SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) Ecologist Garrett Hardin, who
argued for curbing immigration and population growth, and his wife
Jane have died.
The couple, both in their 80s, apparently committed suicide,
their daughter Sharon Clauson said.
She said her 88-year-old father had a heart condition, and her
81-year-old mother had a form of the degenerative nerve illness
known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
They were found dead in their Santa Barbara home on Sept. 14.
The official cause of death was unknown pending further
investigation, according to the county coroner's office.
Hardin and his wife belonged to End-of-Life Choices, formerly
known as the Hemlock Society, a nonprofit group that supports the
right of dying patients to commit suicide.
The Hardins ``felt very strongly that they wanted to choose
their own time to die,'' Clauson told the Santa Barbara News-Press.
``We're very sad about his passing,'' Diane Hull, president of
Santa Barbara-based Californians for Population Stabilization,
which Hardin founded, said Thursday. ``He did engender enormous
respect from everyone, even those who were critical of him.''
Hardin was a professor emeritus at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, where he taught biology and environmental studies
for more than 30 years. He was trained as an ecologist and
microbiologist at the University of Chicago and Stanford
University.
He authored more than two dozen books and hundreds of articles
promoting the idea that any given resource has a ``carrying
capacity'' that cannot be surpassed without disaster.
In works such as his 1968 essay, ``The Tragedy of the Commons,''
he argued that the common holding of natural resources, whether by
people within a single nation or globally, has led to water and air
pollution, overfishing and overgrazing.
Hardin felt that overpopulation was a critical threat to both
environment and culture.
A lifelong Republican, he raised hackles along the political
spectrum with his attacks on anti-abortionists, supporters of
affirmative action and global government and ``growth-intoxicated
industrialists.''
Hardin and his wife helped run an underground operation that
sent 200 women to Mexico for abortions before the procedure was
legal in the United States.
Malcolm Potts, professor of population and family planning at
the University of California, Berkeley, said Hardin's views were
not widely shared but that his tough questions about resource
management stirred up discussion.
``We should be thankful that he made us think about it,'' Potts
said.
The Hardins are also survived by a daughter, Hyla Fetler, and
sons Peter and David Hardin.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)