1I was recently thinking about how much of the world exists as an abstraction to me. I know the names of distant continents, nations I've never visited, mountains I've never climbed, species that have not yet gone extinct but that I may never actually encounter in real life, at least not outside of zoos. Just as I appreciate the mere existence of these places and phenomena that I have not yet directly encountered in my life, I also appreciate the idea of "sharing the planet" with other human individuals and societies and with other species. Why not? I have enough of what I need in my own life, so, yes, live and let live. Please take all that you need, too!

2But this is a passive, lazy, meaningless kind of "sharing," isn't it? Unless I actively sacrifice something of my own, something I have worked to acquire and perhaps even something I vitally need, am I really experiencing the act of "sharing"? And if I do not have this intense, visceral experience of sharing, have I accomplished anything beyond allowing a kind of passive delusion of self-righteousness to pass through my consciousness?

3Last week I was on the island of Guam in the vast, blue western Pacific Ocean. It's far away from where I live in the American state of Idaho—Guam is far away from everything, basically. It's 843 kilometers from the tiny island of Yap, one of the 2,100 or so tiny dots of land known as Micronesia, where seafarers who navigate by the stars put to sea and somehow, amazingly, find their way to distant islands. At the International Conference on Island Sustainability, I listened to a man named Larry Raigetal, a Yap islander and a master navigator, give a talk called "What would happen to traditional navigation if sea levels continue to rise"? It would not be good. The rising sea levels and changing cloud patterns and other environmental shifts would make it difficult or impossible for the paddlers of outrigger canoes to reach their destinations. An entire ancient way of life would be submerged, disrupted, dissolved.

4Surely none of us who would "share the planet" with other species and with other human societies intentionally wishes to cause the collapse of other civilizations. We write powerful articles about the necessity of sharing. We organize special issues of journals. We invent disciplines such as ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. We're good.

5But the sea levels rise, typhoons roar across the sea and lift roofs off college buildings in Saipan, coral reefs die, changing weather patterns lead to widespread drought on remote islands, forcing villagers and city dwellers to rely on bottled water and then to dispose of these bottles (where?). We also buy up precious island land for hotels and restaurants on Palau that cater only to foreign visitors, seeking sanctuary from our hectic continental lives and literally pushing islanders into the sea. This is all happening today, as we speak. As we write eloquently about sharing the planet.

6On Guam last week, I listened to Tony de Brum, ex-Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands and now the islands' chief climate negotiator, plead for the world to appreciate the "unique vulnerabilities" of the region's many island societies and ecosystems, while accepting that fact that, for most of the world, Micronesia exists as "insignificant dots on the map in the middle of nowhere."

7I gave a talk at the island conference called "'We are here!': Poignancy, Storytelling, and the Concept of an Island-Sustainability Testimony Project," which suggested that it might be possible to summon the stories of people in the region to make the Pacific islands and remote, abstract islands throughout the world less abstract and more "poignant" for continent-dwellers—might, in fact, help those on continents realize what it means to live on an island, which is, in fact, where we all do live, if we happen to live on "Earth Island."

8The educator and writer Mitchell Thomashow wrote in his book Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change that "you don't have to be optimistic to be hopeful." I am not particularly optimistic that we are good enough, as a species, to "share" this planet with other people and other species currently living here or with future generations. We want what we want. But I am hopeful that many of us will continue to strive toward the realization of justice and sustainability—toward genuine, meaningful sharing. This earnest striving is something in which we can take heart.