Jan 10 Nash Reading Response

            Island Civilization: A Vision For Human Occupancy of Earth In the Fourth Millennium by Roderick Frazier Nash highlights several of the key historical events that forced the earth to become the not-so ecologically friendly environment that it is today. It talks about the fact that since humans have evolved into somewhat of a dominant species and no longer see themselves as a part of wilderness and nature, the majority of the decisions they make about the environment are extremely anthropocentric. Humans have once seen nature as almost pointless and that it’s better to just conquer the territory no matter what the consequences because human expansion is seen as power. The article goes on to discuss the recent radical changes and laws passed within the second millennium that forced humans to look at other types of life forms as important and beneficial and gave them the right to live in their land peacefully.

            The article talks about the changing minds of humans and how we are attempting to learn to see ourselves as part of the environment and nature without being separate from wilderness. Humans are trying to learn conservation skills to try to maintain and preserve all types of life and not just their own. The most important topic of this article wasn’t the description of the ever-changing thoughts of humans and their environment, but rather the possible consequences that can come about at the start of the fourth millennium in close to one thousand years. There are two different extremes to what can become of the entire earth’s biotic relationships- either the earth enters into the “wasteland scenario” or the humans in the earth learn to become completely sustainable and use their technology and intelligence to create “island civilizations” or something of the sort.

            The “wasteland scenario” can occur if the planet and the people in it continue to trash it leading to a planet with a very low amount of biodiversity. On the other end of the eco-friendly spectrum is the “island civilization” in which humans move to little islands and allow for wilderness to continue in the mainland in order to limit the ecological footprint that humans leave. In between these two scenarios include the possible “garden scenario” in which humans end up controlling all parts of nature and our society becomes completely anthropocentric as well as the “future primitive” in which humans learn to use technology in a much more efficient and responsible way.

            Overall, I feel as though Nash has an excellent point when he talks about the fact that everything humans create and everything humans do pretty much revolves around the wants and needs of our particular species. It’s not fair to cause all of the other species that we share this planet with to suffer and possibly lose their habitats for the enjoyment of humans. Although the changes that humans have created in order to benefit other species on the planet have been rather minute, it’s a rather large step in helping to get our earth in functioning in the way it was ten thousand years ago.

            As phenomenal as the “island civilization” scenario for the fourth millennium seems, I highly doubt anything like that will ever occur. The only scenario I could actually see occurring on this planet in the future are the negative ones. The human species is incredibly selfish and I cannot see them giving up their mainland and moving to islands in order to support the rest of life on the planet. I can understand humans learning to recycle and using their technology more efficiently but I know there will be billions of stubborn people that refuse to go through and allow the drastic change that the earth needs to return to it’s primitive healthiness.

            One point that Nash did make that I completely agree with was that one of the main ways to help earth is to get population growth back to a stable percentage. The fact that human populations are growing in such an extreme manner, it’s limiting the natural resources and using all of them up. Overall, something has to be done about the current environmental situation. However, I’m not sure what laws one could pass or what changes could be made that will be the most beneficial in order to prevent our planet from turning into a rather large wasteland.