"THE Tragedy of the Commons" is the best known article on ecology. It was printed in Science magazine in 1968 and has been reprinted hundreds of times in dozens of fields ranging from anthropology to zoology. Its essential message is profound yet simple: If a valuable resource is open to all, if it is common property and unmanaged, it will be over-exploited. The standard examples are the open range of eastern Montana in the 1880s and unmanaged ocean fisheries. Because of its implications for social as well as natural systems, it is probably the only article written by a biologist that is known by all English-speaking economists

The author is Garrett Hardin, professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara. As Garrett used the term, "tragedy" is not mere unhappiness or even extreme sorrow over an outcome. Rather, tragedy resides in the solemn and remorseless working of things. Given the incentive for exploitation and the absence of constraints on use, valuable common property resources are exhausted. Ecological and economic waste are the expected consequences. Tragedy is predictable, not a puzzling aberration.

I was honored to work with professor Hardin. Our book, "Managing the Commons," was in print for nearly 15 years. It was the first environmental-studies book that stressed the importance of property rights in promoting stewardship and environmental quality. Professor Hardin is primarily responsible for its success and for teaching me principles with lasting value.

Most importantly, Garrett taught me that we are intellectually and ethically obligated to ask the question "and then what?" when we evaluate environmental policy. Good intentions will not suffice. It is irresponsible to ignore predictable problems.

But many Beltway environmentalists have done so. The results, the relentless working of things, are coming due. People are resisting new environmental legislation.

This resistance seems paradoxical at first glance because the vast majority of Americans value environmental quality. Pollution control, habitat preservation and other green ends are widely accepted. Resistance follows from the means promoted by major national environmental groups.

For 25 years, environmental control has been a growth industry led by crisis entrepreneurs who too often ignored costs imposed. Now we see a movement to calculate those costs. It is natural for people to weigh their costs against the benefits they receive. While Washington should keep people from imposing unwarranted burdens on others, it must not impose arbitrary burdens of its own. Opposition to the latter drives efforts to limit unfunded federal mandates.

Crises entrepreneurs create or exaggerate "problems," such as asbestos and pesticide residue, through misrepresentation and junk science. They use the fear and concern aroused in the public to generate funds and use the funds to lobby Congress. Protecting their budgets, not birds and bunnies, seems to be their primary goal.

And what is the long-term environmental impact of crisis entrepreneurs? As real science wins out and "crises" are exposed as not so critical, the attentive public becomes skeptical about the importance of all environmental problems. The public also learns that the remedy offered, more federal control, is always too expensive and usually ineffective.

Superfund, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act are all up for renewal. Policy analysts, resource economists and more-enlightened environmentalists question the operation of these acts. Though the goals are legitimate and praiseworthy, the means are at best inappropriate and, at worst, pernicious.

In his book, "Breaking the Vicious Circle," Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer noted that many federal regulations require individuals and businesses to spend vast sums to obtain excessive cleanliness. For example, companies involved in a New Hampshire waste dump were forced to pay an additional $9.3 million to further clean a site where children playing on the site could already eat a small amount of dirt each day for 70 years without significant harm. But this was not a playground, it was a swamp. The $9.3 million surely had better uses. Sadly, such mandated waste is common.

Environmental quality is not free. When Beltway environmentalists act as though it is, they foster waste and ultimately erode environmental concern. Americans are not rejecting environmental goals. Rather, they are challenging cures that often seem worse than the disease.

To sustain public support we must harmonize environmental quality with economic security and liberty. To do so we must seriously consider three approaches castigated by professional greens as the "unholy trinity":

1) Require cost-benefit analysis of alternative regulations so we can direct our energies where they do the most good;

2) Limit unfunded federal mandates that constrain state and local governments from addressing local problems;

3) Require government to compensate property owners when environmental regulations reduce property's value but not when they control significant externalities or costs foisted on others.

These principles have been dismissed with derision by the Beltway greens. But this dismissal is dangerous because it threatens support for worthwhile green goals. As people realize the opportunism and duplicity of crisis entrepreneurs, they may discount the importance of environmental concern and replace it with attention to problems of public health, community, and personal security. It is time for environmental leaders to ask professor Hardin's question - "and then what?" - and advocate innovative means to reach accepted environmental ends.