Emily D'Souza- Outside Reading 3: "Ecology of Eden"

 I read the Ecology of Eden for my religion and ecology class last semester, but I feel like there are many aspects of the book that relate to this class. The reason I think it relates to the class is because I think it illustrates the means in which we can live in order to be sustainable with the environment. The book emphasizes this idea of “mountains” and “towers”. The mountain represents nature and the towers represent industrialization and city life. But what’s in between the two? Eisenburg described the bridge between the two as our modern day suburbs. The suburbs provide the space and beauty of nature, but also have the benefits of society, such as stores, human interaction, and work. The reason the suburbs would be more sustainable than living in a city or living in nature, is because they don’t produce the same pollution and cause the same environmental issues as cities, but they also don’t infringe upon nature as much as it would if you were to be living directly in it. This is interesting to me, because in my mind, living in nature and amongst the land would seem like the most sustainable mode, however, it isn’t because if humans dwell in nature, it takes away the “Nature”. Another thing I deemed relevant from this book is the idea of “Arcadia”, which is portrayed as the perfect world. Realistically, you can’t live in Arcadia, because there is no such thing as a perfect world. Even with environmental protection, the environment will never be perfect due to human interference, and there is never a perfect solution as to stopping environmental degredation.