The essay entitled "Tragedy of the Commons" argued that population growth
Blank
______.

Question

The essay entitled "Tragedy of the Commons" argued that population growth 
Blank
______.

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Garrett Hardin’s central claim in "The Tragedy of the Commons" is that individual incentives operating on a shared resource produce inevitable overuse and eventual destruction of that resource.

1. Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- "Commons": a resource open to all (e.g., pastures, fisheries, atmosphere).
- Individual rationality vs. collective outcome: each user maximizes personal gain, ignoring full shared costs.
- Externalities and carrying capacity: private actions produce negative externalities shared by all, pushing use beyond sustainable limits.
- Hardin’s conclusion: without coordinated limits or property rights, population growth intensifies these pressures and produces collapse.

2. Step-by-step reasoning process
- Assume a commons used by many individuals. Each individual gains the full benefit of increasing their own use (more animals, more fish caught, etc.).
- The cost of the extra use (degradation) is distributed across all users, so the incremental personal cost is a fraction of the true social cost.
- As population or number of users grows, total pressure on the resource increases. Each user still sees a private incentive to increase use because their personal benefit exceeds their share of the cost.
- Repetition of these choices across many users accumulates into overuse that exceeds the resource’s sustainable yield.

3. Sample calculation illustrating inevitability
- Suppose a pasture sustainably supports 100 sheep. Ten herders share it.
- If one herder adds 1 sheep, personal benefit = +1 unit. The damage from that sheep to the pasture reduces total sustainable capacity by 1, but that cost is split equally among 10 herders → personal cost = 0.1.
- Net private gain = 1 − 0.1 = 0.9 (>0), so the rational decision is to add the sheep.
- If every herder follows this logic, total sheep increase rapidly beyond 100, causing overgrazing and collapse.

4. Why the correct answer is correct
Hardin’s argument rests on the arithmetic of private gain versus distributed cost: as population grows, the sum of individually rational choices pushes use beyond sustainable limits, making destruction of the commons effectively inevitable without regulation.

5. Why the other options are incorrect
- "Sometimes leads..." understates Hardin’s claim; he argued inevitability under unregulated conditions, not mere occasional risk.
- "Is not at all linked..." contradicts the essay entirely; Hardin explicitly links population growth and the overuse of commons.

6. Conclusion
Therefore, the correct choice—“inevitably leads to overuse and then destruction of common resources”—matches Hardin’s argument and is the provided correct answer.

The essay entitled "Tragedy of the Commons" argued that population growth Blank ______.单项选择题

类似问题

What was the world's first widely adopted biodiversity policy?

The aim of the Paris Agreement is to ensure that the earth’s preindustrial temperature is not exceeded by more than º Celsius.

The IPCC's mission is to Blank ______.

Why have most international agreements for environmental protection been based on the honor system?

As was exhibited with the Montreal Protocol and the encouragement of reduced CFC production, trade can be an effective tool to compel compliance with international treaties.

The Stockholm Declaration and UNEP were the result of the Blank ______ first conference on the Human Environment in 1972.

In addition to the direct mission of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), why was CITES so important?

President Trump hiring a corporate leader from the oil and gas industry to head the Department of Energy is an example of regulatory ; one intention behind this was to change environmental policy.

更多留学生实用工具

智能学习助手

风格化写作助手

论文查重助手

文献引用助手

课堂转译助手

课堂笔记助手

Quiz搜索助手

学校历年真题

智能刷题助手

智能匹配练习

希望你的学习变得更简单