Tragedy of the Commons

While extremely clean & efficient technology might allow more people and
material consumption than Hardin imagined, ultimately the trade-off between human
numbers and quality of life would remain. The model of the ToC, while compelling,
generalizes from a faulty historical case study. In fact, communities managed their
commons; real humans are not so exclusively self-interested as to not care what their
fellows think of them, and not be able to manage common concerns. It is possible that
communities do observe and regulate members' fertility, rather than leaving it up to
individual choice. This might be coercion on a small scale, but it could accommodate
much individual need also.

The assumption that were it not for "welfare," over-breeders would have to pay for
their profligacy runs in the face of evidence that parents whose infants die are
paradoxically both more inclined to get pregnant again, and less likely to emotionally
invest in their young. Child survival and welfare enable parents to stop at fewer children,
and provide security in old age, independent from offspring's or husband's income.
People's motivations to have babies are not the same everywhere and at every time. They
vary depending on economic circumstances, culture, and gender. Understanding and
altering these conditions is another route to changing fertility decisions. The cost/benefit
conditions of childbearing decisions can be altered in many ways. But some such
strategies may require an unrealistic degree of material economic development. Ones
which do not include wealth redistribution, meeting unmet need, improving the economic
and educational options for girls and women, and increasing accountability of fathers.
Blunt forms or coersion such as China's one-child policy are likely to have negative
unintended consequences.
 Genetically Modified Organisms and Justice: The International
Environmental Justice Implications of Biotechnology

In September 2006, a WTO dispute settlement panel issued its long-awaited

decision in favor of the United States in the dispute between the U.S. and the European
Union over genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The ruling was based on narrow
procedural grounds, and did not resolve the controversy over the safety of GMOs, over
the right of countries to regulate GMOs more stringently than conventional products, or
over the consistency of the EU's GMO regulatory regime with WTO requirements. The
debate over GMOs continues unabated. Unfortunately, the high-profile dispute between
the U.S. and the EU has eclipsed the important debate in the developing world over the
socioeconomic implications of this technology. While scientific uncertainty continues to
impede efforts to reach consensus on the human health and environmental impacts of
GMOs, the socioeconomic perils of biotechnology in developing countries are becoming
increasingly evident. Regrettably, the trade and environmental agreements governing the
transboundary movement of GMOs privilege science as the arbiter of trade disputes to
the exclusion of other forms of normative discourse. With limited exceptions,
socioeconomic considerations may not be used to justify GMO trade restrictions. Using
environmental justice as an analytical framework, this article examines the unique risks
and benefits of biotechnology for developing countries, and places the debate over
biotechnology in the context of the historic and ongoing controversy between developed
and developing countries over the rules governing trade in conventional agricultural
products. It concludes by proposing alternative regulatory strategies designed to ensure
that international trade law promotes rather than frustrates environmental protection, the
human right to food, and the promotion of sustainable economic development.
 Preserving the Priceless: A Constitutional Amendment to Empower Congress
to Preserve, Protect, and Promote the Environment

Today, federal environmental policy is experiencing two separate yet related

crises. The first is a legal crisis wherein the constitutional foundation of such policy is
being brought into question and challenged before an increasingly conservative bench
sympathetic to such challenges. The second is an ethical crisis wherein present-day
federal environmental policy, built upon the Commerce Clause, fails to properly express
the environmental ethic that that policy seeks to embody. These two crises each
independently commend a constitutional amendment to empower Congress to directly
preserve, protect, and promote the environment. Taken together, they render undeniable
the need for such an amendment, which, given its structure, content, and broad public
acceptance, stands a good chance at ratification.