Author: Richard

I am a retired obstetrician-gynecologist who has been fortunate to live and work in the wonderful community of Durango, Colorado for 40 years.

Categories
biodiversity Carrying Capacity Environment

Tragedy of the Commons

“In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation….”
Great Law of the Iroquois

 

            “They know that they shouldn’t fish closer than 500 meters from the coast, but I’ve seen these boats with their nets out just 200 or 300 meters offshore. The officials don’t enforce the laws.”

We were visiting the Greek island of Mykonos while on tour with the Durango Choral Society. We walked along the harbor with our guide, David, admiring the many small fishing boats. He explained facets of the failing Greek economy as well as the ancient and modern sites on this beautiful island. The Aegean Sea around Mykonos was so overfished, David said, that there were few fish left to catch.

We found proof that David was correct when we sat down to eat. Restaurants, even those overlooking the beautiful blue Aegean, had menus that listed few seafood dishes. Any seafood was prohibitively expensive since it had been caught in distant seas.

The situation that we encountered in Greece is a good illustration of the “tragedy of the commons”. That tragedy can occur when a limited resource is open to uncontrolled use by many people. Any one user may think he can benefit from taking as much of the resource as possible. This behavior is rational only in the narrow sense of self-interest. Regrettably, unbridled use of a resource is likely to lead to its depletion.

The term “commons” referred to pastureland that was available for everyone to graze his sheep in old England. Now it includes many different vital resources such as the air we breathe, the water we drink and the fish in the Aegean.

Most of us learned to share in kindergarten. Unfortunately, some adults never mastered that lesson or have forgotten it.  When there are many people using the same resource, any person who takes more than his share may deprive others of their fair share. Even worse, selfish people can deplete the resource, so eventually no one benefits from it.

In the case of fishing off Mykonos, there had been plenty of seafood for centuries. In the past the boats and fishing techniques only allowed small, sustainable catches, so the small proportion of sea life that ended up in nets was quickly replaced. Now, with more fishermen and more effective fishing techniques and many more mouths to feed, the fish supply has been exhausted. The Greek government has tried to prevent depletion by having a “no fish” zone, with poor results. People don’t seem to pay attention to the law, or the reason that it is needed.

Human population growth is one factor leading to the tragedy of the commons: more people using the same resource means less for all.

Ironically, some of the pollutants we have unintentionally added to drinking water may serve as a feedback mechanism to slow human population growth. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that have unintended hormonal effects. They are found in much of our country’s drinking water. Some come from insecticides and other agricultural chemicals. Many plastics contain BPA, which has undesirable effects. Another source is the waste of women taking hormones. These chemicals have been shown to produce fish and other animals with sexual aberrations. It is possible that endocrine disruptors will lead to decreased human fertility.

The amount of fresh water on the planet is limited and, in some cases, is very slow to be replenished. The Ogallala aquifer is an example of a resource that is being used in an unsustainable manner. Much of the food grown in our country’s midwestern breadbasket depends on water from this aquifer. Tragically, there are some places in eastern Colorado (and in other states) that rely on the Ogallala where the water table has dropped 40 feet in just 15 years!

As our human population has grown, the apparent size of the commons has shrunk. Although the first few wells in the Ogallala made little difference to the water table, now we seem to be sucking it dry. Dumping waste into a river or the atmosphere made little difference with few people and fewer factories, but these resources have become toxic in our populous, industrialized nation. We are learning the problems that can be caused by abusing the commons.

The people who will suffer the most may be those who come after us, the “seventh generation” in the Iroquois law. Unless we think and plan ahead, our progeny will not have the use of many of the resources that we have enjoyed.

© Richard Grossman MD, 2012

Categories
Medical Public Health Women's Issues

Goodbye Obstetrics

I helped with the birth of my last baby here in Durango in November. He is a healthy boy who weighed just under seven pounds.

More than 35 years ago we chose Durango as the best place to raise our two sons. They are now both married and left town long ago. My wife, Gail, and I still enjoy living in La Plata County—it is our home.

Durango was not the most lucrative place to practice back then, and it still isn’t. My starting salary was just $2,000 a month, and often I worked eighty hours or more a week. The work is strenuous, but helping women and families achieve their reproductive goals has been very satisfying.

At age 68 most people are already looking forward to full retirement. I still have goals to achieve, and am happy to be healthy enough to continue working. But I do enjoy sleeping a lot!

Perhaps I should hold my former neighbor, Dick Edwards, responsible for some of my reluctance to retire. Shortly after moving in to our first home on Rio Vista Circle I met Dick on the sidewalk. He said that retirement is dangerous—that a lot of people get sick or die shortly after they quit working. Of course there may be an error in this thinking, since some people retire due to bad health.

About 15 years ago I decided to work less and to be more active in the community and with global issues, and was able to do so. Although my income decreased, our sons had finished college and expenditures also had decreased. Working less allowed me to be active in volunteer organizations. Now I am involved in one local—Durango Nature Studies; one national—a committee of Planned Parenthood; and one international—Quaker Earthcare Witness.

I will continue practicing office gynecology. One of my goals is to take part in a Food and Drug Administration study of Quinacrine Sterilization. This is a means of permanent female sterilization that can be done without anesthesia. It is so simple that midwives have performed thousands of these procedures. QS uses a drug, quinicrine, that was developed in the 1930s as a replacement for quinine to prevent or treat malaria. It was prescribed to millions of GIs during the Second World War. The FDA has approved quinacrine for several uses, but not yet for sterilization. I hope to participate in a study of QS that will start in 2012. Quinacrine sterilization holds the promise of providing inexpensive, safe control of fertility for the millions of the world’s women who want to prevent pregnancy permanently.

Through the years I have been amazed by this community’s support. For instance, the Ballantine family has published this column for over 16 years. They allow me to own the articles’ copyrights so some of the articles have been reprinted, and I distribute them to 75 people in several countries by email. I plan to continue writing Population Matters! which may be the only regularly published newspaper column in the world that focuses on human population issues.

Providing safe, legal and caring abortion services has been controversial, but one of my priorities. I know that many people oppose abortion; I honor their feelings. But I also appreciate that there are many, many who support access to abortion. Twice in the past week strangers have come up to me to thank me for being a doctor who performs abortions.

It has been just 35 years since I started working here—more than a third of a century. The time has come for new people to take the reins. I would like to introduce Dr. Brie Todd, who has just joined Four Corners OB-GYN. She is a perfect fit with the rest of the staff of the organization—compassionate, up-to-date and technically excellent. I will continue working a few days a month in the office. For pregnant women or those who need frequent visits, I am happy to turn their care over to Dr. Todd and the other physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistant at Four Corners.

            On this day, Christmas, I would like to recall a very important birth that is celebrated by two billion people worldwide. Two thousand years ago childbirth was dangerous, especially in a stable. In many parts of the world it still is perilous. We can be thankful that we live here and now, and that the little boy who was born on this day, and his mother, both did well.

© Richard Grossman MD, 2011