The Tragedy of Climate Commons | RealClimate

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• May 09, 2009 02:05PM Trudy Johnson-Lenz

  Dana Meadows on the tragedy of the commons

  Isn't it interesting that this "just imagine" story of fisheries and the tragedy of the commons makes the climate commons point clearer and more obvious -- and no less easy to address?
  
  Dana Meadows wrote several illuminating columns about the Tragedy of the Commons. The first deals with fisheries. I found her description of the enviironmental studies class fisheries simulation and the inevitably tragic results, even with foreknowledge, disturbing. What deeper changes are required to make Hardin's "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" possible?
  
  These two short pieces are well worth reading in their entirety. Actually, all of Dana's essays and Global Citizen columns are well worth reading!
  
  The Tragedy of the Commons on Georges Bank, and Elsewhere, by Donella Meadows:

  In the Massachusetts State Capitol there is a wooden statue of the Sacred Cod, a tribute to the massive fishing ground called Georges Bank. For 200 years codfish from Georges Bank have enriched New England. Now, says the Northeast Fisheries Center, the cod population of Georges Bank is collapsing.
  
  This unnecessary tragedy-in-the-making is directly parallel to other unnecessary tragedies, like ozone holes and national debts, greenhouse effects and urban air pollution. All of them are examples of the Tragedy of the Commons....
  
  In environmental science classes we play a simulation game, in which students manage competing fishing fleets. They are charged realistically for boats, for fishing expenses, for keeping boats idle in port. They're paid for the fish they catch. A small computer program calculates the reproduction and growth of the fish population. The players don't know the actual fish numbers, any more than real fishermen do, except by the evidence of their catch.
  
  The players inevitably destroy the fishery -- even after they have discussed the Tragedy of the Commons....[snip]

  
  
  

  Let's Stop Racing Each Other and Go for Bear Instead, by Donella Meadows:

  I'd heard the joke about the bear before, and so, probably, have you. Two guys are sitting outside their tent in their forest campsite when they see a huge angry bear charging toward them. One starts lacing up his running shoes. The other says, "Are you crazy? You'll never outrun that bear!!!" The first says, "I don't have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you."
  
  Haha, kind of sick humor, really, down the memory hole it goes, with all the other jokes. But recently it came back up for me in a setting that kept me from forgetting it.
  
  We were sitting in a meeting about the future of the forest industry, talking about the rapid growth of sawmills in New England. We were wondering whether the forest can grow trees fast enough to keep all those mills supplied....
  
  Some people who know the industry well were saying, in effect, the mills expand because they have to, to adopt new labor-saving and wood-saving technology, to cut costs, to outcompete each other. They can't know the expansion plans of all other mills, have no way of tracking the wood demands of all mills against the supply capacity of the forest. They only know that if they can stay ahead of the cost curve, they survive to expand again, but if they fall behind, a bigger mill takes their business. Grow or die.
  
  That's when the joke about the bear was told. It cut deep, because in other contexts we've been hearing the same story....
  
  You don't have to beat the bear, you just have to beat the other poor suckers who are trying to beat the bear.
  
  I didn't realize, the first three times I heard it, that this is a joke about the tragedy of the commons....[snip]

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