Royal Society's Terrible Report on Population and Consumption
Tim Worstall, Contributor
I write about business and technology.
The Royal Society, supposedly the leading scientific organisation in the UK, has just released a report looking at the interplay of population growth and consumption and what that means for future economic growth.
I’m afraid that I do have to say that it’s an absolutely terrible report. They get important details wrong (you can see some of them here in this long report I’ve done elsewhere) and there are times when it seems that the writers of one chapter haven’t been paying attention to what other chapters are saying.
Just as an example of how bad the report is they’ve even managed to completely misunderstand what Garrett Hardin was saying about the Tragedy of the Commons:
Many resources are subject to collective action problems: if each actor pursues what is in his or her short-term interest, things will go much less well than if all agree to abide by rules that are in the common interest. Collective action problems are sometimes thought to arise inevitably from common ownership of resources, but this is not the case. Hardin (1968), in coining the phrase the “tragedy of the commons” assumed that common ownership of physical resources such as fields and lakes is problematic because it will be in the interest of each to consume more of the resource than is sustainable. Thus, on Hardin’s analysis, shepherds will tend to overgraze a field which is held in common, as each shepherd seeks to ensure that he or she has as many sheep as possible, and that each sheep is well-grazed. If all (or most) shepherds behave in this way, then the commons will become overgrazed, and its ability to support sheep will soon be destroyed.
However Hardin was mistaken to assume that all commons are open access, and can be used by anyone without control or rules. Almost all commons are closed access, with distinct rules and norms. Closed commons are and can be regulated in such a way that they can be successfully protected and sustained. (Ostrom 1990).
As I go on to point out:
Look, guys, I’m sorry but if you want to talk about the Tragedy of the Commons – something you ought to, for it’s at the heart of most environmental problems – then it really does behove members of the Royal Society to get it right.
For Garrett Hardin did not assume that all commons are open access. He didn’t believe anything so damn stupid. His set-up was very different indeed. It was that if you have an open access commons and then demand for that resource exceeds the regenerative capacity of the resource, then you have to move away from a Marxian (his word) open access commons to some form of limitation of access. This limitation of access could be social (socialist) or private property (capitalist) but some form of limitation there must be.
Otherwise the commons will be exhausted and there won’t be a commons. What Elinor Ostrom has studied (and gained a Nobel prize for) is how this access has been limited. She’s been studying extant commons after all, so by Hardin’s logic the fact that a commons still exists proves that access has been limited. Those that did not have limits placed upon access would not be around for Ostrom to study: like dodos, passenger pigeons and damn nearly the whales and buffalo.
Getting this wrong in the manner they have done is not just some minor league detail that doesn’t matter. The commons tragedy is central to most of the environmental problems we face, from collapsing fisheries through to climate change itself. If you’re going to get that wrong then what weight at all can be put on other musings about matters environmental?
And this is the Royal Society. Supposedly the encapsulation of all that is great and good in the science of the United Kingdom.
It really is the most appalling report. It’s like finding out that Newton couldn’t add.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/04/26/royal-societys-terrible-report-on-population-and-consumption/
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