living is imperiled: work harder. This meant redoubling their efforts to take
more of the few crabs and oysters still out there. Although this tactic may
benefit an individual family, it cannot but wreak disaster on the commons. By
2006, scientists estimated that one-fifth of the fishing and oystering fleet in the
bay would reap about the same harvest, with much less ecological damage.
The problem of the bay is amplified in the oceans by the use of increasingly
sophisticated fishing technology. A report in Science in 2006 predicted that 90
percent of all species of fish and shellfish that now feed people may be gone
by 2048. Twenty-nine percent of those species have already collapsed,
meaning that their harvests were already less than one-tenth what they had
been. The United Nations is struggling to develop a global system “to manage
and repropagate the fish that are still left.” Since international waters are
involved, however, negotiations may not succeed until after many species have
been made extinct.^26
Because the economy has become global, the commons now encompasses
the entire planet. If we consider that around the world humans owned ten times
as many cars in 1990 as in 1950, no sane observer would predict that such a
proportional increase could or should continue for another forty years.^27
According to Jared Diamond, in 2005 the average American consumed thirty-
two times as much of the world’s largesse and produced thirty-two times as
much pollution as the average Third World citizen.^28 Our continued economic
development coexists in some tension with a corollary of the archetype of
progress: the notion that America’s cause is the cause of all humankind. Thus,
our economic leadership is very different from our political leadership.
Politically, we can hope other nations will put in place our forms of
democracy and respect for civil liberties. Economically, we can only hope
other nations will never achieve our standard of living, for if they did, the
earth would become a desert. Economically, we are the bane, not the hope of
the world. Since the planet is finite, as we expand our economy we make it
less likely that less developed nations can expand theirs. Today, increasing
demand for fuel for Chinese vehicles is already creating a worldwide oil
shortage.
Almost every day brings new reasons for ecological concern, from
deforestation at the equator to ozone holes at the poles. Cancer rates climb and
we don’t know why.^29 We have no way even to measure the full extent of
human impact on the earth. The average sperm count in healthy human males