Thinking Spatially - AP Human Geography and Current Issues

This week, a 16 year old Swedish girl named Greta Thunberg delivered a scathing speech to the world leaders at the U.N. Climate Action Summit. Her message was simple: “... we’ll be watching you.” By ‘we’, she meant the four million students from across the globe who joined her on Monday on a climate strike, as well as every child and teenager in the world. She seemed to be to notifying the assembly of heads of state, as well as their governments and powerful people, that their inaction on climate change is being seen by her generation. “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” In her speech she scorns world leaders for setting climate change on the shoulders of teenagers, who should be focused on their schoolwork rather than saving the world. She shames them for talking about money and economic growth when the world is dying. In her speech, Greta Thunberg stat...

Many people think that technology will be the solution to environmental struggles in the world. Although it is true that advanced technology does play a very important role in decreasing the effect that humans have on the environment, it is not as innocent as it seems. Technology has many negative effects on the world and its consumption of energy and resources. In 2000, there were about 415,000 internet device devices in the world. In 2016, that number had grown to 3.5 million. That is an 826% increase in only 16 years. The amount of technology and energy being used has significant impacts on the environment. Techno-trash is a term that refers to the outdated technology that, once it is replaced by something better, will have no use anymore. 5% of all solid waste that we throw out is this outdated technology. We throw out 20-50 million tons of techno-trash every year. The US produced 3.41 million tons of this ourselves in 2011! Inconceivable amounts of techno-trash are being discard...

In the last one-hundred years, global sea levels have risen on average between four and eight inches. The major role in this statistic is the continuous melting of glaciers. These glaciers are large combinations of ice, snow, sediments, and rocks. With glaciers retaining around seventy percent all freshwater on Earth, these ice masses are a force to be reckoned with. According to The Guardian, a single continental glacier (Thwaites) will eventually become too unstable and it will quickly melt causing a fifty-centimeter rise in sea levels. However, this is not the only glacier with a strong sense of instability. In West Antarctica alone, if all glaciers were to melt there would be a predicted five-meter (16 feet) rise in global sea levels. This would put the majority of coastal cities at risk of being underwater and causing a mass evacuation. Not only are there future risks for these coastal regions, but many of these areas are already seeing the effects through increased floodin...

In today’s culture people are more polarized in political views.  In recent years Republicans have become much more conservitive and Democrats have become much more liberal which is causing an increase in tension among these two groups. The graphs below show how the beliefs of Republicans and Democrats have become much more polarized.  The graphs shown below compare the political ideologies of a group of 10,000 adults in 1994 and 2014.  In the span of twenty years the percent of people who report having consistently conservitive or consistently liberal has more than doubled.    The map below shows that over the years individual counties are much more likely to be won in a landslide now than in the nineties.  People in individual areas or becoming much more homogeneous in their ideologies, they are surrounding themselves with people who share our opinions and shun those who do not.  This problem has grown over the years so now half of all voters ...

Around two people die each second in the world. That totals to 151,600 deaths each day. The most traditional ways to deal with death disposal are burial and cremation, but are we realizing what it is doing to the planet? First of all, it is costing us precious natural resources that we could be using for other things. Additionally, it is causing more environmental damage than originally predicted. Not only that, but it arises the concerns of uneven birth rates to death rates. What can we do about it? When we lose a loved one, the last thing we think about is the environment, and that’s okay! However, it is taking away resources that we never stop to think about. For example, cremation uses natural gas and sometimes wood. While it doesn’t use as much wood as it did in the past, it is still a great use of a vital natural resource. It has been said to use as much gas and electricity as a 500-mile road trip. Casket burials are taking 100,000 tons of steel, 1.5 million tons of concret...

“Every day in America, 17 young people are murdered with a gun,” states Maggie Thompson , who is the executive director of Generation Progress. Gun violence is an epidemic, and sadly children and young adults are increasingly being affected. These effects are destroying their mental health and possibly the future to our world. Without children there is no future, so why are we not helping to take care of them. Although they can’t represent themselves children worldwide are becoming more and more affected by gun violence everyday. It even goes as far as gun violence passing car crashes as the leading killer in young adults. The effects of these devastating crimes is not only affecting children physically but it is also destroying their fragile mental health. Since their brain is not fully developed it is way more fragile and such a scary event as gun violence can stick with them forever. The Family Development Center located at Cornell University suggest that the kids witnessing o...

American’s often consider the U.S.A as the greatest country in the world. However in recent years the education in America has not shown this to be true. As of the end of 2018, the U.S is ranked 14th overall in test scores. Test scores in 2018 with top ranking south Korea compared to 14th rank U.S. From World Population Review “We throw more money at our schools than just about any other country, and what do we get? For our K-12 school system, an honorary membership in the Third World. Not long ago, we had a superb public school system, but now we trail most countries. In math, we’re 38th in the world among developed countries in terms of how 15 year-olds perform. And it’s getting worse, not better.”writes Professor F. H. Buckley in a Fox News opinion column.  Professor Buckly stated that the U.S at one time had a great public school system, but we quickly dropped down the list. At no level, early childhood, K-12, higher education, are we in the top ten internationally. O...