Everybody's Guilty The Ecological Dilemma Summary

Com 330
February 4, 2013
Critical Reaction Paper 1

“Everybody’s Guilty” Critical Reaction Summary
In “ Everybody’s Guilty – The Ecological Dilemma, “ author and professor of Human Ecology at University of California, Santa Barbara, Garrett Hardin, explains the current issue with invisible reverberations. Hardin calls attention to the readers about how innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment. “ We all acquiesce in the system of arrangements and practices that has created our ecological crisis” (Hardin, 40). In order to approve of our actions, individuals tend to hide from reality behind symbols and/or words. Incorporating rhetoric into our everyday lives does this. Garrett Hardin begins his argument by explaining
By doing this, consumers are using an unethical form of persuasion while not being aware of the consequences or changes this action may have on people. Hardin wants the readers to view our world not as a society, but “as an ecological system” (Hardin, 40). Instead of acting as a whole, people need to understand that as individuals, everyone needs to play their part to improve the world we live on. Hardin suggests, “we [as individuals] can never do merely one thing” (Hardin, 41). The choices that are made everyday can have an impact on something a lot larger than what was intended. In the article, “Everybody’s Guilty”, Hardin uses the example of damming the Nile at Aswan. By building this dam, workers not only secured a water source for electricity and irrigation, which was their only intention, but they also caused deep distress to Egypt. This proves Hardin’s argument. Although the thought of a dependable water source is efficient, many times the consequences are overseen. Egypt now is suffering from periodic floods, which is slowly eliminating the nutrients within the water. To bring this example into an easier perspective, lets look at what average people do
Increasing the size of the population is generally held to be a good thing, but an even larger proportion of the world’s people is becoming convinced that the world is already overpopulated” (Hardin, 42). Increasing the population not only limits resources, it also increases the amount of misunderstanding to people “never do[ing] one thing”, which can potentially lead to a larger ecological crisis. There are many problems when it comes to population. Technology is expensive and with population growing, the price of natural resources is increasing as well. There are solutions to this issue though, but cannot be implemented right away. Hardin looks “toward voluntarism and persuasion to help create a climate of opinion that can some day support stronger measures” (Hardin, 45). By “doing the right thing”, Hardin rhetorically persuades the readers to engage in thoughtful actions that decreases the population. The first step to this solution is to create a 100% effective birth control. Society knows that contraception is not completely effective, but because of this, Hardin suggests we create a system for acceptability towards abortions if necessary. If birth control fails, abortions should be included as a “back up plan” with the cost of being preferably free. The problem with this proposal is that abortions are frowned upon in other countries. To avoid the abortion issue, young girls need to be taught to become