Tragedy of the Commons, 1968.
Tragedy of the Commons (1968)
Source: 1960s, The meaning of the twentieth century: the great transition, 1964, p. 126
Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973) Energy reorganization act of 1973: Hearings, Ninety-third Congress, first session, on H.R. 11510. p. 248
1970s
Variant: Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.
Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On God
Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)
Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008), Appendix (summary)
Edinburgh University Union (1969)
The Environmental Revolution: Speeches on Conservation, 1962–77 (1978)
Context: The sheer weight of numbers of the human population, our habitations, our machinery and our ruthless exploitation of the living and organic resources of the earth; together these are changing our whole environment. This is what we call progress and much of this development is naturally to the direct and welcome benefit of mankind. However, we cannot at the same time ignore the awkward consequences and the most direct and menacing, but not the only consequence of this change, is pollution... Pollution is a direct outcome of man's ruthless exploitation of the earth's resources. Experience shows that the growth of successful organic populations is eventually balanced by the destruction of its own habitat. The vast man-made deserts show that the human population started this process long ago. There are two important differences today. In the first place the process has gone from a walking pace to a breakneck gallop. Secondly we know exactly what is happening. If not exactly in all cases, we know enough to appreciate what is happening and the need to take care... Pollution is no longer a matter of local incidents, today it has the whole biosphere in its grip. The processes which devastated the Welsh valleys a hundred years ago are now at work, over, on and under the earth and the oceans. Even if we bury all this waste underground there still remains the risk that toxic materials through chemical reactions will be washed out and into underground water courses. If ever there was an area of research more closely related to human welfare it is the problem of the safe disposal of waste and effluents... The fact is that we have got to make a choice between human prosperity on the one hand and the total well-being of the planet Earth on the other. Even then it is hardly a choice because if we only look for human prosperity we shall certainly destroy by pollution the earth and the human population which has existed on it for millions of years... If the world pollution situation is not critical at the moment it is as certain as anything can be that the situation will become increasingly intolerable within a very short time. The situation can be controlled and even reversed but it demands co-operation on a scale and intensity beyond anything achieved so far... I realise that there are any number of vital causes to be fought for, I sympathise with people who work up a passionate concern about the all too many examples of inhumanity, injustice, and unfairness, but behind all this hangs a really deadly cloud. Still largely unnoticed and unrecognised, the process of destroying our natural environment is gathering speed and momentum. If we fail to cope with this challenge, all the other problems will pale into insignificance.
“A symbol is first of all a finite reality of this world.”
Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Seven, The Symbolic Structure of Religion, p. 133
"Dare to declare capitalism dead – before it takes us all down with it" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth, The Guardian, 25 April 2019.
“The world's nature is a harmonious compound of infinite and finite elements”
The Life of Pythagoras (1919)
Context: Fragment 1. (Stob.21.7; Diog.#.8.85) The world's nature is a harmonious compound of infinite and finite elements; similar is the totality of the world in itself, and of all it contains.
b. All beings are necessarily finite or infinite, or simultaneously finite and infinite; but they could not all be infinite only.
Interview with John Newark (1990) from Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith (2004), ed. James Ronald Stanfield and Jacqueline Bloom Stanfield
