Living Within Limits

Garrett Hardin is Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of a number of books about ecology, biology, and ethics.

Wonderfully rich in original ideas and insights... compelling... A rare intellectual feast that challenges, charms, and engages the reader... A book that will be widely read and is bound to be enduringly influential.

• Part 1 Entangling Alliances ; 1. The Challenge of Limits ; 2. Overpopulation: Escape to the Stars? ; 3. Uneasy Litter Mates: Population and Progress ; 4. Population Theory: Academia's Stepchild ; 5. Default Status: making Sense of the World ; 6. The Ambivalent Triumph of Optimism ; 7. Cowboy Economics versus Spaceship Ecology ; 8. Growth: Real and Spurious ; 9. Exponential Growth of Populations ; 10. What Malthus Missed ; 11. The Demostat ; 12. Generating the Future ; 13. Limits: A Constrained View ; 14. From Jevons's Coal to Hubbert's Pimple ; Part 2 Lookin for the Bluebird ; 15. Nuclear Power: A Nonsolution ; 16. Trying to Escape Malthus ; 17. The Benign Demographic Transition ; Part 3 Biting the Bullet ; 18. Making Room for Human Will ; 19. Major Default Positions of Human Biology ; 20. Carrying Capacity ; 21. The Global Pillage: Consequences of Unmanaged Commons ; 22. Discriminating Altruisms ; 23. The Double C-Double P Game ; 24. Birth Control versus Population Control ; 25. Population Control: Natural versus Human ; 26. The Necessity of Immigration Control ; 27. Recapitulation and a Look Ahead ; Notes and References ; Index