Island Civilization Summary/Response

In his essay entitled “Island Civilization: a Vision for Human Occupancy of Earth, Roderick Frazier Nash proposes a unique solution to the problem of environmental decay that currently threatens our planet. He believes that humans must do what they can to restore the planet to its natural state; the wilderness that it once was before people began to manipulate, control, and pollute the environment. Nash makes the point that the world is not ours to destroy and take from, but rather that people live alongside nature without disturbing it. This seems like a very good idea, and the way he explains our history of conquering and taming the wilderness is intended to demonstrate that the current course is savage and unsustainable.  Agreeing with him is easy at first. If we end up destroying the environment, it will be embarrassing for us when future generations, in Nash’s words, “learn the truth about passenger pigeons, salmon, whales, an coral reefs”. This is a very affective argument, and it explains why what we have done is wrong and reasons why the destruction of the environment is wrong.

Nash then proposes what is, in his opinion, the ideal solution that future generations should implement. It is a system in which people establish pockets of civilization that he calls “islands”. These islands, of which there would be a few hundred, would be scattered throughout the world, each island being a hundred or so miles in diameter. Aside from the islands, the rest of the world would be stripped of any evidence of humans, and nature would hopefully return it back to its original, wilderness state. Small pockets of humanity would exist in a vast expanse of wilderness.

This method, however, seems unappealing. Instead of humans expanding and continuing to grow and make progress, the Island Civilization method puts a limit on how for people can go by cutting down on the size of our population and limiting our freedom and mobility. The one thing almost every person universally strives for is achieving more and bigger and better things. Without this hope and drive for improvement, we would simply exist. Island civilization will doom us to simply existing by putting a limit on how for we can go.

Another option that Nash dismisses is the idea of the Garden Scenario, in which, in the future, people have mastered and gained control of all natural processes. We would have completely mastered our planet by optimizing and modifying it to suit our needs. Nash says that when this happens, we will no longer be a part of nature; we will have stepped off of the “biotic team”. That does not seen to be such a bad thing though, after all, we will have become masters of our planet and our lives. If we get to a point where we no longer need the wilderness and our environment, why keep it? It seems much more desirable to let humanity expand to its fullest potential, rather than put a cap on growth and stop progress all together. If we can create a perfect world like in the Garden scenario we should. The wilderness may fall by the wayside, but it is a worthy price to pay for the sake of progress. It is better to have a perfect, united world inhabited and mastered by us, than to have bears and forests.

The Island Civilization scenario is an unnecessary, complicated, and limiting idea, where as the Garden scenario allows the healthy and sustainable expansion and progress of the human race that will benefit everyone.