Tortilla Curtain

Former British Prime Minister (and future Nobel Laureate) Winston Churchill introduced the use of “curtain” as a metaphor for barriers in global geopolitics. He first used the term Iron Curtain in a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He applied coined the phrase to describe the rapidly growing post-war rift between the West and those countries allied with or controlled by the Soviet Union. That divide quickly became so profound that many students are likely to be unaware that the United States and the USSR were allies in World War II.

Churchill’s great, metaphorical divide is most often associated with the very tangible Berlin Wall (1961-1989), whose physical dismantlement is correlated with the demise of the Soviet Union and the fading of the Iron Curtain concept. The term

Bamboo Curtain was the eastern counterpart to the Iron Curtain, applied to the boundaries between Asian command economies (such as China and North Korea) and neighboring capitalist countries. The term was never as widely recognized as Iron Curtain, both because of its discontinuity and because alliances among communist countries were frequently shifting.

In his 1995 novel Tortilla Curtain, T. Coraghessen Boyle applies the curtain metaphor to cultural divides within North America.

Geography Directions: Remembering

From our Geography Directions site reviewing Wiley-Blackwell’s Geography Compass review journal covering the entire discipline.  Keep up with cutting edge academic geography.  These articles may be useful for introducing students to the discipline or may be appropriate for upper division Geography classes.

Remembering

by Fiona Ferbrache

Climate Change in the Pacific: State of Emergency

As outlined in a previous post, “Climate Change in the Pacific:  Help we’re drowning,” Pacific islands are bearing the first clear environmental shifts of global climate change.  Not only are the islands being threatened by rising sea levels, their territory and societies ‘drowning’ in the process; but, climate change is combining with other environmental conditions to jeopardize the essential fresh water sources that these insular societies depend on.

On October 2011, the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu declared a national state of emergency.   The emergency is that the country’s fresh water sources are running out and others are unfit for consumption.  Some areas of the island were projected to completely run out of potable, fresh water within two days of the declaration.  The conditions that led to the state of emergency are related to the longer term climate changes, but also to seasonal shifts.  A seasonal, La Niña weather pattern has been causing drought in Tuvalu.  Below-average rainfall has been experienced since June or at least and is projected to continue into December.  Most of the country’s fresh water supply comes from collected rainwater.  Another source of freshwater lies under the ground.  Yet, this source is limited.  Tuvalu is a series of low-lying coral atolls.  The geology of coral atolls does not support deep groundwater sources.  Further, the shallow groundwater that is found on these islands is being compromised by rising sea levels as salt water infiltrates the groundwater supply.  A reporting of animals deaths leads Tuvaluan Red Cross officials to question the safety of the groundwater supply for consumption.  Considering the nature of groundwater recharge, and most acute in Tuvalu, the lack of rainfall is accelerating the infiltration of seawater into subterranean water features.  The impacts of water shortages are felt in the islands’ traditional subsistence agriculture activities as well as water rationing affecting basic water services.  Tuvalu’s neighbor and New Zealand territory, Tokelau followed up soon after with its own state of emergency declaration.

The relief is coming from international organizations like the Red Cross as well as from the government of New Zealand.  The people of Tuvalu and Tokelau are being aided with water collection supplies, desalinization units and plenty of bottled water.  The larger affects are still yet to come.  In particular, questions about the long-term settlement of many low-lying Pacific islands have implications for nationhood, cultural traditions, economic rights, and logistics of mass migration.

 

One Country – Two Princes

Among this week’s interesting posts by geographer Amanda Briney is an article about the geography of Andorra, a small principality nestled in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France.  Most of us know this simply as a very small country, so it is good to learn some context and details about it. Most interesting to me is that it has a very unusual form of sovereignty, shared by two sovereigns who do not reside in the country. Moreover, one is secular and one religious!

Andorra shares several characteristics with other places that are dependent on tourism for economic development. Splendid scenery, an interesting history, and a situation that is at once isolated and convenient help to draw tourists. Meanwhile, its small area does not include abundant natural resources, and its high elevation and steep slopes limit the productivity of agriculture.

What is unusual about tourism in Andorra, however, is its incredible volume — with more than one hundred visitors per resident in a given year!

Suggested activities:

1. Use the Very Small Country quiz on JetPunk.com to learn the names of the world’s smallest countries — by area and population.

2. Divide the list among students, each of whom can learn about one country and report details about population, site, situation, and historical geography to the class as a whole. Research can begin with the Human Development Index, the CIA World FactBook, and the Census Bureau’s International Database.

What’s That Got to Do with the Price of Coffee Beans?

I give a lot of public presentations about coffee, usually focused on the millions of farmers around the world who are reliant on this commodity for an often meager livelihood. My talks may also cover the proper preparation of coffee, my regular travel with students to Nicaragua, and even the development of a sense of place at the corner café.

During the question and answer period at the end of each talk, I usually get asked one of two questions: “What do you think of Starbucks?” and “What do you think of Dunkin’ Donuts?” The polite answer is the former appears slightly more concerned about the lives of farmers than the latter, and the only large, conventional farm I have been allowed to visit was a Starbucks “Cafe Practice” farm.

When the retail price of coffee is rising — as it is now — price becomes the main area of curiosity. To the question of why prices are rising, my initial inclination has been to answer “I don’t care,” because it usually is not very important. A 10 or 20 percent increase in the wholesale price of coffee would not make a significant difference in the household budget of even the most avid coffee drinker, and the chances of such an increase being transferred to a farm family (where it actually would make a difference) are nil.

So the topic did not interest me until late 2010, when the price increases at the wholesale level became substantial enough that some farmers did start to know about it. The first thing I noticed was that the price was rising so rapidly that some “coyotes” — often unscrupulous middlemen who tend to control local coffee markets — were often able to exceed fair-trade prices.  What could be a very good bargain for farmers in the short term, however, was starting to undermine cooperatives that had taken years to establish. When the price of coffee falls in the future, the farmers may be without an organization to secure prices that meet the costs of production.

In the dominant free-trade model, commodity prices tend to fluctuate, as high prices draw producers and low prices draw consumers in a perpetual see-saw of demand and supply. Conventionally economists recognize the risk inherent in reliance on commodity income in such a circumstance, but it was the distinct contribution of Raúl Prebisch to demonstrate the dependency that arises from the secular decline of commodity prices relative to the prices of manufactured goods over the long term. The “earnings” line in the hypothetical cartoon below models the random fluctuation predicted by conventional economics; the “purchasing power” line models the combination of short-term random fluctuations and long-term decline that dependency theory predicts for commodity producers.

The combination of volatility, long-term decline in terms of trade, and specific historic circumstances led to the severe 1999 coffee crisis, which displaced many thousands of farm families. Some are calling the current, rapid price increases a “second coffee crisis,” because of the dynamic mentioned above that threatens the cohesion of local cooperatives.

California coffee buyer Max Nicholas-Fulmer offers the clearest explanation I have seen for the quick run-up in coffee prices. His January 2011 post on the Royal Coffee blog has, in fact, been republished widely, including on Coffee Buzz and in The Specialty Coffee Chronicle (2011n3).

The article offers several reasons for the increase in the price of coffee futures. The first is that single-origin specialty coffees are beginning to command substantial premiums that in turn are bringing up prices for futures on all Arabica coffees. Second, coffee yields and coffee quality are greatly dependent on consistent climate conditions, and for those conditions to be found in the same locations as specific properties of soil and topography. Nicholas-Fulmer gives several examples of the uncertainty in rainfall and its timing that are resulting from climate change. Finally, he describes the impact of suburban sprawl, which is no longer limited to industrial countries. Even in many coffee-producing countries of the global south, automobile-dependent growth puts farmland in direct competition with suburban land markets, enticing many to leave what has become an unprofitable land use.

As he wrote in January, coffee Certified Stocks (the “C” Market) were trading at $2.45 in New York, the highest it had been since the 1997 bubble, when it had reached $3.20. As I write today, it is even higher, at $2.70, so Nicholas-Fulmer’s observations appear to be relevant for the foreseeable future.

Suggested activities:

1. To learn about the relative prices of coffee at each stage of the commodity chain,  play Kelly Whalen’s game Your Coffee Dollar, which is on the web site for the PBS-Frontline program on coffee in Mexico and Guatemala. The low values the game ascribes to coffee growers are actually optimistic — close to 97 percent of coffee is sold in conventional markets that tend to pay growers even less that the amounts suggested in this exercise.

2. Visit a local, independent coffee shop and inquire about where the coffee comes from, whether price fluctuations are affecting the shop, and how much the staff knows about the production areas of the coffee.

Geo-STEM

Although education reform efforts in the United States have focused on basic writing and math literacy, many leaders are increasingly concerned about the erosion of the country’s leadership in the STEM disciplines:  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. For this reason, STEM education is increasingly the focus of education reformers and stakeholders from regional business groups to state governments to the White House science advisors.

In my own outreach work with K-12 students (mainly at the middle school level), the relationship between geography education and STEM education is increasingly clear. Because geography is both a social science and a physical science, the relationships between geography and STEM are sometimes less than clear.

In a recent letter to Dr. John Holdren, one of President Obama’s top science advisors, a coalition of geography organizations makes a strong case for geography and geospatial education as part of a national STEM-education policy. The Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO) includes both the Association of American Geographers and many organizations with more specific, technical missions, such as the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

All of the groups agree that the current state of thinking on STEM is too narrow in its exclusion of geography. Specifically, they make the case for geographic education, which they note is missing from the PCAST report Prepare and Inspire: K-12 STEM Education for the Future. They make the following arguments for its inclusion:

• A 2009 White House budget calls for placed-based policies and programs
• A 2006 Department of Labor report identified geospatial technologies as one of twelve New and Emerging Occupations
• In 2010, the Department of Labor identified geography as a Knowledge and Skill Area central to employment involving the geospatial technologies it had previously identified
• The National Science Foundation provided $7 million in funding to geography research projects in 2009-2010
• National Geospatial Technology Center for Excellence is funded in part by NSF for the purpose of improving university-level geography education; strong geography education in the K-12 sector is a prerequisite for success in these efforts
• President Obama has said, “We must educate our children to compete in an age where knowledge is capital, and the marketplace is global.”
• The PCAST report itself warns that methods for teaching STEM disciplines must be developed that allows students to apply what they learn to real-world problems. Geography is an integrative discipline that is well-suited to this critical need.

The case for geographic education is not limited to careers and technology, of course; as I have argued before my own state government’s education officials, geography is an essential foundation for cultural literacy and public diplomacy as well, and are good preparation for a wide range of both STEM and non-STEM careers.

Suggested activities

1. Contact education leaders in your state – perhaps starting with the state’s Geographic Alliance – to learn the current status of geographic education in the state.
2. Review the 18 standards for geography education identified in the Geography for Life project. Which of these are most relevant to the geospatial careers for which the COGO group advocates?
3. Make a list of the geospatial technologies on which you rely – directly or indirectly – each day. How many e-commerce web sites, for example, employ Geographic Information Systems as part of their interface with potential customers?

CHANGING GEOGRAPHIES: THE DOMINO “THEORY” AND THE ARAB “SPRING”

Read more

It’s Carmageddon!?

Is everything in LA so over-dramatized?  Uh, yes.  Even a two-day 10 mile closure of the 405 freeway connecting the South Bay, Westside and Valley on July 15-18 for about 50 hours is big, big, everyday news in the Southland.  There have been billboards, announcements, television and radio programs, websites, apps, and nearly everything you can imagine to prepare, navigate, and well, survive this weekend.

Here’s a screenshot of a typical 9am weekday look of LA area freeways:

This is an interesting phenomenon to a Geographer because of the intersections of the material infrastructure with the culturally ingrained car society.  Remember Missing Persons’ song, “Walking in LA”?  Well, according to that tune, “Nobody walks in LA,” and it’s pretty true.  Southern Californians are all driving the freeways to get around or they are jamming up the main city arteries alone in their cars or on the notoriously inefficient bus system.  Los Angeles’s urban development was historically driven by real estate and transportation (and water, too).  Early on, there was a prescient design for freeways and boulevards to connect the suburban sprawl.  Resultantly, the LA transportation network is denser than any other US city.  This is confirmed in a 2009 article published by the University of California’s Transportation Center that delves into the problem of traffic congestion in Los Angeles.  The area’s nearly endless freeways, all conspicuously titled as the one and only, The 5, The 101, The 10 and so on reveal the centrality of transportation in Southern California Life.

So, it is no wonder that Carmageddon is such a big deal.  Caltrans, the State of California’s Transportation Department, launched a public relations campaign that started months out.  Prominent figures, from local politicians to celebrities, have been doing their part to remind Southern Californians to plan ahead, stay away, or better yet, stay home.  But, can Southern Californians really stay away?  According to some of the dialog outside of the official PR campaign, they might not be able to.  One commentator on a local network news website blatantly said, “I know myself and a lot of people from the San Gabriel Valley, and the Inland Empire, are planning on driving into L.A. to witness this spectacle and simply add to the chaotic fray.”  Other exchanges illustrate the car-centric navigational-hubris of Los Angelinos.  Some think they know the secret routes, that they own the freeways (if you’ve ever driven here, you’ve seen them charging up your rear view mirror, gesturing wildly at you, driving in service lanes, etc.).  They have created apps to show real-time traffic on those supposed secret, alternate routes.  Some of these alternate routes will not be found on the ground, and hook up with another high-in-the-sky transportation network: air.  The airline JetBlue is selling $4 one-way fares as their “Over-the-405” special going from Long Beach in the South Bay to Burbank in the east Valley.  The 600 seats sold out in a matter of hours.  Another Southern California entrepreneur will be taking up patrons in a helicopter for a bird’s-eye view of the closure.  If anything, the high-fliers seem to be more interested in seeing a vacant freeway, a blue-moon, hell-froze-over type of experience.

As for me, I’ll be staying at home in North Orange County observing; ready to capture an epic screenshot of a clogged Southland.  Check back to find out if Southern California, “Survived Carmageddon.”

Concept Caching: Glacier Bay

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all Geography classes.

Climate change, climate change, climate change.  It certainly bears repeating, if a refrain leads to awareness.  This seems like the dominant discourse to engendering climate change awareness.  Climate change will have (and is having) wide-reaching consequences, some we can predict and many others we cannot.  And of stories of affected landscapes, the high-elevation and high-latitude environments are the most often mentioned.  The post, Geography Directions: Permafrost, carbon and thermokarsts: the Arctic importance offers a slightly different spin on the hackneyed talk of glacial melt.  Instead of continuing to focus on the changes in quintessential landscapes-under-threat, like this one of Glacier Bay, Alaska, the article discusses carbon storage processes in periglacial landscapes.  By focusing on periglacial carbon storage, the article provides another avenue for understanding the Earth’s Carbon Cycle.  Further, periglacial landscapes are also undergoing transformation; however, these areas are also landscapes of human settlement and activity.  If periglacial, permafrost and thermokarsts aren’t sexy enough, then subsiding lands, sinking buildings, and trucks mired in mud should offer some tantalizing bases for climate change mitigation.

 

Geography Directions: Permafrost, carbon and thermokarsts: the Arctic importance

From our Geography Directions site reviewing Wiley-Blackwell’s Geography Compass review journal covering the entire discipline.  Keep up with cutting edge academic geography.  These articles may be useful for introducing students to the discipline or may be appropriate for upper division Geography classes.

The Arctic covers 5% of the total land mass of the earth and reaches across every longitude: it is important. It is estimated that 1.4 times more carbon is stored in permafrost than is currently circulating in the atmosphere, and there is 1.5 times more carbon in permafrost than is currently being stored in all the earth’s vegetation. William Bowden (2010) outlines this in a Geography Compass article, and explains the relationships between permafrost, thermokarsts and climate change.

Permafrost is soil or rock which remains below 0^oC for at least 2-3 years at a time. When permafrost thaws it loses its internal structure and subsides unevenly, and the resulting formation is called thermokarst. The transition from permafrost to thermokarst has important hydrological, geomorphological, biogeochemical and ecological importance to arctic landscapes. Globally, this transition may also release the stored carbon which, due to microbial processes, may be released as carbon dioxide or methane.

In April, a special edition on climate change was published by the journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. It outlined key research questions required to better understand the impact of greenhouse gases on climate change. The arctic was prominently featured, and in particular the concern over permafrost melt and potential methane release. Scientists seem to agree that research is needed to understand the transitional process from permafrost to thermokarsts and the possible implications on the global climate.

By Caitlin Douglas

To view the original article please visit the Geography Directions Blog.

 

Next Page »