In an everyday modern nutshell, that is the idea implied by a 1968 paper in the journal Science entitled "The Tragedy of the Commons." "If everyone optimizes for themselves, it leads to everyone being worse off — and that's true in Hardin's commons metaphor, but it is also true in climate change," said Beugin. Besides some of Hardin's more unsavoury ideas, there is another reason that the tragedy of the commons argument has been controversial: The free market solution that comes with it. Economists have proposed that the solution to the 'tragedy of the commons' is private ownership. That may sound hopeless, but there are a few reasons why the tragedy of the commons lesson may not condemn us to a climate Armageddon.

Source: CBC News August 11, 2021 08:00 UTC