The Lorax: The Tragedy Of The Commons

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The tragedy of the Commons is an issue where individuals exploit a shared resource to the point where there’s barely much of the resource left, and the resource becomes unavailable. This occurred several times throughout the history of mankind. This repetitive cycle happens for several reasons. The tragedy of the commons occurs due to self-interest, unawareness of the problem, and finite resources. These reasons for tragedy of the commons was in the 1972 cartoon “The Lorax” and a historical event on “Easter Island”.
Unawareness, or denial, of the issue, was among one of the reasons that the tragedy of commons can happen. In the Lorax: the Once-ler denies the fact that the environment was getting destroyed for his profit gain. “I chopped down …show more content…

Usually, people believe that they’re not overusing a certain resource. And most resources are shared with other citizens of the public. This leads to overusing essential resources until there is barely enough to go around. Hardin addresses this issue as well in his writing. “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. “Space” is no escape.”. (Hardin, Garrett). In “The Lorax” the Truffula trees were an example of a finite resource. Unfortunately, the Once-ler cut down too many trees for his short-term gain of profit. And once all of the trees were gone, he finally noticed that there was an issue, when it could have been realized before the whole forest was demolished. For Easter Island, the resources were the animals they hunted and the plant-life. When transporting the Moai they must clear the pathway of trees and logs for rolling them. So the Rapa Nui ended up cutting down many trees. And for other inventions and supplies needed to be built, they used wood. Eventually, the island became a treeless wasteland over

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