On Saturday morning, I went to Usdan to embark on a gluttonous rampage at brunch. I noticed Bon Appétit was serving one of my favorite delicacies: smoked salmon. Much to my dismay, I noticed that most of the salmon had already been consumed. I then proceeded to watch the perpetrator take all but the last two pieces, which was maybe a tenth of what had previously been on the serving dish. Since I had arrived with my friend, I gave him one piece and took the other for myself.
This was a crystal clear example of the tragedy of the commons, a term I learned in my Introduction to Environmental Studies course.
The tragedy of the commons was first explained in an article written by Garrett Hardin in the journal Science. Hardin illustrates the tragedy by describing a parcel of public pastureland. Farmers who raise livestock will seek to maximize their profit by purchasing additional units of capital (cows, for example). The extra benefit of adding one more cow is some dollar amount. The downside of increasing his herd is the degradation of the public pasture. This cost, although partially incurred by the farmer who has added the additional cow, is dispersed among all farmers (due to degraded pastureland). Thus, the farmer still makes more profit. With the benefit greater than the cost, the farmer adds another cow. Now, imagine the damage done to the pasture as the farmer’s herd explodes in population.
Here’s another example. In New York City, all apartment buildings are metered so that electric companies can bill their customers. Sub-metering, in which each individual apartment’s electricity consumption is measured, is not required of all buildings. In a recent New York Times article, Con Edison estimated that of two million apartment buildings measured, 250,000 (12.5 percent) do not have meters on individual apartments. These houses were found to consume 30 percent more electricity than their sub-metered counterparts.
New Yorkers living in these apartments realize the benefits of using their air-conditioners all day (they get to come home to cool apartments) without paying the cost of excess electricity usage. The costs associated with this electricity binge are incurred directly by building landlords, and indirectly by households that reside next to power plants (whose output is ramped up) in the form of increased health costs.
Even informed consumers will commonly make decisions that benefit themselves at the cost of others. In the case of the tragedy of the commons, the way to lessen harmful effects is to incentivize good behavior.
Some experts, like Garrett Hardin, claim that privatization can be a solution. If you give control of a particular common area to the people who are using it, those people will have a direct reason to stop polluting. However, if big industries gain control of formerly common lands, there may develop a greater propensity for environmental destruction: imagine if the entire Amazon rainforest were owned by a couple logging companies.
Here at Wesleyan, food, heat, and electricity are all incorporated somehow into our tuition. There is thus a relatively fixed cost for these highly variable consumption patterns. If you live in a dorm, you will often notice that bathroom lights, room lights, and televisions are commonly left on, even when not in use. Since we don’t directly pay for these services, we don’t feel responsible to conserve them—an obvious tragedy of the commons.
However, according to data provided by Director of Environmental Health, Safety, and Sustainability Bill Nelligan, the average Wesleyan student emits 11.26 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent gases. That’s roughly half the emissions of an average American citizen. The reason for this lies in the composition of Wesleyan’s campus. Most of our facilities are accessible by efficient, low emissions transportation methods. In other words, Wesleyan’s infrastructure prevents wasteful habits from causing too much environmental harm.
Nonetheless, it’s dangerous to draw the conclusion that our consumption patterns are irrelevant on a larger scale. If logging companies were to adopt the same perspective (and many do), then our forests would be in peril. If large fisheries did too, then many fish populations could face extinction.
We must realize that all of our actions indirectly affect others, especially in environments where the potential to waste on a large scale is much higher. By taking ownership of our actions, such as not eating all of the salmon at brunch or turning your bathroom lights off, we can minimize our impact on others and begin to value the invaluable.
Leave a Reply