Drivers of the Human Threat

Question 1

For the following situations, identify the use of privatization or mutually agreed upon coercion.
Privatization (a)
Mutually agreed upon coercion (b)

1) If you hunt outside of deer season, you can be fined.
2) England’s Enclosure Acts took public grazing fields, split them up, and turned them over
to individual farmers.
3) You pay a fee to enter a National Park.
4) The largest wildlife reserve in Zimbabwe is a conglomeration of game ranches owned by
individuals.

Answer 1

1) b
2) a
3) b
4) a

Question 2

Describe White’s thesis regarding human threats to the environment. What was his
solution?

Answer 2

With the population explosion, the carcinoma of planless urbanism, the now geological deposits of sewage and garbage, surely no creature other than man has ever managed to foul its nest in such short order.
What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one.
The key to an understanding of Francis is his belief in the virtue of humility–not merely for the individual but for man as a species. Francis tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures.

Question 3

Describe Hardin’s thesis regarding human threats to the environment. What was his
solution?

Answer 3

The population problem has no technical solution;
it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
But, in terms of the practical problems that
we must face in the next few generations
with the foreseeable technology, it
is clear that we will greatly increase
human misery if we do not, during the
immediate future, assume that the world
available to the terrestrial human population
is finite.
The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. And it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so. can we put an
end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

Question 4

Describe 2 of the 3 major reasons humans threaten wildlife conservation which we
discussed in class. Describe a potential solution to each threat. (4 parts)

Answer 4

• Overpopulation
• Overconsumption
• Injustice
• Beginning and end (linear non-repetitive time)
• Perpetual progress
• Dominance over animals (and nature)
• Superiority over animals (and nature)
• Human centered
• Nature is “for” people