You probably know about the effect called the tragedy of the commons. The classic case is shepherds and a common grassy area. If each lets their sheep graze so they consume grass as fast as it grows, then each has the incentive to graze more, privatizing the extra profit while everyone else loses a smaller amount, but if all do it, everyone loses.

Here is Wikipedia’s definition:

The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely replace them, the predictable result being a “tragedy” for all.

Polluting the atmosphere is different, though. The problem with sheep grazing isn’t sheep grazing. One sheep grazing in a big field doesn’t hurt anyone.

Polluting inherently hurts people. It destroys life, liberty, and property. Unlike when not too many sheep graze, all pollution harms people. The problem isn’t over-polluting. It’s polluting at all. This oil refinery is qualitatively different than an overgrazed field, as are Cancer Alley and sacrifice zones:

Ironically, the greater insidiousness of the problem of polluting makes its solution as easy as the solution to poisoning people directly: don’t allow it at all. Not even a little.

Likewise with depletion, mostly. Using many non-renewable resource deprives others of them in contrast to grass that sheep overgraze and can grow back. Actually, if they overgraze enough, they could turn a field into a desert. That’s the situation with many uses of non-renewable resources.

A solution for many cases is to live only with things circulating in the biosphere, as humans have done for hundreds of thousands of years. I suppose you can use some rocks you quarry and water from aquifers slower than they replenish

• ← Nature’s discipline missing in today’s world
• You’re lying to yourself if you believe we can ramp up wind and solar to replace fossil fuels and stop using them →