The New Land Rush

[Undertoad]

Wikipedia:

The tragedy of the commons is a phrase used to refer to a class of phenomena that involve a conflict for resources between individual interests and the common good. The term derives originally from a parable published by William Forster Lloyd who was Drummond Professor at Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society, in his 1833 book on population.
...
The parable demonstrates how unrestricted access to a resource such as a pasture ultimately dooms the resource because of over-exploitation. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals, while the costs of exploitation are distributed between all those exploiting the resource.

That was the parable to which I was referring. The Wiki entry also notes that

It was then popularized and extended by Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science essay "The Tragedy of the Commons".

BTW, the overpopulation scientists were kind of humbled when the growth curve started its downtrend in the 1980s. "Oops." Our doomsaying always sounds better when it's semi-scientific.