Which statement is an example of Hardin's use of deductive reasoning in this passage? A. Hardin states that India is a good example of a country that uses its resources well. B. Hardin explains that large populations put a strain on the environment and uses India to support that idea. C. Hardin reasons that larger populations use fewer resources because they live in cities. D. Hardin explains that it's not a problem if larger populations use up resources because the resources are renewable.

Garrett James Hardin was a pioneering ecologist in the study of the impacts of human population on land. His article The Tragedy of the Commons, published in 1968 in the American journal Science, addressed the notion that human misery would continue to grow unless it was recognized that the number of spaces suitable for human survival on earth was limited.

The tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individuals acting independently and rationally according to their own interests behave in contradiction to the best interests of a community, depleting some common resource. The hypothesis raised by the "tragedy of the commons" states that free access and the unrestricted demand for a finite resource end up by structurally condemning the resource because of its overexploitation.

To reinforce his theory, Hardin explains that large populations put pressure on the environment and use India to support this idea by showing how the large Indian population places a negative charge on the already impoverished nature.