Hello everyone, my name is Anthony Russo and I am currently a sophomore at Penn State University Park. I currently live in downtown State College for school and I am from a small town about half an hour outside of Reading called Douglassville. For those not familiar with that area, it is about one and a half hours west of Philadelphia. The major I am currently studying is Security and Risk Analysis with the Intelligence Analysis and Modeling option. With this major I hope to work for either the government or a large corporation in the business sector. I am not very sure which route I want to pursue yet. Geography has always interested me when it came up in lesson plans of former courses. I wanted to learn about the subject more in depth. One fun fact about me is that I like to play golf and have scored a hole-in-one from 169 yards out.
After being introduced to the breadth of perspectives in the field of geography, a major issue that has come to my attention is that of global warming. This issue is important because there is a good chance it is responsible for the changes currently being witnessed on Earth. The influx in temperatures and the melting of the top of the planet are just a few examples. The scale of global warming is not just a small region, but the entire planet. This is very well suited for the subject of geography because a major contributor to this epidemic is human impact on the environment such as carbon monoxide produced from man-made cars. This leads to humans questioning whether we can sustain ourselves with other ecological systems. I would like to explore the ethics of humans and see how much we put ourselves over the ecosystem. What would be different if humans didn’t prioritize themselves over non-human ecological systems?
Anthony,
Your posting is interesting and insightful. Global warming is one of the greatest challenges we face, in many regards. First, we have to get people to acknowledge that there is a problem, as if a near-unanimous consensus of scientists and an abundance of observable physical evidence were not enough. I was fortunate to visit Mt. Rainier in Washington State several years ago. The retreat of the glacier is just incredible! And disheartening! Then we must move ourselves and our society to action. This a daunting task to say the least.
On several occasions I have tried to engage my congressman in a dialogue on the subject of global warming, only to be met with “canned” email responses and silence. He cannot even bring himself to make a statement on his website of his position on this issue. However, I will not give up.
You appear to have a good handle on this issue. I look forward to what you have to say in future postings.
Mike Evangelista
https://sites.psu.edu/geog30/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=post&author=65077
Hi Anthony,
Thank you for your response to my blog post.
I enjoyed reading your post. Global warming seems to have a large impact on the current discussion of climate change. Everywhere I look in news on climate change global warming is right behind it. It is evident that the earth’s climate is changing due to natural and human causation. As a geography and environment & society minor, I have focused my studies on how humans will adapt to earth’s warming, rather than reverse our impact. I believe in some aspects that global warming is natural, but do not deny that humans have aided the current situation. Sustainability is becoming crucial for humans to mitigate the effects of global warming on all scales.We often view climate change on a global scale, but it is much easier to look at local scales when adjusting human interactions with the environment. It blows my mind that humans are the only organism to adapt and live in all regions of the world. We have the intelligence to do so, but is this style of adaptation ethical? To address your question about prioritization, I believe humans would suffer a population decline if we stopped prioritizing our species. From my experience, I have seen individuals across the globe adapt to their ecosystem rather than exploit its resources and reshape the land. I think customizing our ecosystems has become too natural to the human species. I also wonder what else would be different if humans spent less time prioritizing themselves and more time caring for the environment on a global rather than local scale.
You can access my blog below.
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/01/14/laurene1/
Hello Anthony, I’m Ian feel free to give my blog post a read here: https://wp.me/p3RCAy-aRg. I agree with your statements about the need to give more attention to the ecosystem. I am a winter person so I connect with the fear of global warming. Not only can it impact the mountains and areas where skiing and snowboarding are prevalent, but also the cities and towns neighboring bodies of water due to the rise of sea level. As much as I would hate to see snow and ice forms dissolve from this planet I would also hate it just as much to see the number of lives that would be changed due to such thing. That being said I hope the world shows progression in the efforts to reduce global warming.