Hello my name is Ryan Kramer. I’m from Harleysville, Pennsylvania which is located in Montgomery county, about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I am a freshman at Penn State and my current major is environmental engineering, however I plan on transferring into chemical engineering. I took a similar class in the summer called Sustainability in Jamaica. In that class I actually traveled to Jamaica for a week and got to experience life in an entirely different country. I feel that my experience gained from that trip will be extremely useful for this class since I witnessed the effect of how geography affects people’s lives. For example, in Jamaica, the largest export is high quality aluminum ore called bauxite. However, since the process of mining bauxite is harmful to the country’s environment, the government is faced with the problem of picking money or the environment.
The area of this class that interested me most was the human/environment interactions. I think that within the next couple of decades, the world could begin facing issues with pollution and environment destruction. In addition examining how and why people live in certain places adds to my curiosity on why I am taking this class. I think it will be interesting learning about how humans can live in a sustainable way, one that doesn’t harm the environment. Of course each country will have different circumstances and limiting factors, but in general it will be interesting to see how humans can improve ourselves.
Hey josh! My name is kaitlyn, and I chose to respond to your blog post because I found your trip to Jamaica to be extremely interesting. Many of my close friends also went to Jamaica last year on a missions trip and had similar experience to your own. They were amazed at how differently the people in Jamaica live from ourselves. I also chose to focus on human-environment interaction, and I thought your perspective was interesting as well. I think we need to work together to find a solution to the pollution problem our society faces.
Hi Josh. My name is J.R. and I am also a freshman here at Penn State. Here is the link to my blog: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/01/19/module-1-getting-to-know-you-4/
I found it interesting that you were able to travel to Jamaica for a class this summer. The fact that the government there has to make such an important decision really caught my attention. Hopefully we learn more material like that in this class.I also am interested in learning more about the human and environment interactions that happen in our ecosystem. Like you said, pollution is a topic that needs to be addressed and a better alternative needs to be thought of to help our planet out.