Over Using Food Resources

There are tons of reasons why we would need a drastic idea like Roderick Nash’s “Island Civilization” to change our planet. I feel the most important one is the over use of our food resources. We are depleting the nutrients in the soil for crops and overfishing at alarming rates. John Locke wrote in the Tragedy of the Commons about this issue. He believed we should divide the land to provide enough for everyone to live sustainably. In other words if you only need one cow to survive, don’t over take the common space by having three cows. I completely agree with this notion. This whole problem could be solved if people just lived off of what they needed and not what they wanted. This notion of living sustainably also ties nicely into Nash’s ideas of decreasing population and taking what is needed.

            To me the biggest concern is overfishing. The ocean is a very fragile place, but a very important place as well. Overfishing is causing a large unbalance in the marine ecosystems. The decline in bait fish has caused the apex predators of the food chain to starve. Slowly these important ecosystems are disappearing causing the ocean to become a very tumultuous environment. In order to restore this place, everyone has to be willing to sacrifice their steak and lobster dinners. Like both Nash and Locke stated in their papers, we must all give up our wants for the common good. In order to change anything we have to be reduced to just our needs.