In 1968, Garrett Hardin published an influential article in the journal Science called “The Tragedy of the Commons“. The gist of his argument is that individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen.

Hardin’s example is a community of cow herders sharing a common parcel of land (the “commons”), on which they are all entitled to let their cows graze. Each herder decides it’s in their best interest to put as many cows as possible onto the land, even if the commons are damaged as a result. The herder receives all of the benefits from the additional cows, while the damage to the commons is shared by the entire group. However, if all herders make this individually rational decision, the commons are destroyed and all herders suffer.

The evidence for this all too human behavior is abundant. As mankind grew in population, our hunter and gatherer ancestors eventually overwhelmed the local wild game and edible plants. Eventually, our species mastered farming and animal husbandry and enacted laws to protect wild flora and fauna from our most destructive proclivities. No doubt more than a few hunters and gatherers were dragged kicking and screaming into this new reality. Fast forward several hundreds of years to recent times. During our lifetimes we’ve been witnessing a similar phenomena only this time it’s the collapse of our marine fisheries.

It took far longer to overwhelm the marine commons but then again the ocean is a big fecund place relative to land. As with land, hitting the aquatic sustainability wall has led to the rapid rise of fish farming along with tougher laws governing the commons of our wild waters. Few fishermen are happy about this because access to their traditional “commons” have become highly restricted and a threat to both their livelihood and lifestyles. Plus it’s not a level playing field since many countries have yet to restrict access to marine commons to the extent the U.S. and E.U. have. So far, the rest of us are only mildly bothered by all of this since we somehow continue to find all the fish we want at the local grocery store.

The traditional antidotes to the tragedy of the commons have been privatization and regulation. Private ownership of land and associated natural resources turns out to be a far more effective approach than relying on our collective stewardship of the commons. People are reluctant to destroy a limited resource if they own it and are dependent on it for food, shelter and income. Effective up to a point, privatization is not a panacea. Eventually all private property adjoins either someone else’s private property or the remaining commons. Thus, the second antidote to the tragedy of the commons has been the passage and promulgation of laws and regulations protecting the remaining commons; a manifestation of collective stewardship enforced by the taking of your money, or even your personal liberty, should you fail to comply.

Perhaps inevitably, we are now overwhelming the mother all commons – the natural machinery of our global climate. Only this time it’s not a special interest group like a few hunters with bows, gatherers with bags or fishermen with boats that are overwhelming the commons. This particular commons knows no physical boundaries, obeys none but natural law, and is not mindful of our wants, needs, property rights or regulations. It  is the very stuff in which we all exist. Scientists, have raised the alarm that we need to collectively change our ways or else suffer horrendous hardships, loss of property, and economic dislocation. We are further being advised that the cost of doing nothing (business as usual) will be far greater than doing something (reducing greenhouse gases). The worst of it hasn’t been visited upon us yet so skeptics bark and there’s an air of unreality to it all. Not surprising, there’s a lot of kicking and screaming going on and not just a little denial.

Social psychologists who study human behavior have observed that when we humans experience more than 5% cumulative change in our lives each year, we don’t handle things well. We start to resist, deny and assign blame. First and foremost, we attack the messenger. In the case of climate change, the messenger is the PhD scientist; arguably the most apolitical, rational and fact-oriented amongst us. Unfortunately, scientists have neither wealth nor political power. Also unfortunate (and wildly ironic) is that Americans have actually grown increasingly ignorant of science over the last few decades even as technology touches our lives more intimately every day. So when the scientific community rises out of obscurity and delivers a hugely politically unpopular, albeit urgent, message that will likely require more than 5% change, not to mention a lot of money in the near term, the urge to roast the nerds runs strong and deep. Not surprisingly we’ve ridiculed, stalled and have even hired other “better” scientists to obfuscate and find contrary evidence. For a familiar historical example of this process at work, look no further than the tobacco industry and the infamous shenanigans of Phillip Morris et. al.  Let’s face it. Scientists are lousy marketers and don’t do public relations worth a damn, never mind that their one and only product is highly structured and rationally derived truth.

In response to these Paul Revere’s of climate change, a very noisy contingent of culture warriors would have us believe that almost all of these PhD educated climate geeks are dead wrong. Not just wrong per se as in having made an honest mistake. Wrong as in committing a pernicious guilt-ridden tree-hugging liberal attack on the American way of life. Red meat fodder for the AM radio talk shows hosts, climate change has even found itself lumped in with the evolution vs. creationism debate and refuted with similar arguments such as: there’s inadequate evidence, the evidence is contradictory, there’s no consensus, models don’t work and can’t be trusted, prediction is impossible, and we can’t be sure. Ostensibly reasonable arguments to the lay person, they are nothing less than an assault on science itself disguised as rational debate. For the less rabid who grudgingly concede that climate is indeed changing, these arguments shift to ….it’s happened before and is part of natural change, it’s not caused by CO2, the effects are good-minor-normal, it’s too late to stop it anyway, it’s not our problem to solve, and lastly, it’s economically infeasible to mitigate and would lead to disaster if we tried.

By its very nature, climate is not cultural, philosophical, religious, political or dependent on a belief system. Albeit complex, climate change is a physical phenomenon driven solely by the nondenominational laws of physics which adhere to no party. Try as you might, you can’t “believe”, or for that matter, not believe, in climate change. While genuine arguments over climate change specifics do exist, such disagreements exist largely in the realm of reason and data, backed up by some wicked hard mathematics. Inotherwords, we can rationally “know” climate change.

Most of the misinformation and resistance surrounding climate change has been worn away by the growing weight of scientific evidence and the projected economic downside of continuing to do nothing. The debate has shifted from broad denial to more practical questions of alternative courses of actions and their associated cost-benefit economics.

Climate scientists have accumulated a sufficient body of knowledge through evolved models and robust data collection to arrive at a significant majority consensus with a high confidence interval of certainty. Today, over 90% of the world’s leading climate scientists are certain that climate change is happening, that it’s a manmade phenomena, and that failure to mitigate it will likely be catastrophic to future generations. The ultimate tragedy of the commons is on our doorstep, it’s not going away by itself, and cannot be mitigated by sale to the private sector. We are, uncomfortably, wholly dependent on our politicians and political system for a solution.

Perhaps most challenging of all is that mitigating actions taken by a single nation, even one as large and influential as the United States, will amount to a small drop in the large global bucket if other nations don’t follow suit. If we react unilaterally, we may be taking on economic burdens and subjecting ourselves to competitive disadvantages only to find the rest of the world beating us senseless with our own climate change policies. This is a very tough political pill to swallow. Swallowing it anyway is called leadership. In this case, a brand of leadership that would demonstrate that the U.S. is indeed a truly global power.

On Friday, June 26, 2009 the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2454, the “American Clean Energy and Security Act,” by a vote of 219-212. Among other firsts, it marked the first time the U.S. Congress voted for mandatory reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions. It could easily have been titled the “2009 Tragedy of The Commons Avoidance Act”. Let’s hope the U.S. Senate finds the courage to put aside politics as usual and also pass this critical legislation. Passing this act isn’t the journey but it’s a necessary first step. Nothing less than avoiding the tragedy of our ultimate commons is at stake.

Tags: climate change, energy, energy policy, global warming