Tragedy of the commons. I never heard of this term before this week in AP Environmental Science. I felt sort of out of the loop, not having a clue what it meant, but then it made sense to me. Sort of thinking of it like a 'common tragedy' helped me out too. Well, I couldn't really come up with any examples on my own..so I had to do a little research online. Google, of course, helped out a lot.
One of the more modern commons I found had to do with car pollution. Some of the negative outcomes from car pollution include congestion, carbon emissions, and traffic accidents. Like, and I found this one explanation over Wikipedia (Yes, I like Wikipedia, sue me) which was.. Think of it as if every time 'Person A' gets in a car, it becomes more likely that 'Person Z' -and millions of others- will suffer in each of those areas. That. Sucks. There are so many Americans who drive everywhere nowadays.. Just think of how much pollution is clouding up the air, forcing soot and dust over the roads, and doing horrible other things to our atmosphere and world. It's sort of scary, I think.
Another example is the seemingly unstoppable human population growth, that most likely will soon lead to overpopulation in the world. I'm guessing the day we won't have much more capacity to fit in all the humans on earth isn't that far away. I always hear about how crowded China is, and how, I think, the families are only permitted two or three children each. I guess that's a good solution to help fix the problem..but it still doesn't end up like a 'win win' idea. It would just lead to unsatisfied parents, who wish for a bigger family to raise, and have a future with. All sad stuff. Yep.
Uhm, since I realized just now how long this entry is, I guess I should start to end it. So, those are just two of the many examples I found and had taken an interest in. At least now I know what the term 'tragedy of the commons' means. :]
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