Is a Utopia Realistic?

For the past few days in our history class, we have been working together in small groups to create ancient ideal civilizations.  Our guidelines were to design a realistic civilization that can protect itself from destructive forces such as environmental disasters, wild animals, and competing civilizations. Our community also had to be able to supply its citizens with their basic physiological needs. However, no matter how close our group thought we were to making a civilization that could withstand anything, another potential problem always sprang up.  This made me think about whether a utopia can actually be created.  Can a civilization possibly be invulnerable to all major threats and catastrophes?

When civilizations were first being established, their primary goal was to prosper in an area of land where they felt safe and could supply their people with basic physiological necessities.  However, there were always problems.  If a civilization was near a large water source with the purpose of obtaining food and water, a flood could strike them.  If a civilization relied greatly on agricultural farming for food, they could still be hit with a drought resulting in a famine.  Even if a civilization was successful in avoiding environmental problems, they were always vulnerable to attacks from other civilizations.  In any scenario, there was a chance of a disaster ruining the civilization.

Therefore as centuries passed, humans began to invent tools and devices to protect themselves from environmental disasters and wars with other civilizations.  The civilization with the best technology would find the most food, conquer the greatest amount of land, and protect itself from the largest environmental catastrophes.  However, as inventions progressed and production rates increased, a problem came back to haunt humans that they hadn't had to cope with sense the early years of civilization: the wrath of the environment.  

Before the human race knew it, they had found themselves ruining their environment that had sustained them for thousands of years. The consequences were and have been substantial. Due to large amounts of pollution, global warming and depletion of fresh water are issues that will dramatically affect human health in the near future.

It seems that no matter how many advancements the human race can produce to help protect itself from the possible disasters, it can never achieve a completely safe world.  In my opinion, a utopia is only an idea, a dream, or a goal that humans should aim for.  However, in reality it is impossible to achieve a true perfect world.