Summary and Reflection on Island Civilization

In Roderick Frazier Nash’s, Island Civilization, he addresses the problem of our planet in peril of environmental devastation. He presents us with a solution that is not so human centered and instead takes into effect the rights of our the earth itself.

Nash reminds us of something that many of us forgot our never actually realized; That we created the boundary between civilization and wilderness. The earth has no sanctioned land for development. It is only humans, who in our quest for organization and control deemed some places conquered. It was only when we became so powerful that we were now in control of the wilderness, did we realize the value of it. Nash says that Americans were generally surprised to find out that the frontier was closed. It seemed to be an unlimited resource, an abundance of wild fire that would never really go out. But in less than a century, it had been mapped, settled, and even had a railroad built across it. When the industrial revolution had set in, the wilderness changed from something to be feared and conquered, to a recreational destination.
It wasn’t until people perceived the wilderness to be valuable, did they attempt to preserve it. When people started to appreciate nature, environmentalism was started. Yet, even though laws and actions were being made to protect the Earth, it was only for the benefit and enjoyment of humans that we started too. We thought about our future and how the Earth wouldn’t be able to properly provide for us .
Nash introduces a plan that calls for priority to be given to the planet instead of humans. His solution of “Island Civilization” calls for all human development to be confined to closed off sectors from nature or “islands”. Natures process would not be interfered with except in the deemed areas of these islands. People and nature would be completely cut off for the good of the planet and the only contact would be someone choosing to venture out into the wilderness by choice. Even then, Nash goes as far to say that no permanent shelter or even small agriculture would be allowed outside the walls of civilization. Never has man put himself behind something. The value of the life of a single human being today is arguably at its highest in history with the medical technology available to sustain life longer and much money invest in life insurance. Death is a major inconvenience in the world these days. The question this raises is how much is a man worth compared to nature. Is a man worth a forest? How about a mountain range or river? Or is it just a single tree? All of these things will certainly be around longer than a man.
For the “Island Civilization” plan to actually work, man must first re-appropriate his value with the Earth’s. This will require a lot of new restrictions and boundaries that people are just not use to. For so long we have expected the Earth to provide for us and give nothing back in return. Now to be “good neighbors” to the planet, we must pull our weight in the global ecosystem. Will man’s inherent greed hold us back from realizing such a plan? Maybe we will never look far enough into the future to solve long term problems that span even longer than one hundred years. Either way, a solution needs to be agreed on soon, by the whole population and I believe the Earth will need to be granted certain rights of humans for it to be effective.