The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia

Garrett Hardin, one of our leading thinkers on problems of human overpopulation, here assails the recklessness and basic ecological ignorance of economists and others who champion the idea of unbounded growth.
Hardin delivers an uncompromising critique of mainstream economic thinking. Science has long understood the limits of our environment, he notes, and yet economists consistently turn a blind eye to one feature we share with all of our planet's inhabitants—the potential for irreversible environmental damage through overcrowding. And as humankind draws ever closer to its goal of conquering our final natural enemy—disease—the fallacy of sustainable unchecked population growth becomes more and more dangerous. Moreover, Hardin argues, rampant growth will soon force us to face many issues that we will find quite unpalatable—most notably, that since volunteer population control will not work, we will have to turn to "democratic coercion" or "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" to limit growth, a policy that directly threatens long cherished personal rights. Challenging an array of powerful taboos, Hardin takes aim at sacred cows on both sides of the political fence—affirmative action, multiculturalism, current immigration policies, and the greed and excess of big business and "growth intoxicated industrialists."
Hardin's forceful and cogent argument for the union of ecology and economics is a must for anyone concerned with the goal of a bountiful, yet sustainable world. Sure to spark controversy, this book underscores the urgency of our situation and reveals practical steps we must take to ensure the long term survival of humankind.

Publishers Weekly

Because overpopulation poses such a grave threat to the planet's sustainable economic future, and because voluntary measures to curb population don't work, we will soon be forced to abandon our head-in-the-sand stance and adopt some form of coercive constraints on individuals' "unqualified reproductive rights." Or so argues Hardin (Living Within Limits), professor emeritus of human ecology at U.C.-Santa Barbara, in a collection of accessible, if academic, essays that venture some highly unfashionable proposals. Hardin suggests that every person should be required to carry an identity card "to put a stop to America's race toward multiculturalism," which he sees as a misguided movement that fosters cultural and political balkanization. He ridicules One Worlders' ideal of global government, arguing that such a system would be more likely to lead to chaos than our present multinational world of balanced antagonisms. Affirmative action, in his withering critique, is an overreaction to racism, a program that "turned out to be racism with a different name" and that often fails to supply the level of skills that jobs demand. Hardin also favors sharp restrictions on immigration, high tariff walls and a reversal of the current economic thinking that, he says, nurtures the illusion that perpetual growth is possible. The "ecological economics" Hardin embraces would force us to choose ethically among limitless demands in a world of finite resources. Throughout these blunt, open-ended essays, the author invokes a visiting, wholly rational Martian, not clouded by human passions, who surveys Earth's corrupt, self-destructive governments and offers a pro-population-control Martian sonnet, "To Malthus." Many readers will doubtless find some of Hardin's notions alarmist, but he airs unorthodox views that could conceivably be on the table tomorrow. (Feb.)

Garrett Hardin is Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The founder of the field of human ecology, he is the author of the seminal essay "The Tragedy of the Commons," which has been reprinted in over 100 anthologies, and the book Living Within Limits (Oxford), which won the 1993 Award in Science from the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He lives in Santa Barbara.