2b. Vegetation

Plant Communities or Biomes (McKnight fig. 11.10)

• humans and cultures have been shaped by vegetation...
  

  'Great American Desert'

  
  

  

  Fences and Vegetation: Wood fences (left) vs. barbed wire fences (right)

  
  

  ...but humans and cultures can adapt and change vegetation

  

  

  Palmerton: where is it?

  
  

  

  Irrigation in Mexico

2c. Landforms

• landforms shape human and cultural activities...

  

  

  Guns and Landforms: Kentucky Rifle (top) vs. Colt Six Shooter (bottom)

  
  

• ...but humans and cultures adapt and change landforms

  

  Kissimmee River, Florida (left) and Shamokin, Pennsylvania (right)

  
  

• New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina (August/September 2005): over 10,000 dead?

  

  • tan is above sea level, blue is below sea level (map courtesy of C. Gersmehl)

    
    

• As furious as the hurricane: The Blame Game
  • "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." George Bush, Sept 1, 2005

  • "Hurricane Pam" (2004) computer simulation of hurricane impact on New Orleans area, predicted the breach of the levees, the inability of approximately 100,000 area residents to leave the city (lack of transportation, money, or external family support), and the inadequacy of the regional evacuation plan. Meeting about the simulated hurricane impact attended by local, state, and federal agencies (FEMA, White House, Homeland Security).

  • Sept 1, 2005: Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (responsible for the levee system in New Orleans): "We certainly understood the potential impact of a category 4 or 5 hurricane."

  • "Let's not play the blame game." George Bush, Sept 7, 2005

  • "When people don't want to play the blame game, it's because they are to blame." Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Sept 7, 2005

    
    

  • Sunday Sept 4: Washington Post and Newsweek: a "senior Bush official" claimed that "as of Saturday [Sept.3], [Louisiana Gov.] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency" thus delaying federal help with the Hurricane aftermath.

  • Monday Sept 5: Washington Post: "A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26."

    
    

  • Why no coherent evacuation plan? Expense? To complicated? "Less than two months ago, Cuba was able to move 1.7 million people on short notice." Efficient hurricane evacuation plan, praised by the US Red Cross. U.S. Gross National Product: $36,000 per person, Cuba Gross National Product: $943 per person (2003).

    
    

• More furious as the hurricane: the politics: race, poverty, the role of the federal government, god...
  • "George Bush doesn't care about black people." (Kayne West, on NBC's live broadcast of Concert for Hurricane Relief)

  • "Neither President Bush nor the federal government would have reacted any differently to the devastation in New Orleans had most of those stranded in the flood-raged city been white, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. Source.

    
    

  • "People living in the path of Hurricane Katrina's worst devastation were twice as likely as most Americans to be poor and without a car - factors that may help explain why so many failed to evacuate as the storm approached." "...Residents in the three dozen hardest-hit neighborhoods in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama also were disproportionately minority and had incomes $10,000 below the national average." "It's a different equation for poor people," explained Dan Carter, a University of South Carolina historian. "There's a certain ease of transportation and funds that the middle class in this country takes for granted." Source.

  • "US poverty rate up for fourth straight year (September 2005): the number of people living below the poverty line rose last year to 37.0 million people from 35.9 million in 2003, and the poverty rate increased to 12.7 percent from 12.5 percent. (US Census Bureau)." Source.

    
    

  • "You see in this example that even in the 21st century you need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do their best." (Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn)

  • On rebuilding New Orleans with federal assistance: "I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me." "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." (Dennis Hastert [R-Illinois], speaker of the House of Representatives)

    
    

  • "If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off." Ben Stein, from The American Spectator.

  • "God's angry with New Orleans. It's an evil city." (Brian Thomas, trapped New Orleans resident).

  • Steve Lefemine, an anti-abortion activist in Columbia, S.C., was looking at a full-color satellite map of Hurricane Katrina when something in the swirls jumped out at him: the image of an 8-week-old fetus. "In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion."

    

    
    
    

    

  In the end...

  
  

For Next Time...

Handout: Read a short article about Centralia Pennsylvania

Visit the Centraila WWW sites listed below for additional information, and type up one page:

• 1/2 page typed description of the environmental problem in Centralia
• 1/2 page typed of your reactions to the problem, questions, etc.
• Due: Next meeting in class

Centralia and the Anthracite Region online:

Centralia PA: Place Taste and the Taste of Place

A Brief History of the Centralia Mine Fire

2d. Human Environmental Interaction: The Centralia Mine Fire

Mine fire, underground in Centralia Pennsylvania

• good example of the complexity of environmental problems
• how human activities lead to environmental problems
• how it is often really tough to figure out what to do about the problems
• and how humans react to such problems in diverse ways

Watch Video: about 30 minutes

Comments: Centralia Mine Fire

Look at the historical context of human/environmental relations in Centralia.

Location of Centralia: Anthracite coal region in Pennsylvania

Centralia Fire, ca. 1980

Centralia as a microcosm: development of a complex human and cultural situation centered around an environmental problem

An update on Centralia

Centralia ca. 1981

Centralia ca. 1995

Sign in Centralia ca. 1980

Moving out of Centralia ca. 1980

Boarding up Centralia ca. 1980

Tearing down Centralia ca. 1980

Roadside, near Centralia ca. 1980

Burn area ca. 1995

Sign in Centralia ca. 1999

Burn area, Centralia ca. 1999

Burn area, Centralia ca. 1999

Downtown Centralia ca. 1995

Near Downtown Centralia ca. 1995

Propped up Row House ca. 1995

Propped up Row House ca. 1995

Centralia Mine Fire ca. 1995

Centralia Mine Fire ca. 1995

3. Human Perspectives on the Physical Environment

Human Environmental Cycle

Next: undertake a more methodical understanding factors in the human environment

Human activity in the natural world has increased greatly

There are many different ways of understanding the relationship between the environment and humans: vary over time, through space, and in all cases these are human concepts: they are not natural to the world

Resources: anything in the natural world that is useful to humans; a cultural appraisal of the natural world, as different cultures (and the same cultures at different times) assume certain things to be resources and others not

Middleton Table 2.1: Classification of Resources:

Resources in the Natural Environment

• continuous resources
• renewable resources
• non-renewable resources

Resources in the Human Environment

• extrinsic resources

Middleton: all environmental issues can be seen as the result of a mismatch between extrinsic resources and natural resources; they stem from people deliberately or inadvertently misusing or abusing the natural environment.

4. Human Forces Behind Environmental Issues

Interactions between humans and natural environment results from our attempts to satisfy real and perceived needs and wants

Middleton fig 2.1: Human Forces of Environmental Change

Human behavior leads to

• driving forces: population, technology, sociocultural organization

• mitigating forces: regulation, market adjustment, social reg.

Look at driving forces and mitigating forces with the example of population and how they lead to environmental change

Population

Historical concerns about population and natural resources

• Thomas Malthus: 1700s: population growth will outpace available resources

• many studies show that this happens

• but other studies show that it does not necessarily happen

Imbalances in power and wealth may be more significant forces driving negative changes in the environment.

5. Human Induced Imbalances

Imbalances created and maintained by economics, culture, and society

Exploitation and Dependency on the Global Scale

• many inequities in the world

• shift in control: used to be colonial powers controlled colonies

• now, developed world has most wealth, and indirectly controls former colonies

• inequities are extreme

  

  Gross National Product: Amount of Goods and Services Produced in a Year

  
  

  

  Middleton fig 2.4: Commodity concentration

• economic disasters lead to environmental disasters

Key idea: that imbalances - economic and political - are important driving forces behind environmental change

6. Interest in Environmental Issues

Human interest in environmental issues: not recent

• Early examples of humans responding to environmental change (mitigating forces)

Colonial Era: Environmental Interest 1600s thru 1800s

• rapid increase in curiosity about and understanding of the natural world

• scientific exploration and the data it collected revolutionized understanding

• birth of environmental sciences: geology, botany, meteorology

• birth of modern interest in environmental issues

• George Perkins Marsh: Man and Nature (1864)

• Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962)

Middleton table 2.4: 20th century Western Environmental Thought

Some extremes...

• Technocentric approaches: technology and economics can be used to solve environmental problems; relatively easy to solve environmental problems without major social or economic or political change

• Ecocentric approaches: deep rooted problems with ethics and morals lead to environmental problems; can't easily be fixed with economic or technological means; must change our world views

Pro-science and anti-science approaches

All these swirl together around any given environmental problem

7. Sustainable Development

Sustainable development: an attempt a compromise between economic development, the creation of wealth, and the exploitation of natural resources on one hand, and stewardship and conservation of natural resources and the natural environment on the other

Why has this become a popular idea?

Human impact on the environment has reached a threshold: more people accept that we may be seriously damaging the environment we need to survive

Middleton fig 3.3: how human society interacts with the environment

• cycle A: typical of global economy in historical times

• cycle B: when cycle A crosses an environmental threshold

• cycle C: sustainable development

Alas...sustainable development is a complicated and controversial term

7a The Idea of Sustainable Development

Origins in a Report: World Conservation Strategy (1980): All economic development programs should

• maintain ecological processes
• promote sustainable use of resources
• maintain genetic diversity

Developed further by the Brundtland Commission: United Nations, 1983

• Sustainable development: "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987)

Sustainable development draws together environmental, social, and economic concerns: basic guiding principles:

• continued support of human life

• maintenance of environmental quality and long-term stock of biological resources

• right of future generations to resources of equal worth to those used today

7b. Valuing Environmental Resources

Not everyone agrees with the idea of sustainable development, but it is an influential idea: work on sustainable development

ex) Environmental Economics: the world is based on money and costs and benefits and thus treat the environment in this manner

7c. Growth and Development

Key issue in sustainable development: relative roles of

• economic growth: quantitative expansion of economies

• development: qualitative improvement of society

Bruntland Commission 1987: sustainability achieved with a 5 to 10 fold increase in world economic activity in the next 50 years; to meet population growth

• but focus on economic growth has led to environmental degradation

• new focus: slow economic growth vs no growth

Within the context of sustainable development: growing influence of idea that we can improve human lives and society (development) with very slow or no economic growth by being more efficient and careful with our use of resources

Sum and Conclusions

Introduction to Earth's Physical Environment

What is Geography? and what is this course...

An overview of Earth's physical environment

• The Solar System and Earth's origins
• The Size and Shape of Earth
• Locating things on Earth: The Geographic Grid
• Earth Movements: Rotation and Revolution
• Earth's Seasons

An overview of the manner in which we Classify the Environment

• the Environmental Spheres
• Ecosystems and Biomes

The idea of Natural Systems

• Hydrologic Cycle, Carbon Cycle, etc.

Time and Space and Environmental Change

...then

Introduction to Human Environmental Interactions

Three general views of the relationship between humans and the environment

• environmental determinism
• human/cultural determinism
• human environmental interaction

• symbolic relationship

Human Environmental Cycle

Examples of human environmental relations

• climate, vegetation, landforms
• Centralia: complexity of human environmental problems

Overview of more key ideas and concepts

• human perspectives on the environment: resources
• human forces shaping environmental change: population
• human induced imbalances
• growth of human interest in environmental issues
• key idea of sustainable development

Next: Introduction to the Course Project

Then: Maps

• Reading: McKnight ch. 2

E-mail: jbkrygier@owu.edu

...to Geog 111 Main Page and Course Description
...to krygier teaching page.
...to krygier top page.

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