governed solely by the principle of
"dog eat dog" -- if indeed there ever was such a world -- how many
children a family had would not be a matter of public concern.
Parents who bred too exuberantly would leave fewer descendants, not
more, because they would be unable to care adequately for their
children. David Lack and others have found that such a negative
feedback demonstrably controls the fecundity of birds.
[11] But men are not birds, and have not acted
like them for millenniums, at least.
If each human family were dependent only on its own
resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to
death; if thus, over breeding brought its own "punishment "
to the germ line -- then there would be no public interest
in controlling the breeding of families. But our society is deeply
committed to the welfare state, [12]
and hence is confronted with another aspect of the tragedy of
the commons.
In a welfare state, how shall we deal with the family, the
religion, the race, or the class (or indeed any distinguishable and
cohesive group) that adopts over breeding as a policy to secure its
own aggrandizement? [13] To couple the concept of
freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal
right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of
action.
Unfortunately this is just the course of action that is being
pursued by the United Nations. In late 1967, some thirty nations
agreed to the following: "The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of
society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the
size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and
cannot be made by anyone else.” [14]
It is painful to have to deny categorically the validity of this
right; denying it, one feels as uncomfortable as a resident of Salem,
Massachusetts, who denied the reality of witches in the seventeenth
century. At the present time, in liberal quarters, something like a
taboo acts to inhibit criticism of the United Nations. There is a
feeling that the United Nations is "our last and best hope,"
that we shouldn't find fault with it; we shouldn't play into
the hands of the archconservatives. However, let us not forget what
Robert Louis Stevenson said: "The truth that is suppressed by
friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy." If we love the
truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, even though it is promoted by the United Nations.
We should also join with Kingsley Davis [15] in
attempting to get Planned Parenthood-World Population to see the
error of its ways in embracing the same tragic ideal.
Conscience Is Self-Eliminating
It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of
mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience. Charles Galton
Darwin made this point when he spoke on the centennial of the
publication of his grandfather's great book. The argument is
straightforward and Darwinian.
People vary. Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some
people will undoubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those
who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next
generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The
differences will be accentuated, generation by generation.
In C. G. Darwin's words: "It may well be that it would take
hundreds of generations for the progenitive instinct to develop in
this way, but if it should do so, nature would have taken her revenge,
and the variety Homo contracipiens would become extinct
and would be replaced by the variety Homo progenitivus.”
[16]
The argument assumes that conscience or the desire for children
(no matter which) is hereditary-but hereditary only in the most
general formal sense. The result will be the same whether the
attitude is transmitted through germ cells, or exosomatically, to use
A. J. Lotka's term. (If one denies the latter possibility as well as
the former, then what's the point of education?) The argument has
here been stated in the context of the population problem, but it
applies equally well to any instance in which society appeals to an
individual exploiting a commons to restrain himself for the general
good -- by means of his conscience. To make such an appeal is to set
up a selective system that works toward the elimination of conscience
from the race.
Pathogenic Effects of Conscience
The long-term disadvantage of an appeal to conscience should be
enough to condemn it; but it has serious short-term disadvantages as
well. If we ask a man who is exploiting a commons to desist "in
the name of conscience," what are we saying to him? What does
he hear? -- not only at the moment but also in the wee small hours of
the night when, half asleep, he remembers not merely the words we
used but also the nonverbal communication cues we gave him unawares?
Sooner or later, consciously or subconsciously, he senses that he has
received two communications, and that they are contradictory:
1. (intended communication) "If you don't do as we ask, we will
openly condemn you for not acting like a responsible citizen";
2. (the unintended communication) "If you do behave as we
ask, we will secretly condemn you for a simpleton who can be shamed
into standing aside while the rest of us exploit the commons."
Every man then is caught in what Bateson has called a "double
bind." Bateson and his co-workers have made a plausible case
for viewing the double bind as an important causative factor in the
genesis of schizophrenia. [17] The double bind
may not always be so damaging, but it always endangers the mental
health of anyone to whom it is applied. "A bad conscience,"
said Nietzsche, "is a kind of illness."
To conjure up a conscience in others is tempting to anyone who
wishes to extend his control beyond the legal limits. Leaders at the
highest level succumb to this temptation. Has any president during
the past generation failed to call on labor unions to moderate
voluntarily their demands for higher wages, or to steel companies to
honor voluntary guidelines on prices? I can recall none. The
rhetoric used on such occasions is designed to produce feelings of
guilt in noncooperators.
For centuries it was assumed without proof that guilt was a
valuable, perhaps even an indispensable, ingredient of the civilized
life. Now, in this post-Freudian world, we doubt it.
Paul Goodman speaks from the modern point of view when he says:
"No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither
intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention
to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own
interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.”
[18]
One does not have to be a professional psychiatrist to see the
consequences of anxiety. We in the Western world are just emerging
from a dreadful two centuries-long Dark Ages of Eros that was
sustained partly by prohibition laws, but perhaps more effectively by
the anxiety-generating mechanisms of education. Alex Comfort has told
the story well in The Anxiety Makers; [19]
it is not a pretty one.
Since proof is difficult, we may even concede that the results of
anxiety may sometimes, from certain points of view, be desirable. The
larger question we should ask is whether, as a matter of policy, we
should ever encourage the use of a technique the tendency (if not the
intention) of which is psychologically pathogenic. We hear much talk
these days of responsible parenthood; the coupled words are
incorporated into the titles of some organizations devoted to birth
control. Some people have proposed massive propaganda campaigns to
instill responsibility into the nation's (or the world's) breeders.
But what is the meaning of the word conscience? When we use the word
responsibility in the absence of substantial sanctions are we not
trying to browbeat a free man in a commons into acting against his
own interest? Responsibility is a verbal counterfeit for a
substantial quid pro quo. It is an attempt to get something for
nothing.
If the word responsibility is to be used at all, I suggest that it
be in the sense Charles Frankel uses it. [20]
"Responsibility," says this philosopher, "is the
product of definite social arrangements." Notice that Frankel
calls for social arrangements -- not propaganda.
Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon
The social arrangements that produce responsibility are
arrangements that create coercion, of some sort. Consider bank
robbing. The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were
a commons. How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to
control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of
responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we follow Frankel's
lead and insist that a bank is not a commons; we seek the definite
social arrangements that will keep it from becoming a commons. That
we thereby infringe on the freedom of would-be robbers we neither
deny nor regret.
The morality of bank robbing is particularly easy to understand
because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are
willing to say "Thou shalt not rob banks," without providing for
exceptions. But temperance also can be created by coercion.
Taxing is a good coercive device. To keep downtown shoppers
temperate in their use of parking space we introduce parking meters
for short periods, and traffic fines for longer ones. We need not
actually forbid a citizen to park as long as he wants to; we need
merely make it increasingly expensive for him to do so. Not
prohibition, but carefully biased options are what we offer him. A
Madison Avenue man might call this persuasion; I prefer the greater
candor of the word coercion.
Coercion is a dirty word to most liberals now, but it need not
forever be so. As with the four-letter words, its dirtiness can be
cleansed away by exposure to the light, by saying it over and over
without apology or embarrassment. To many, the word coercion implies
arbitrary decisions of distant and irresponsible bureaucrats; but
this is not a necessary part of its meaning. The only kind of
coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the
majority of the people affected.
To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we
are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it. Who enjoys
taxes? We all grumble about them. But we accept compulsory taxes
because we recognize that voluntary taxes would favor the
conscienceless. We institute and (grumblingly) support taxes and
other coercive devices to escape the horror of the commons.
An alternative to the commons need not be perfectly just to be
preferable. With real estate and other material goods, the
alternative we have chosen is the institution of private property
coupled with legal inheritance. Is this system perfectly just? As a
genetically trained biologist I deny that it is. It seems to me that,
if there are to be differences in individual inheritance, legal
possession should be perfectly correlated with biological
inheritance-that those who are biologically more fit to be the
custodians of property and power should legally inherit more. But
genetic recombination continually makes a mockery of the doctrine of
"like father, like son" implicit in our laws of legal
inheritance. An idiot can inherit millions, and a trust fund can keep
his estate intact. We must admit that our legal system of private
property plus inheritance is unjust -- but we put up with it because
we are not convinced, at the moment, that anyone has invented a
better system. The alternative of the commons is too horrifying to
contemplate. Injustice is preferable to total ruin.
It is one of the peculiarities of the warfare between reform and
the status quo that it is thoughtlessly governed by a double
standard. Whenever a reform measure is proposed it is often defeated
when its opponents triumphantly discover a flaw in it. As Kingsley
Davis has pointed out, [21] worshipers of the
status quo sometimes imply that no reform is possible without
unanimous agreement, an implication contrary to historical fact. As
nearly as I can make out, automatic rejection of proposed reforms is
based on one of two unconscious assumptions: (1) that the status quo
is perfect; or (2) that the choice we face is between reform and no
action; if the proposed reform is imperfect, we presumably should
take no action at all, while we wait for a perfect proposal.
But we can never do nothing. That which we have done for thousands
of years is also action. It also produces evils. Once we are aware
that the status quo is action, we can then compare its discoverable
advantages and disadvantages with the predicted advantages and
disadvantages of the proposed reform, discounting as best we can for
our lack of experience. On the basis of such a comparison, we can
make a rational decision which will not involve the unworkable
assumption that only perfect systems are tolerable.
Recognition of Necessity
Perhaps the simplest summary of this analysis of man’s population
problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable
only under conditions of low-population density. As the human
population has increased, the commons has had to be abandoned in one
aspect after another.
First we abandoned the commons in food gathering, enclosing farm
land and restricting pastures and hunting and fishing areas. These
restrictions are still not complete throughout the world.
Somewhat later we saw that the commons as a place for waste
disposal would also have to be abandoned. Restrictions on the
disposal of domestic sewage are widely accepted in the Western world;
we are still struggling to close the commons to pollution by
automobiles, factories, insecticide sprayers, fertilizing operations,
and atomic energy installations.
In a still more embryonic state is our recognition of the evils of
the commons in matters of pleasure. There is almost no restriction on
the propagation of sound waves in the public medium. The shopping
public is assaulted with mindless music, without its consent. Our
government has paid out billions of dollars to create a supersonic
transport which would disturb 50,000 people for every one person
whisked from coast to coast 3 hours faster. Advertisers muddy the
airwaves of radio and television and pollute the view of travelers.
We are a long way from outlawing the commons in matters of pleasure.
Is this because our Puritan inheritance makes us view pleasure as
something of a sin, and pain (that is, the pollution of advertising)
as the sign of virtue?
Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of
somebody's personal liberty. Infringements made in the distant past
are accepted because no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the
newly proposed infringements that we vigorously oppose; cries of
"rights" and "freedom" fill the air. But what does "freedom" mean?
When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind
became more free, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic
of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they
see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue
other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, "Freedom is the
recognition of necessity."
The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize,
is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical
solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to
breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions
many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible
parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to
independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all
conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.
The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious
freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very
soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" -- and it
is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning
the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of
the tragedy of the commons.
Notes
1. J. B. Wiesner and H. F. York, Scientific
American 211 (No. 4), 27 (1964).
2. G. Hardin, Journal of Heredity 50,68
(1959), S. von Hoernor, Science 137, 18, (1962).
3. J. von Neumann and O. Morgenstern, Theory
of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, N.J., 1947), p. 11.
4. J. H. Fremlin, New Scientist, No.415
(1964), p. 285.
5. A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations(Modern
Library, New York, 1937), p. 423.
6. W. F. Lloyd, Two Lectures on the Checks to
Population (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England,1833).
7. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern
World (Mentor, New York, 1948), p. 17.
8. G. Hardin, Ed., Population, Evolution, and
Birth Control (Freeman, San Francisco, 1964), p. 56.
9. S. McVay, Scientific American 216(No.
8), 13 (1966).
10. J. Fletcher, Situation
Ethics(Westminster, Philadelphia, 1966).
11. D. Lack, The Natural Regulation of Animal
Numbers (Clarendon Press, Oxford, England, 1954).
12. H. Girvetz, From Wealth to
Welfare(Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif, 1950).
13. G. Hardin, Perspectives in Biology and
Medicine 6, 366 (1963).
14. U Thant, International Planned Parenthood
News, No. 168 (February 1968), p. 3.
15. K. Davis, Science 158, 730(1967).
16. S. Tax, Ed., Evolution After Darwin
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960), vol. 2, p. 469.
17. G. Bateson, D. D. Jackson, J. Haley, J.
Weakland, Behavioral Science 1, 251 (1956).
18. P. Goodman, New York Review of
Books10 (8), 22 (23 May 1968).
19. A. Comfort, The Anxiety
Makers(Nelson, London, 1967).
20. C. Frankel, The Case for Modern Man
(Harper & Row, New York, 1955), p. 203.
21. J. D. Roslansky, Genetics and the Future
of Man (Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1966), p.177.
Garrett Hardin was born in Dallas, Texas in 1915.
He attended the University of Chicago and went on to earn
doctorate in biology from Stanford University in 1941. In
1946 he became a professor of human ecology at the University
of California at Santa Barbara. Originally a plant biologist,
he became increasingly interested in genetics, evolution,
and the problems of pollution and population growth. He
campaigned for legalized abortion during the 1960s, was
director of the American Eugenics Society in 1971-74, and
president of the Environmental Fund in 1980-81. He was the
author of several books about human population explosion
and father of four children. Garrett Hardin and his wife Jane
committed suicide on September 14, 2003.
Garrett Hardin Society.
Humans as Cancer
by A. Kent MacDougall
When a spot on a person's skin changes color, becomes tough or
rough and elevated or ulcerated, bleeds, scales, scabs over and fails
to heal, it's time to consult a doctor. For these are early signs of
skin cancer.
As seen by astronauts and photographed from space by satellites,
millions of manmade patterns on the land surface of Earth resemble
nothing so much as the skin conditions of cancer patients. The
transformation of the natural contours of the land into the geometric
patterns of farm fields, the straightening of meandering rivers into
canal-like channels, and the logging of forests into checkerboard
clearcuts all have their counterparts in the loss of normal skin
markings in cancer victims. Green forests logged into brown scrub and
overgrazed grasslands bleached into white wasteland are among the
changes in Earth's color. Highways, streets, parking lots and other
paved surfaces have toughened Earth's surface, while cities have
roughened it. Slag heaps and garbage dumps can be compared to raised
skin lesions. Open-pit mines, quarries and bomb craters, including
the 30 million left by US forces in Indochina, resemble skin
ulcerations. Saline seeps in inappropriately irrigated farm fields
look like scaly, festering sores. Signs of bleeding include the
discharge of human sewage, factory effluents and acid mine drainage
into adjacent waterways, and the erosion of topsoil from deforested
hillsides to turn rivers, lakes and coastal waters yellow, brown and
red. The red ring around much of Madagascar that is visible from
space strikes some observers as a symptom that the island is bleeding
to death.
If skin cancer were all that ailed Earth, the planet's eventual
recovery would be less in doubt. For with the exception of malignant
melanoma, skin cancer is usually curable. But the parallels between
the way cancer progresses in the human body and humans' progressively
malignant impact on Earth are more than skin-deep. Consider:
Cancer cells proliferate rapidly and uncontrollably in the body;
humans continue to proliferate rapidly and uncontrollably in the
world. Crowded cancer cells harden into tumors; humans crowd into
cities. Cancer cells infiltrate and destroy adjacent normal tissues;
urban sprawl devours open land. Malignant tumors shed cells that
migrate to distant parts of the body and set up secondary tumors;
humans have colonized just about every habitable part of the globe.
Cancer cells lose their natural appearance and distinctive functions;
humans homogenize diverse natural ecosystems into artificial
monocultures. Malignant tumors excrete enzymes and other chemicals
that adversely affect remote parts of the body; humans' motor
vehicles, power plants, factories and farms emit toxins that pollute
environments far from the point of origin.
A cancerous tumor continues to grow even as its expropriation of
nutrients and disruption of vital functions cause its host to waste
away. Similarly, human societies undermine their own long-term
viability by depleting and fouling the environment. With civilization
as with cancer, initial success begets self-defeating excess.
It's easy to dismiss the link between cancer the disease in humans
and humans as a disease on the planet as both preposterous and
repulsive -- or as a mere metaphor rather than the unifying hypothesis
its leading proponent claims for it. Only a handful of
limited-circulation periodicals, including this one (see Forencich
1992/93), have granted the concept a respectful hearing.
Accepting the humans-as-cancer concept comes easier if one also
accepts the Gaia hypothesis that the planet functions as a single
living organism. To be sure, the Earth is mostly inanimate. Its
rocky, watery surface supports only a relatively thin layer of
plants, animals and other living organisms. But so, too, is a mature
tree mostly dead wood and bark, with only its thin cambium layer and
its leaves, flowers and seeds actually alive. Yet the tree is a
living organism. Earth behaves like a living organism to the extent
that the chemical composition of its rocky crust, oceans and
atmosphere has both supported and been influenced by the biological
processes of living organisms over several billion years. These
self-sustaining, self-regulating processes have kept the Earth's
surface temperature, its concentrations of salt in the oceans and
oxygen in the atmosphere, and other conditions favorable for life.
James Lovelock, who propounded the Gaia hypothesis in 1979,
initially rejected humans' cancer-like impacts as a corollary,
declaring flatly: "People are not in any way like a tumor" (Lovelock
1988, p. 177). But before long he modified this view, observing:
"Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic
micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor or neoplasm" (Lovelock
1991,p. 153).
Others have stated the connection more strongly. "If you picture
Earth and its inhabitants as a single self-sustaining organism, along
the lines of the popular Gaia concept, then we humans might ourselves
be seen as pathogenic," Jerold M. Lowenstein, professor of medicine
at the University of California, San Francisco, has written. "We are
infecting the planet, growing recklessly as cancer cells do,
destroying Gaia's other specialized cells (that is, extinguishing
other species), and poisoning our air supply....From a Gaian
perspective... the main disease to be eliminated is us" (Lowenstein
1992).
Dr. Lowenstein isn't the first physician to examine the planet as
a patient and find it afflicted with humanoid cancer. Alan Gregg
pioneered the diagnosis. As a long-time official of the Rockefeller
Foundation, responsible for recommending financial grants to improve
public health and medical education, Dr. Gregg traveled widely in the
years following World War II and observed the worldwide population
boom. By 1954 he had seen enough. In a brief paper delivered at a
symposium and subsequently published in Science, Gregg (1955)
compared the world to a living organism and the explosion in human
numbers to a proliferation of cancer cells. He sketched other
parallels between cancer in humans and humans' cancer-like impact on
the world. And he expressed hope -- unrealized to this day -- that
"this somewhat bizarre comment on the population problem may point
to a new concept of human self-restraint."
It has fallen to a physician who is also an epidemiologist to
flesh out and fill in Gregg's sketchily drawn analysis. Warren M.
Hern wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on how the intrusion of Western
civilization has increased birth rates among Peruvian Amazon Indians.
He does his bit to keep the US birth rate down by operating an
abortion clinic in Boulder, Colorado. Hern (1990) published a major
article that laid out in detail, and buttressed with anthropological,
ecological and historical evidence, the ways in which the human
species constitutes a "malignant eco-tumor." He proposed renaming us
Homo esophagus (for "the man who devours the ecosystem").
Illustrations accompanying the article included aerial photographs of
US cities juxtaposed with look-alike photos of brain and lung tumors.
Dr. Hern has delivered papers on the hypothesis at symposia
organized by the Population Association of America, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Public
Health Association. Two papers have subsequently been published (Hern
1993a, 1993b). But in general the scientific community doesn't take
his hypothesis seriously, preferring to see it as a mere metaphor or
analogy. Indeed, it has evoked hostility in some quarters. When Hern
presented the hypothesis at the International Conference on
Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, listeners reacted
angrily, with one threatening, "Are you ready to die?" A Denver radio
talk show host called Dr. Hern an "ecoquack" and a
"fellow-in-good-standing of the Sky-Is-Falling School."
Such disparagement can be seen as yet another parallel between
cancer the scourge in humans and humans as a carcinogenic scourge on
the world. For just as Warren Hern encounters indifference, denial
and downright hostility to his views, until recently American doctors
routinely kept their cancer patients in the dark about the nature of
their illness. The aim was to spare patients the shock, fear, anger
and depression that the bad news commonly evokes. Families were
reluctant to admit that a relative had died of cancer, and newspaper
obituaries referred euphemistically to the cause of a death from
cancer as "a long illness." In Japan, cancer remains a taboo topic.
Public opinion polls indicate that people would rather not know if
they have cancer and doctors would rather not tell them. When Emperor
Hirohito was dying of cancer of the duodenum, his doctors lied,
telling both him and the public that he had "chronic pancreatitis"
(Sanger 1989).
In the United States, even some environmentally enlightened
analysts remain in denial when it comes to the
humans-as-a-planetary-cancer hypothesis. Christopher D. Stone, a law
professor at the University of Southern California and son of the
late leftist journalist I. F. Stone, authored an influential essay on
environmental law, Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal
Rights for Natural Objects. But in his latest book Stone (1993,
p.4) casts doubt on the proposition that "the earth has cancer, and
the cancer is man." "The interdependency of the earth's parts does
not amount to the interdependency of organs within a true organism,"
he notes. "The earth as a whole, including its life web, is not as
fragile...the Gaian relationships are not so finely, so precariously
tuned."
Even deep ecologists acknowledge that Earth is qualitatively
different from a true organism, that its legitimate status as a
superecosystem falls short of qualifying it as a superorganism. Frank
Forencich, who argued in "Homo Carcinomicus: A Look at Planetary
Oncology" (Forencich 1992/93) that "the parallels between neoplastic
growth and human population are astonishing," concedes that even a
nuclear winter wouldn't completely destroy the living biosphere, much
less the inanimate lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. "We
can't kill the host," he says. "Civilization will break up before the
biosphere goes" (Forencich 1993).
Still another objection is that any generalization about cancer is
suspect because cancer is not a single disease, but rather a group of
more than 100 diseases that differ as to cause and characteristics.
Some cancers -- breast cancer, for instance -- typically grow rapidly and
spread aggressively. Others, such as cancers of the small intestine,
usually grow slowly. Prostate cancer often grows so slowly that it
causes no problem. "It's completely possible for an organism to have
cancer cells for its entire lifetime and suffer no ill effects"
(Garrett 1988, p.43).
The lack of a perfect correspondence between cancer the disease in
humans and humans' cancer-like effects on the Earth invalidates the
humans-as-cancer concept for some observers. But Warren Hern insists
humans-as-cancer is a hypothesis because it is subject to
verification or refutation and because it is useful as a basis for
further investigation. Frank Forencich, in contrast, is content to
consider the concept a metaphor. "That humans are like cancer is
indisputable," he says. "But humans are not cancer itself."
Whether as metaphor or hypothesis, the proposition that humans
have been acting like malignant cancer cells deserves to be taken
seriously. The proposition offers a unifying interpretation of such
seemingly unconnected phenomena as the destruction of ecosystems, the
decay of inner cities and the globalization of Western commodity
culture. It provides a valuable macrocosmic perspective on human
impacts, as well as a revealing historic perspective in tracing
humans' carcinogenic propensities back to the earliest times.
The progenitors of modern humans exhibited one of cancer cells'
most significant characteristics, loss of adhesion, one to two
million years ago. Because cancer cells are attached more loosely to
one another than normal cells are, they separate easily, move
randomly and invade tissues beyond those from which they were
derived. Our direct ancestors, Homo erectus, demonstrated
this trait in migrating out of Africa. Living in small mobile groups,
these foragers/scavengers/hunters spread across Asia and Europe. The
next hominid species in the evolutionary line, Homo sapiens,
extended the dispersal into previously uninhabitable northern forests
and tundra. Their successors, anatomically modern Homo sapiens
sapiens, have spread to every continent and major ice-free
island. With the aid of clothing, shelter, technology and imported
supplies, they now occupy forests, wetlands, deserts, tundra and
other areas formerly considered too wet, too dry, too cold, or too
remote for human habitation. Humans now occupy, or have altered and
exploited, two-thirds to nine-tenths (estimates vary) of the planet's
land surface. It seems only a matter of time before they take over
all the remaining "empty" spaces.
Humans' ongoing expropriation of the planet has proceeded apace
with the eruption of human numbers; and the eruption of human numbers
has features in common with the proliferation of cancer cells. In a
healthy body, genetic controls enable a large number of individual
cells to live together harmoniously as a single organism. Genetic
switches signal normal cells when it is time to divide and multiply,
and when it is time to break apart and be absorbed by neighboring
cells. When the genetic switches are damaged, as by chemicals,
radiation, or viruses, they can get locked in the "on" position. This
turns normal cells into malignant cells that divide and multiply in
disregard of the health of the entire organism.
When humans lived in semi-nomadic bands in harmony with an
environment they did not dominate, they limited their numbers so as
not to exceed the supply of food they could gather, scavenge, and
hunt. Nor did they produce more young than they could carry between
seasonal camps. Their contraceptive measures included coitus
interruptus (withdrawal), pessaries, and prolonged breastfeeding to
depress the hormones that trigger ovulation. When these methods
failed, they resorted to abortion and infanticide. Like normal cells
in a healthy body, hunter-gatherers seemed to know when to stop
growing.
However, technological and cultural contaminants upset this
delicate natural balance, permitting humans to multiply beyond
numbers compatible with the harmonious health of the global
ecosystem. The first and still the foremost contaminant was fire. By
400,000 years ago -- perhaps even earlier -- hunter-gatherers had learned
to control and use fire. Thus began the transformation of humans from
just another large mammal in competition with other fierce predators
into the undisputed overlord of all species, plant and animal.
Addiction to combustion has defined human existence ever since, and
has escalated into the current orgy of fossil-fuel burning with the
potential of overheating Gaia and jeopardizing the existence of all
her inhabitants.
Fire was generally benign when used by hunter-gatherers to thin
dense forests into more open and park-like landscapes supporting more
game. But the increase in food supply that more effective hunting and
the cooking of tough meat and fibrous vegetable matter made possible
swelled hunter-gatherer populations. As humans proliferated and
spread out, overhunted and overgathered, large game and suitable wild
foods became less abundant. This made hunting and gathering less
efficient, leaving horticulture, which previously hadn't been worth
the extra effort, as the only viable alternative.
Clearing forests to farm began some 10,000 years ago in Asia
Minor. About 2000 years later, shifting horticulturists began
slashing and burning their way northwestward across Europe. They
overwhelmed and pushed aside less numerous hunter-gatherers before
giving way in turn to agriculturalists whose plow cultivation of
permanent fields permitted more intensive food production and denser
populations.
Agriculture condemned peasants to a short, harsh life of
monotonous toil, an inadequate diet, the constant threat of crop
failure and starvation and exposure to virulent contagious diseases.
It fostered social stratification and sexual inequality, cruel
treatment of animals, despotism and warfare. And it encouraged
further cancer-like encroachment on wilderness to feed increased
populations and to replace fields and pastures eroded and depleted of
soil fertility by overcropping and overgrazing. The elites that came
to dominate sedentary agrarian societies caused still more woodland
to be cleared and marshland to be drained to maximize production they
could expropriate for their own use. This economic surplus, in turn,
helped support an increasing concentration of people in river
valleys, along seacoasts, and in cities.
The massing of humans into cities is all too similar to the way
crowded cancer cells harden into tumors. Whereas normal cells in a
tissue culture stop reproducing when they come in contact with other
cells, cancer cells continue to divide and pile up on top of one
another, forming clumps. Normal cells display contact inhibition,
growing only to the limits of their defined space and then stopping.
Cancer cells never know when to quit.
Likewise, human populations grow even under extremely crowded
conditions. The very essence of civilization is the concentration of
people in cities. As scattered farming villages evolved into towns,
and some towns became trading, manufacturing, ceremonial and
administrative centers, the city was born. Fed by grain grown in the
provinces and served by slaves seized there, the administrative
centers of empires grew large; Rome may have reached one million
people at its height in 100 C.E. Yet not until industrialization and
the extensive exploitation of distant resources after 1800 did cities
really begin getting out of hand, and in 1900, still only one in ten
people lived in cities. Half will in 2000, with 20 metropolitan areas
expected to have 10 million or more people each.
The propensity of modern cities to spread out over the
countryside -- absorbing villages, destroying farm fields, filling in
open land, and creating vast new agglomerations -- was noted early in
this century by the Scottish garden-city planner Patrick Geddes.
Geddes (1915) identified half a dozen such "conurbations" in the
making in Britain, and he foresaw the approach of a 500-mile
megalopolis along the northern Atlantic seaboard in the United
States. Geddes compared urban sprawl to an amoeba, but it fell to his
American protege Lewis Mumford to liken disorderly, shapeless,
uncoordinated urban expansion to a malignant tumor, observing that
"the city continues to grow inorganically, indeed cancerously, by a
continuous breaking down of old tissues, and an overgrowth of
formless new tissue" (Mumford 1961, p. 543).
A malignant tumor develops its own blood vessels as it grows.
Similarly, cities vascularize with aqueducts, electric power lines,
highways, railroads, canals and other conduits. A tumor uses its
circulation network to pirate nutrients from the body. Similarly,
cities parasitically tap the countryside and beyond to bring in food,
fuel, water, and other supplies. However, just as a tumor eventually
outgrows its blood supply, causing a part of it, often at the center,
to die, inner city neighborhoods and even older suburbs often
atrophy. Alan Gregg (1955) noted this parallel 40 years ago,
observing "how nearly the slums of our great cities resemble the
necrosis of tumors."
Humans are increasingly concentrated along seacoasts. Sixty
percent of the world's people now live within 100 kilometers of a
seacoast. In Australia, one of the world's most highly urbanized
nations, nine of every ten people live along the coast. The boom in
international trade, from which coastal areas receive a
disproportionate share of the benefits, helps explain the worldwide
trend; but the pattern goes back thousands of years and parallels yet
another carcinogenic process: metastasis.
In metastasis, a tumor sheds cancer cells that then migrate to
distant sites of the body and set up secondary growths. The medium
for the migration of the cells is the blood and lymphatic systems. In
the ancient world of the Mediterranean, another fluid -- water
-- facilitated the migration of people and goods. The
Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthagenians and Romans all took advantage of
the relative ease of travel and transport by water to establish
colonies all around the Mediterranean. At the height of the Roman
Empire, no fewer than 500 settlements flourished along the African
coast from Morocco to Egypt.
Just as secondary tumors in the human body destroy the tissues and
organs they invade, colonizers of the ancient Mediterranean
devastated the fertile but fragile ecosystems of the coastal regions
they colonized. They logged coastal forests for ship timbers and
building materials, to provide charcoal to fire bricks and pottery
and smelt mineral ores, and to create farm fields and pastures.
Overcropping, fires, sheep and goats prevented regeneration. Intense
winter rains washed the thin, easily eroded soil down hillsides into
coastal plains to smother farm fields, choke the mouths of rivers,
create malarial marshes, bury port cities and strand many of them
miles from the sea. The slopes, left barren, have not recovered to
this day.
The voraciousness of secondary tumors as they invade and consume
tissues and organs has its counterpart in the orgies of destruction
that states and especially empires have engaged in for 5000 years. In
many cases, the destruction has exceeded what was in the destroyer's
own self-interest. Many invaders routinely obliterated the cities
they conquered, massacred their inhabitants, and destroyed their
fields and flocks instead of just taking them over. Carpet bombing of
cities and the mass slaughter of their civilian noncombatant
populations during World War II constitute the modern equivalent.
Ancient Romans ransacked their empire for bears, lions, leopards,
elephants, rhinos, hippos and other live animals to be tormented and
killed in public arenas until there were no more to be found.
European invaders of North America and Siberia did in the fur trade
from which they so hugely profited by the self-defeating overkill of
fur-bearing animals.
Human destruction of ecosystems has increased relentlessly since
industrialization. The annihilation of 60 million bison on the North
American Great Plains was made possible by the intrusion of railroads
and the invention of the repeating rifle. The reckless exploitation
of whales was speeded by the invention of the explosive harpoon,
cannon-winch and engine-driven ship. Enormous nets towed by today's
factory trawlers permit oceans to be strip-mined for fish -- and any
other creature unlucky enough to become ensnared in these curtains of
death. Tractors and other modern farm machinery alternately compact
and pulverize topsoil, increasing its vulnerability to erosive winds
and rains. Chain saws and bulldozers level forests faster than axes
and hand saws ever could. Dynamite and drag line excavators permit
strip mining on a scale hitherto unimaginable, decapitating
mountains, turning landscapes into moon craters, and rendering
islands such as phosphate-rich Nauru in the South Pacific all but
uninhabitable. Boring holes in the earth to get at minerals, of
course, resembles the way cancer bores holes in muscle and bone. As
Peter Russell (1983, p.33) has observed, "Technological civilization
really does look like a rampant malignant growth blindly devouring
its own ancestral host in a selfish act of consumption."
Just as a fast-growing tumor steals nutrients from healthy parts
of the body to meet its high energy demands, industrial civilization
usurps the resources of healthy ecosystems that their natural plant
and animal inhabitants depend on for survival. In 1850, humans and
their livestock accounted for 5 percent of the total weight of all
terrestrial animal life. Today, that portion exceeds 20 percent, and
by the year 2030 it could reach 40 percent (Westing 1990, pp.
110-111).
"Never before in the history of the earth has a single species
been so widely distributed and monopolized such a large fraction of
the energetic resources. An ever diminishing remainder of these
limited resources is now being divided among millions of other
species. The consequences are predictable: contraction of geographic
ranges, reduction of population sizes, and increased probability of
extinction for most wild species; expansion of ranges and increased
populations of the few species that benefit from human activity; and
loss of biological diversity at all scales from local to global"
(Brown and Maurer 1989).
Decline in diversity is common to both cancer and civilization. In
both cases, heterogeneity gives way to homogeneity, complexity to
simplification. Malignant cells fail to develop into specialized
cells of the tissues from which they derive. Instead,
"undifferentiated, highly malignant cells tend to resemble one
another and fetal tissues more than their adult normal counterpart
cells" (Ruddon 1987, p.230).
De-differentiation in human societies is at least as old as
agriculture and animal husbandry. Farmers have been replacing diverse
species of native plants with pure stands of domesticated crops for
thousands of years. Instead of the thousands of kinds of plants that
pre-agricultural peoples gathered for food, just seven staples
-- wheat, rice, maize, potatoes, barley, sweet potato and cassava
-- now supply three-quarters of the caloric content of all the
world's food crops. The world's astonishing abundance and variety of
wildlife is going fast, with many species soon to be seen only in
zoos and game parks, their places taken by cattle, sheep, goats, pigs
and other domesticated livestock.
Despite their value in providing wildlife habitat, modulating
flood waters and filtering out pollutants, more than half of the
world's swamps, marshes, bogs, seasonal flood plains and other
wetlands have been drained, dredged, filled in, built on or otherwise
destroyed. Temperate forests dominated by trees of many species and
of all ages are giving way to single species, same-aged conifer
plantations supporting far fewer birds and other wildlife. And the
tropical forests that harbor more than half of all species on Earth
are being mowed down faster than their bewildering biodiversity can
be identified, leading some experts to warn that we are causing the
greatest mass extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65
million years ago.
The tendency of civilizations to homogenize and impoverish
ecosystems is nowhere clearer than in urban areas. Major cities are
becoming indistinguishable from one another in appearance and
undifferentiated in function. Central business districts so resemble
one another that travelers can be forgiven for forgetting whether
they are in Boston, Brussels or Bombay. Shanty cities in poor
countries look alike, as do suburbs in rich countries.
As Lewis Mumford pointed out more than 30 years ago, the
archetypal suburban refuge in the United States consists of "a
multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at
uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste,
inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age
group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same
tasteless pre-fabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in
every outward and inward respect to a common mold, manufactured in
the central metropolis. Thus the ultimate effect of the suburban
escape in our time is, ironically, a low-grade uniform environment
from which escape is impossible" (Mumford 1961, p.486).
Globalization of the economy is enclosing the entire world in a
single market for machine-made goods that are increasingly
standardized whatever their country of origin. Western material
values and capitalist commodity culture, led by American television,
movies, music, street fashions and fast food, are dominant
internationally. Local and regional individuality, along with
indigenous cultures, languages and world views, are fading fast.
The decline of natural and cultural diversity is as threatening to
the planet as undifferentiated cells are to the cancer patient.
Whereas a well-differentiated prostate cancer tends to grow slowly,
remain localized and cause no symptoms, a poorly differentiated one
often spreads aggressively. Similarly, traditional farmers who keep
weeds, pests and plant diseases in check by rotating crops,
fertilizing naturally, and maintaining the tilth of the soil don't
threaten Earth's health the way single-crop plantations relying on
pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and heavy machinery do.
Unfortunately, monocultural agriculture is becoming the norm on every
continent.
Hemorrhaging is still another symptom of the carcinogenic process.
The first sign of cancer is often spontaneous bleeding from a body
orifice, discharge from a nipple, or an oozing sore. Vomiting can
warn of a brain tumor or leukemia. Signs that Earth, too, has cancer
abound. Cities vomit human sewage and industrial wastes into adjacent
waterways. Mines and slag heaps ooze mercury, arsenic, cyanide and
sulfuric acid. Wells gush, pipelines leak and tankers spill oil.
Farm fields discharge topsoil, fertilizers, pesticides and salts to
silt up and poison rivers and estuaries. Cattle feedlots add manure.
Most serious of all, deforested, eroded hillsides hemorrhage floods
of mud.
Fever is another symptom of cancer in both humans and the planet.
Cancer patients become fevered because of increased susceptibility to
infection caused by a depressed immune system. Chemotherapy and
irradiation can also cause fever, as can temperature-elevating
substances released by a malignant tumor. Global warming is the
planetary counterpart. Waste products released by industry and motor
vehicles, deforestation and other feverish human activities pump
inordinate quantities of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane,
chlorofluorocarbons and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
where they trap heat and raise temperatures.
Wasting, or cachexia, is still another sign of advanced cancer. A
cancer patient becomes fatigued and weak, losing both appetite and
weight as the tumor releases toxic hormones and makes metabolic
demands on the body. "Many cancer patients die not of cancer itself,
but of progressive malnutrition" (Rosenbaum 1988, p.264). The
planetary counterpart includes loss of forests, fisheries,
biodiversity, soil, groundwater and biomass.
It's not in a tumor's self-interest to steal nutrients to the
point where the host starves to death, for this kills the tumor as
well. Yet tumors commonly continue growing until the victim wastes
away. A malignant tumor usually goes undetected until the number of
cells in it has doubled at least 30 times from a single cell. The
number of humans on Earth has already doubled 32 times, reaching that
mark in 1978 when world population passed 4.3 billion. Thirty-seven
to 40 doublings, at which point a tumor weighs about one kilogram,
are usually fatal (Tannock 1992, pp. 157, 175).
Like a smoker who exaggerates the pain of withdrawal and persists
because the carcinogenic consequences of his bad habit don't show up
for 20 or 30 years, governments generally avoid the painful
adjustments needed to prevent social, economic and environmental
disasters in the making. "Governments with limited tenure, in the
developing as well as in the developed countries, generally respond
to immediate political priorities; they tend to defer addressing the
longer term issues, preferring instead to provide subsidies, initiate
studies, or make piecemeal modifications of policy" (Hillel 1991, p.
273). So it usually takes a crisis, often a catastrophe, before even
the most commonsensical action is taken -- and then it is often too
late to avoid irreversible ecological damage.
Is the prognosis for the planet as grim as it is for a patient
with advanced cancer? Or will infinitely clever but infrequently wise
Homo sapiens alter geocidal behaviors in time to avoid
global ruin? Even the most pessimistic doomsayers concede that humans
have the capacity to arrest Gaia's deteriorating condition. Cancer
cells can't think, but humans can. Cancer cells can't know the full
extent of the harm they're doing to the organism of which they are a
part, whereas humans have the capacity for planetary awareness.
Cancer cells can't consciously modify their behavior to spare their
host's life and prolong their own, whereas humans can adjust, adapt,
innovate, pull back, change course.
Gaia's future, and humans' with it, depends on their doing so.
Notes
Brown, James H. and Brian A. Maurer 1989. Macroecology: The
Division of Food and Space Among Species on Continents.
Science 243:1145-1150.
Forencich, Frank. 1992/93. Homo Carcinomicus: A Look at Planetary
Oncology.Wild Earth 2(4): 72-74.
Forencich, Frank. 1993. Personal communication.
Garrett, Laurie. 1988. The Biology of Cancer. In Mark Renneker,
editor, Understanding Cancer, third edition. Bull
Publishing, Palo Alto, CA.
Geddes, Patrick 1915. Reprinted in 1968. Cities in Evolution:
An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of
Civics. Ernest Benn, London.
Gregg, Alan. 1955. A Medical Aspect of the Population Problem.
Science 121(3,150): 681-682.
Hern, Warren M. 1990. Why Are There So Many of Us? Description and
Diagnosis of a Planetary Ecopathological Process. Population and
Environment 12(1): 9-39.
Hern, Warren M. 1993a. Is Human Culture Carcinogenic for
Uncontrolled Population Growth and Ecological Destruction?
BioScience 43(11): 768-773.
Hern, Warren M. 1993b . Has the Human Species Become a Cancer on
the Planet? A Theoretical View of Population Growth as a Sign of
Pathology. Current World Leaders 36(6): 1089-1124.
Hillel, Daniel J. 1991. Out of the Earth: Civilization and the
Life of the Soil. Free Press, New York.
Lovelock, James. 1988. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our
Living Earth. W. W. Norton, New York.
Lovelock, James. 1991. Healing Gaia: Practical Medicine for
the Planet. Harmony Books, New York.
Lowenstein, Jerold M. 1992. Can We Wipe Out Disease?
Discover November 1992: 120-125.
Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History: Its Origins, Its
Transformations, and Its Prospects. Harcourt, Brace & World, New
York.
Rosenbaum, Ernest. 1988. In Mark Renneker, editor
Understanding Cancer, third edition. Bull Publishing, Palo
Alto, CA.
Ruddon, Raymond W. 1987. Cancer Biology, second edition.
Oxford University Press, New York.
Russell, Peter 1983. The Global Brain. J. P. Tarcher, Los
Angeles.
Sanger, David E. 1989. Tokyo Journal: A Fear of Cancer Means No
Telling. New York Times Jan. 20, 1989.
Stone, Christopher D. 1993. The Gnat Is Older Than Man: Global
Environment and Human Agenda. Princeton University Press,
Princeton, N.J.
Tannock, Ian F. 1992. In Tannock and Richard P. Hill, editors,
The Basic Science of Oncology, second edition. McGraw-Hill,
New York.
Westing, Arthur H. 1990. In Nicholas Polunin and John H. Burnett,
editors, Maintenance of the Biosphere: Proceedings of the Third
International Conference on Environmental Future. St. Martin's,
New York.
A. Kent MacDougall (911 Oxford St., Berkeley CA 94707) is
professor emeritus of journalism at the University of California,
Berkeley. He completed his 25-year newspaper reporting career in 1987
with a 24,000-word series of articles for the Los Angeles Times on
deforestation around the world and through the ages. The series won
the Forest History Society's John M. Collier Award for Forest History
Journalism.
