A Need for an Island Civilization

A Need for an Island Civilization

                Noting the way we, as humans, treat the Earth, it’s clear that something disastrous is in the forecast.  I’m not normally one to preach about global warming, but the evidence is too overwhelming to ignore.  Global warming doesn’t just make the air temperature hotter; it intensifies all of the seasons.  This means more hurricanes, longer droughts, and unbearable heat waves.  It has been recorded that in some areas, the winters are more mild and shorter; but that is not necessarily a good thing.

Coming from a small farming community near Erie, Pennsylvania, I know a few things about the importance of a lake-freezing winter.  Back home I can just walk through a couple acres of grape vineyards and be at Lake Erie.  Actually, nobody can go too far without seeing the two most important aspects of my town: the grapes and the lake. However, when the grape roots don’t freeze during the winter, the sugar content in the grapes lowers which makes it more difficult for the farmers to sell their crops.  Some of the crops even started blooming in February instead of May, causing a panic during March when we had a small snow fall. Because this winter was one of the warmest ever recorded in North East, Pennsylvania, the farms are going through one of the hardest times in history.   Not even the lake froze over and, much to my dismay; we didn’t have a single snow-day at school.  Of course because of the fact that the lake didn’t freeze, nobody was able to go ice fishing which in turn caused numerous businesses to suffer during their normally most prosperous season.  So you see this weather is affecting not only our environment, but our economy as well and in turn our wellbeing. 

In all honesty, if something isn’t done, my hometown will no longer be in existence and I know it’s not the only one of its kind. Developing into an island civilization could be a solution.  Within an island civilization, there would be less pollution and therefore fewer greenhouse gases which would at least slow down the process of global warming, if not, reverse it. But trying to be realistic, full-on island civilizations are not exactly necessary here; we could just take certain aspects of the concept and apply them to each town like mine.  Everyone could live the same as they do now, just more consciences of the environment and how it directly affects them.  By driving electric cars, recycling, planting more trees, and making aerosol cans go extinct, we could really start something. 

This movement will be a lot like the acceptance of African Americans in United States.  At the start, it seemed virtually impossible, and it was very hard in the early decades. Because of the way children were raised by their parents, racism stayed alive for a long time after African Americans were able to gain all the same rights as everyone else.  But because I grew up in a completely different society as my grandparents, the fact that our President is African American doesn’t seem like much of a feat to me.  If we can change our mindset from thinking “slave” to “President” in 143 years, then I’m pretty sure we can change our mindset to start being more friendly to the environment.  We just have to teach the upcoming generations to treat the Earth with respect and in time, an island civilization could be very possible.