In the old days, the "common" was a large patch of grazing area in a village or town that was to be used by everybody's stock as needed. But everybody had to be trusted to not abuse it - if, for example, one person brought in his whole herd to graze, the common would not only be overgrazed, it would probably also be ruined for the future. So everybody sort of had to acknowledge that everybody had an obligation for the common good or it was "curtains" for everybody. This is the basic idea of the prisoner's dilemma game and the Acme Truck and Bolt game. (Depending on how desperate you are to fill up time, you could maybe even briefly explain those.) If everybody shares the concern, it'll work. But sometimes it doesn't take much for somebody to ruin it for everybody.
In today's world, we see that with water in the summer when there's a shortage. We have to have rules about watering the lawns - people with addresses with even numbers can water on even days, certain hours, etc., because merely asking people to cut back doesn't work. Or in California, where they have tried forever to ask users to cut back on electricity. (Not enough people did, and they ultimately had shortages.) You could come up with endless examples in the environment. (Forest fires caused by carelessness [I guess Smoky the Bear wasn't enough to do the trick] and toxic dumping come immediately to mind.)
Because of many people's refusal to acknowledge their personal responsibility, we have to have rules, laws, watchdog organizations and even snoopy neighbors to keep people in line so the environment isn't ruined. For example, we have a lake house, and of course there are strict rules about dumping. Yet one neighbor was observed to be piping her washing machine rinse water directly into the lake. That was only a few years ago. (There was quite an uproar, as you can imagine. She had tried to conceal the pipe so it wouldn't show.)
Well, this Eveready bunny's batteries are probably tapped out now...
Beth Benoit
Daniel Webster College
College for Lifelong Learning
Portsmouth NH
