We live in a world full of expectations. At home you’re expected to clean your room, do your chores, be home by curfew, do your homework, etc. When you come to college, all of those expectations change. Yes, you are expected to complete your work and professors expect you to do your best but now your parents aren’t standing behind you guiding you through those expectations. In environmental studies, what we expect isn’t always what happens in the end.
Garret Hardin, the author of “The Tragedy of the Commons,” expects that with common property, such as oceans, people will use them egotistically. People will claim that extra fish because if they don’t, someone else will. This is what Hardin expects of people. He expects them to be self-centered, non-cooperative individuals. Hardin’s expectations aren’t always reality. For example, Elinor Ostrom found that many communities with decentralized governments have determined rules for sharing common goods and penalties if this rules aren’t followed; the opposite of Hardin’s expectations.
As you come to start your environmental studies journey at Lewis & Clark, you might expect that one day, you will save the Earth. You might expect that if everyone didn’t drive a car, or if everyone didn’t shower, or if everyone adopted a vegan diet we would be able to end climate change. Then you will take your first environmental studies class and realize that those changes, although they are well intentioned, will not make a significant change.
Expectations are the idealistic concepts we have of how we want the world to be. Reality is the unfortunate truth we have to face when tackling these ideas. In an ideal world, every country’s first priority would be to tackle climate change. Unfortunately, Hardin’s expectation of the world being full of egotistical individuals isn’t entirely false. Although some local communities may be able to work together and agree upon a common set of rules, governments seem to have a hard time with this concept. Short term goal often outweigh long term ones,. That fast reward causes people to forget that regulation is cheaper than mitigation. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t expect that you won’t save the world one day. I’m saying that realistically, it’s going to take more than a hike across a rainbow to solve the world’s problems.