Sharing The Burden: Examining The 'Tragedy of The Commons'

The essay entitled 'Tragedy of the Commons' is written by Garrett Hardin and it revolves on how human being become greedy of the things they are not capable of. A human being is naturally greedy and that lead us to a severe problem rather than taking solution from what we are experiencing, thus looking after his own interests before those of others. According to Garrett Hardin’s 'Tragedy of the Commons', humans would rather seek temporary gain with long-term disadvantages than suffer little inconveniences for long-term gain. But unfortunately, the majority who contribute to this tragedy are not aware of what they are doing. Before reading this 'Tragedy of the Commons' essay, I was not aware of this problem, and honestly, I still do not know how to avert this tragedy.

It’s not the environment who’s at fault but rather, the human population growth is the problem and its not diminishing. Instead, it continues to grow and grow that results to a severe problem which is the over population. But since our world is finite, it was difficult to sustain the needs and wants of the people because we have limited resources. Therefore, each person’s share in this world must lessen or reduced with the increase in human number. But what is happening now? Each person grabs whatever resources he can for himself and his family. As a result, imbalance is gradually becoming evident in our society, and soon, in our world. We, as human beings, keep doing what we want instead of what we need: reproducing and satisfying our own needs. We increase our demand from this earth’s resources, yet we refuse to sacrifice even the most unnecessary inconveniences. Basically, human population continues to increase while the world’s resources continue to decrease. This is tragedy when we think of the generations that will follow.

Illegal logging is very rampant and the most relevant issues in our environment. People become illigal loggers because it's the only way to sustain their needs and wants as part of the poor people. Since it's only their source of income, they wasn't able to think of the consequences of their actions to our environment. These are the people who don’t look at what will benefit the world and the people around them in the long run. When the time will come that they realize their mistake, it might be too late. Therefore, there wouldn't be green in our surrounding and animals will soon vanished same with the human beings. They would no longer food to eat and results to cannibalism. Aren’t we seeing the effects of people’s carelessness now? How much more will our children and our children’s children? That is if they will live to see this world as we see it now. That is if pollution will not kill them before they reach an age of maturity to see what our world has become, or rather, what their fathers and their father’s fathers have done to their world.

Second cause is the rampant use of chemicals and usually dumped into rivers and seas that kills the underwater creatures. It wouldn't be immediately kills all the dishes but if this continues then, it might harm them and later on died. supply from freshwater and seawater. Not only this, but we will lose our water supply as well. What will we do then? Can these factories supply us with water that is safe to drink, safe to bath in? Or will they sell us overpriced water artificially manufactured with chemicals? When that time will come, we won’t have the heart to complain, we won’t even have the choice to refuse them.

To address the 'Tragedy of the Commons', it is often necessary to introduce some form of regulation, such as laws, taxes, or fees, to limit the use of shared resources. For example, fishing quotas and catch limits can be used to protect fish populations, and pollution standards can be used to protect water and air quality.

In conclusion, the 'Tragedy of the Commons' is a term used to describe a situation in which individuals acting in their own self-interest can lead to the depletion or degradation of a shared resource. This concept is often used to describe problems related to environmental degradation and overuse of natural resources, as well as other types of shared resources. To address the 'Tragedy of the Commons', it is often necessary to introduce some form of regulation, such as laws, taxes, or fees, to limit the use of shared resources.