Tragedy of the Commons Lab Debrief & Conclusions; Begin 'The Environment & Society' Reading & Guided Notes

WARM UP: (do with your lab group on small whiteboard and use science vocabulary we've been learning to discuss and describe outcomes)

1.Beach shorelines in Oregon are public property — in other words, they are owned in common. Periodically, beach clean-up days are organized and citizen groups are urged to volunteer. Why is that public service effort necessary? (Meanwhile, a nearby private lake owned by a group of fishermen has absolutely no trash floating in the water or littering the beach.)

2.Suppose that following an earthquake that destroyed the water system of a large city, producers of bottled water contributed a convoy of trucks full of water to the citizens of the city. Predict what would happen (how people in the city would behave) if the water was a common resource. Predict what would happen and how people would behave if instead the water was given to a local fast-food restaurant to sell, under the condition that the owner donate 95% of the money to charity.

-Return papers & Announcements

-Lab debrief and conclusions - review discussion questions

-Closure (take notes!)

The antidote to the tragedy of the commons is to provide clearly defined (know who owns it), enforceable (owned property pro­tected by law), and transferable (profits from the resource, or the re­source, itself, can be bought and sold) property rights. There are many ways to define property rights in circumstances in which property own­ership is not obvious. First, a government can assume ownership and thus restrict use—as in admission to national parks. Second, govern­ment can assume a monitoring role, as it does with air and water pollu­tion or fishing. Third, private ownership can be assigned. A private owner will profit from the resource and thus have an incentive to protect it.

The key points of the lesson:

• What is the tragedy of the commons? (Resources owned in com­mon tend to be overused.)
• How would a specification of ownership have made a difference in who got what and how much? (If a teacher had owned the resource, then the teacher might have moni­tored the students when they took the resource, ensuring everyone got some. If a student(s) had owned the resource, the outcome might have been the same. Or student(s) might have sold the resource to other students. Either way, the quantity taken by each student would have been monitored.
• Explain why the hallways in schools tend to be littered at the end of the school day. (No one seems to own the hallways. Students are tempted to treat them as long wastebaskets.) The analysis used here would also apply to water. 

Some videos to help explain Tragedy of the Commons:
Quick Intro video to concept (3:30 mins)
Chalk Talk 1 (2 mins)
Chalk Talk 2 (2 mins)
John Stossel News Report (11 mins)

Begin last section of Unit 3: The Environment & Society

Learning Objective: I can explain how humans affect the environment by examining economic concepts and how resources are used.

Reading: The Environment and Society

Guided Notes