Lecture 10 - The ToC and commercialism in History

The Tragedy of the Commons in History - The Theory

• 1968 - Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science

• The theory was very simple → it dealt with the question of how we deal with resources for which there is no formal ownership (his answer: badly)

• Very controversial, as Hardin offered a solution: private property (but there are other solutions based on a very robust counter-position to Harbin’s)

• But this is not my point today: my point today is did or do we behave in the ways Hardin ascribes to us?

The Parable of the Passenger Pigeon

• Passenger pigeons represented 40 percent of the total bird population of North America in 1850s

• Flocks contained up to 2 billion individual birds, but high rates of reproduction were no match for industrialized slaughter

“Hunting” the Pigeon

• Slaughter occurred on an industrial scale, beginning in the 1850s

• Laws were passed, and ignored - the species was too plentiful to protect

• After Martha, the last PP, died in 1914 in Cincinnati zoo, other birds became targets

Commercializing the Commons, Part I

When I can shoot my rifle clear

At pigeons in the sky

I’ll say good-by (sic) to pork and beans

And live on pigeon pie

There were commercial reasons to hunt species, and very powerful ones to hunt them as maximally as possible

The Bison: A Natural History

• When Europeans crossed the Ohio valley (1. 18^th century), they encountered somewhere around 30-60 million bison, but they’d been encountered earlier in north Texas too

• Bison were a keystone species and as such were crucial to the plains ecosystem

Ecosystem Managers

• Role of megafauna in grasslands → act as nutrient sinks, doling out nutrients through urine and faeces

• Physical impact of hooves on soil / root systems / aeration also key

• Leads to megafaunal grasslands being among the most productive ecosystems on earth

Commercial Waste

• Chicago becomes the center of the trade, where hides are tanned for leather - but the process is hugely wasteful (only one of five make it to the market)

• “1,000 miles never out of sight of a dead buffalo, nor within sight of a living one.”

Ecological Impact

• Keystone species removed… ecological imbalances result (the loss of the bison is a likely element in the severity of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s)

• So, too, does human tragedy - that of the plains peoples

• What to do with the bones?-

- Sugar refining, manufacture of bone china and amazingly…

- …ground up and used as fertilizer

And we did it in the 20^th century too, with (for example) - whaling

• “The Most Senseless Environmental Crime of the 20^th Century” - Soviet whaling in the Antarctic Ocean, 1950s-1960s

• Why?

• For no other reason than to say they had done so.

Commercializing the Commons, Part II

• Commercial activities always aim for the lowest denominator and the highest profit, or in the case of communist economies, to fulfill the centrally-planned economic targets

• It was in the late 19^th century that flocking mechanisms ceased to be an evolutionary advantage

• And we replaced those species with the species we wanted, and with ourselves

The sting in the tail

• …or maybe not. Maybe we didn’t replace those species with ourselves.

• Maybe those species replaced us, and then we replaced them

Pollution has changed radically in the last 200 years:

1. Quantity of waste has shot up, as has the range of waste being dumped

2. The Chemical Nature of the waste has changed

3. The Point Concentrations of wastes have changed dramatically

History of Pollution: Prehistory

• Our long-term polluting effect on the environment is an (evolutionarily) recent phenomenon - maybe 10,000-15,000 years at most

• before then (as we know) populations were small, possessions light, although our behavior (firestick technology, megafaunal extinctions) did have impacts

History of Pollution: Classical Civilizations

• Here there is a detectable environmental impact: activities produced long-lasting effects

• Example: Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan, and the impact of Roman lead and copper mining → a once-rich farming area was devastated by deforestation and metallic pollution (and the effects are still apparent today, 2,000 yrs later)

History of Pollution: In the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

• Early Mediaeval period → good for the environment as pollution falls

• 1200s and after → as society recovers, pollution returns

• Air pollution becomes a significant problem (e.g., London as early as 1285)

• Response? Laws ( which turn out to be ineffectual)

• 1500s/1600s - situation’s so bad that anti-pollution tracts are being published

History of Pollution: The Industrial Revolution

• Environmental Pollution as we know it today starts here

• So too does awareness and modern attempts at control:

- By-laws protecting cities’ air and water quality

- Bans on consumption of fish from rivers (e.g. Hudson River, 1974)

- Awareness of chemical contamination (e.g., Love Canal, Bhopal)

- Awareness of radioactivity in the environment

But how effective can they be when not everywhere sees pollution as negative?

- International agreements on pollution control exist in the following areas:

• Marine pollution (global and regional)

• Pollution of the international watercourses (global and regional)

• Air pollution (regional)

• Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) (global and regional)

Attitudes and Pollution

• Idea of environment as dump persists…why? Because there’s no direct cost to the polluter

• Pollution thus enters the biosphere, with indirect effects on people and the environment

Local vs. Regional vs. Global Pollution

• Local pollution “hot-spots” often attract our attention, but…

• … it’s the general pollution that’s the big issue

• Even in the most isolated parts of the world, pollution is a problem

Warming Up To The Problem

• Atmospheric pollution is regional, continental, or global:

• Urban pollution tends to be local

• Acid Rain a regional one

• CO₂, thought, is a global phenomenon