The Lifeboat Just Got Lighter

Gloomy, zero-sum ecologist-cum-philosopher Garrett Hardin, whose essay Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor single-handedly turned me into a socialist when I was nine years old, died along with his wife in what appears to have been a mutual-suicide pact this weekend in Santa Barbara. He was 88, she was 81; both were in poor health and members of the Hemlock Society, according to the Los Angeles Times obit. His life's work was haunted by what have mostly turned out to be exaggerated fears of over-population and resource depletion. His best-known essay was the 1968 classic, The Tragedy of the Commons. (Link via Colby Cosh.)