Island Civilization Response

Rodrick Nash’s Island Civilization discusses how we as humans have impacted our environment for the worse over time and offers a solution to the problem. He begins his essay by defining wilderness as “self-willed land” or land that humans did not interfere with. Humans slowly developed from being hunters and gatherers, where they would live off the wilderness, to pastoral societies, where they would farm and herd animals. Pastoral societies destroyed the environment because they introduced human dominance in to the wild. These pastoral societies developed into industrialized societies and continued to spread further and further. Now, “only about two percent of the contiguous forty-eight states are legally wild,” which shows how over three hundred years humans have taken control of millions of acres of land where now only a very small portion remains like it was thousands of years ago.

            After giving a brief history of how humans have destroyed the wild, Nash goes on to suggest a way to return to its natural state over time. First, he points out that the human population cannot continue to grow exponentially. He suggests a maximum population of 1.5 billion humans. These humans would be spread out over the world in “islands” or what we would compare to currently as communities or cities. These “islands,” however, would be self-sustaining meaning that they would provide all of the food, water, electricity, and other essentials for life to their community and their community only. There would not be communication between the different “islands” nor economic exchanges. The communities would have a one hundred mile radius in which the humans would maintain. Anything that was not within the “island” would transform back into the wild as it would not be maintained by humans.  Humans would have the choice to live within these “islands” or, if they desired, they could go out into the wild, but they would have to maintain the hunter and gatherer lifestyle. This was Nash’s solution to the current environment issue.

            While I do agree that there is an environment issue, I would have to disagree with Nash and his idea. While it would be an effective way in eliminating human destruction of the wild, his idea is just not feasible. The amount of destruction humans have done to the Earth is enormous, and almost irreversible. For example, the roadways which we drive on are designed to last for the longest amount of time possible. While everything does eventually disintegrate it will take years upon years before the Earth is back to its natural beauty. Once the roads finally disappear, trees will have to grow again. Then there is the human aspect of the issue. The current population of Earth is almost seven billion people. Nash wants to eliminate five and a half billion people. While, theoretically over time, decreasing the population is possible, but you would have to convince billions of people not to reproduce or find a way to force them.  While a utopian society would be ideal, uniting everyone in the world to go along with this idea would be the greatest hindrance.  Nash’s idea would have to have a lot of things going for it which is why I do not see it as being a practical solution to the destruction of the wild.