The concept of the “Tragedy of the Commons” explains a lot of human behavior.
The fish in the sea are a “common” resource, and our individual tendency is to take a little more than our share, which collectively means that, without regulation, fishing areas are almost always depleted.
Most often, when things get really bad, humans collectively take action. The air in Los Angeles is better than it used to be – but only because it became so bad, it was clear that something had to be done.
Collective action can bring back species from near extinction, can improve the air quality in LA, can improve the quality of water in Lake Erie, and fight back against environmental disasters like Love Canal.
Alexandra Spiliakos in a Harvard Business School Online article defined the tragedy of the commons, writing that it “refers to a situation in which individuals with access to a public resource (also called a common) act in their own interest and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource.”
What happens most often is that a situation has to become painfully and blatantly dire before we can find the will to act collectively and not individually to fix it.
With climate change, the problem is that we are now talking about the entire planet. The brilliant scientist Carl Sagan addressed the US Congress in 1985 about the impact of a warming climate caused by human activity! That is coming up on 40 years ago. His explanation can be heard on a youtube video, and it is clear, concise, and compelling.
It is deeply disturbing that even after nearly 40 years we are still waiting for our situation to become so dire that even the staunchest holdouts acknowledge that we need to act. There are still people with blinders on, and many are members of one of the few groups on the planet that still call global warming and climate change a hoax. Of course, we are speaking about the Republican Party leaders in the Unites States of America.
In a mindboggling move, a US Senator, James Inhofe, brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to “prove” that climate change is a hoax. Mr. Inhofe appears to have been incapable of understanding the basic difference between weather and climate.
As the bumper sticker makes powerfully clear, there is no Planet B. At this point with melting glaciers, rising seas, massive fires, record breaking heat, and with the gulf stream in danger of being permanently disrupted, along with a 1,000 other potentially fatal consequences, it is imperative that Republican voters make the effort to inform themselves about climate change by turning to our current equivalents of the amazing Carl Sagan and, once informed, tell their elected officials to start taking it seriously – for the sake of all of our children and grandchildren. In the 1985 hearing, Senator Durenberger of Minnesota opened the meeting by thanking Carl Sagan for coming to “a place like Washington where everything seems to be living in today and not tomorrow.” Well, it is 38 years later. It is tomorrow, and it is time for everyone to get onboard and save the only planet we have.
