In chapter 2 it talks about how we should depopulate the people on the planet. There is no rhyme or reason on why we should do this. How would anyone ever be able to decide who to keep and let go? That would be a hard decision to make. This would also mess up society and how it functions. China will be hurting in the future because of there birth laws and how they can have only one child per family. This has lead to them keeping millions of babies from being born. All the older people are going to retire in society with no one to take there position. There needs to be competition in the labor force. We as a society need to figure out how to keep the same amount of population but not let it grow. There still needs to be competition in the marketplace.
The book mentions tragedy of the commons and the problems with free loaders these days. Tragedy of the commons is when many individuals are only thinking of themselves and using resources to there own expense. In the future we will pay for this with the environment. People don’t care because there is no effect on them right now. Free loaders is another problem we have these days. Free loading is when you have someone who doesn’t pay for the good and still benefits from the good. For example if people want who live on a lake want it cleaned up but not everyone will pay for it and they clean it up anyways. Everyone on the lake will benefit from it. It’s a problem that is hard to regulate. Hardin does mention that privatization would help the with freeloaders. This also means that everyone would be responsible with maintaining there own property. So, the city would no longer pay for trash trucks to come around and pick up the trash that you put out on the curb. The good thing about privatization would be the lowering of taxes though. This would happen because the governement or town would not have as many expenses.
Ethics is another topic that the book points out and it has to deal with the environment. Our ethics in the U.S. are not very good when it comes to eating and the amount that we waist. We need to be more concerned with the way we are dealing with this. There is so much waste that we produce from this country. Just walk through the campus and look at all the left over food that has been thrown away. It is also amazing how students can’t just put the recyclables in the recyclable bins. It would inconvenience them to much to do that. So, as a country we need to open our eyes and take a look at how we are treating the environment. Maybe the government needs to put restrictions on how much food people buy. I read an article about how they might try to put restrictions on fast food. I am all for the government doing this. The reading makes many valid points throughout the first part of the book that everyone needs to take a good look at. Some of them I agree with and some not so much. Even if making the environment green cost to much, we should still spend the money. It will better us off in the long run.
Green taxes are a big discussion that is currently going on and will happen. Companies that produce pollution should be taxed on how much there are polluting. This will give them an incentive to either get better technology or to stop producing as much. I also recently read an article on taxing gasoline at the pump. It would be a Pigovian tax which is put on something that gives of negative externalities. By taxing the $1 on every gallon of gas sold to the buyer would generate billions of dollars to put back into the environment every year. This would also give drivers an incentive to find other ways of transportation for example biking, walking, public transportation, ect.
