Final Human Geography Essay

1. Final Human Geography Essay

2. Population • How we impact the environment: • If you agree with the Malthusians you would say that there is a limit to how many people the earth can support. If you agree with the Cornucopians you would say that more people make us smarter – we’ll find a way to cope.

3. Population • How we impact the environment, con’t: • Japan: taller houses, more land being used for housing, filling in wetlands/marshes and building cities • Terrace farming in Japan • Bangladesh: overfishing to get enough food • Bangladesh: taking down forests and damaging tiger habitat

4. Population • How the environment impacts us – • Japan: have to build up because they don’t have space – it is mountainous/volcanic and an island • Bangladesh: typhoons killed 150,000 people who lived in low-lying areas – they lived there because the population was so large they had nowhere else – more people have moved in now

5. Population • How the environment impact us: • Japan: causes us to increase technology to compensate (underground trains, bullet train, capsule hotels)

6. Food Production • How we have impacted our environment: • GMOs not known whether or not they are safe, they are blown around and affect other land – they often contain pesticides, or breed them to be chemical resistant • Meat production – taking too much space to grow feed for the animals (inefficient because 16lbs of grain creates 1 lb of meat) • Hormones and chemicals fed to animals pollute the water and air through feces/poop • 300 gallons of water to produce food for a day for a vegan, 4000 gallons to feed meat eater

7. Food Production • How the environment impacts us: • GMO’s potential harm people – • GMO’s that “escape” where they are supposed to be, contaminate and take over other crops, hurting our ability to grow more food • When GMO’s escape, the big companies like Monsanto can sue small farmers • Polluted water/air making people sick • Polluted meat can make people sick

8. Global Warming • How we have impacted the environment: • Greenhouse gases thickening the atmosphere, trapping the heat – CO2, ammonia, methane all contribute and come from pollution. • Use energy that pollute – gas, coal – 50% of CO2 comes from US and China • Polar Ice Caps melting: creates warmer oceans which makes storms stronger (Hurricane Katrina), kill polar bears through destruction of habitat • Heat wave in Europe in 2005 killed 35,000

9. Global Warming • How it impacts us: • Increase in natural disasters – hurricanes in the Pacific • Change in precipitation patterns – raining more and harder causing flooding, droughts in other places • Rise in sea level will cause massive flooding