GEO 101 World Human Geography
Spring 2008
WWW Resources: Geographies of Population and the Environment

Nature vs. Culture, Butte, Montana and the Berkeley Pit Mine, Environmental Activism and Justice, Environmental Racism, Antarctica, Environmental Determinism, Important Environmentalists, Project Plowshare, Colorado Project Plowshare Tests, Nuclear Testing, Measuring Population, The Political Geography of Population, Forced Migration and Refugees, Rwanda

Nature vs. Culture/Technology

• Changing Approaches to Cultural Landscapes Has quotes and a discussion about the distinction between culture and nature. This will also be relevant when we talk more closely about cultural geography.
• The Test Tube Family Reunion from Wired Magazine. The idea of "test-tube babies" significantly challenges the traditional separation between nature and technology.
• Deep Crisis Website for an episode of the Scientific American Frontiers TV program that focuses upon efforts to stop salmon and other fish from going extinct. Given the way that we've dammed our rivers, there's nothing at all natural about the way that salmon reproduce these days. Highlights include a barge that transports the young fish down the river and into the ocean. Given these technological inventions, to what degree can it be said that salmon are at all natural creatures? You can read a transcript of the episode or even watch online.

Butte Montana and the Bekeley Pit Mine

• Berkeley Pit Education Committee Web Page Gathers and disseminates information about water monitoring efforts about the effect of the Berkeley Pit Mine on Butte, Montana's water resources. Includes photos of the mine as well as background and history and the text of a bianuall publication they produce titled Pit Watch.
• CopperCity.com, Butte, MT, The Can Do City of Montana With A Whole New World from Disney's Aladdin playing on the first page, for those of you with midi capabilities, this mildly tacky yet endearing page celebrates Butte Montana. See especially the memories page and Butte's Lost Neighborhoods (created incidently by two 7th graders!).
• Butte Montana Chamber of Commerce including a page of Butte, Montana Mining Attractions. With the decline in Butte's economy it appears that Butte is engaging in the common practice of selling place and history. Nowhere here does the Butte described in your reading appear.
• Mai Wah . "Working to Preserve and Interpret Butte's Asian History and Culture Since 1991." Like many cities in the western U.S. Butte was home to a thriving Chinatown. Find out about the Wah Chong Tai Co. and Mai Wah Noodle Parlor "the most important and least altered physical remnants of Butte’s Chinese Heritage."
• Montana on the edge: A fight over gold forces the Treasure State to confront its future by Heather Abel From the High Country News December 22, 1997.

Environmental activism and justice

• The Environmental Justice Information Page A nice description discussion of Environmental Justice Issues.
• Home page of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency See especially the section titled Concerned Citizens for information and resources surrounding issues of community benvironmental action locally and globally. Also see the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assuance's Office of Environmental Justice page.
• A short History of Mothers of East Los Angeles - Santa Isabel
• Environmental Justice: The View from Seattle "Interviews with African American leaders in Seattle show that a broad conception of environmental issues is required to bring together those concerned with both the environment and social justice."
• Envirolink A good place to start for environmental information.

Environmental Racism

• Fighting Environmental Racism: A Selected Annotated Bibliography by Irwin Weintraub Gives a nice overview of Enviornmental Racism issues as well as providing a list of resources that you might find useful.

Antarctica

• Antarctic Exploration Stories from 'Old Antarctic Explorers' including A History of South Pole Exploration by Dr. Robert Lutes
• Antarctic Philatelic Home Page The history of Antarctic exploration through stamps. One of the best sites with quite a bit of information and gobs of photos on Antarctic exploration.

Environmental Determinism

• Chapter 1: The Operation of Geographic Factors in History and Chapter II Classes of Geographic Influences from Influences of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography by Ellen Churchill Semple. From 1911 this is chapter one of a book that largely espouses an environmentally deterministic position.
• Paul Vidal de la Blache A biographical sketch by Jason Hilkovitch & Max Fulkerson. Paul Vidal de la Blache was a French Geographer who countered environmental determinism using the idea of Possibilism. This biography discusses these concepts and his approach to the question of the human-environment relationship.

Important Environmentalists, etc

• Biographies of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Paul Ehrlich and others.
• Environmental Philosophies explained. Conservation, preservation, deep ecology, ecofeminism, social ecology.
• the Modern Environmental Movement An essay by Josh Knauer.
• Doomsayer Paul Ehrlich Strikes Out Again Anti-Ehrlich site. This man does not like Paul Ehrlich.

Project Plowshares

• Spectacular Ideas in Marginal Landscapes by geographer J.B. Krygier. Documents a Project Ketch, a proposed though never enacted Project Plowshare plan to detonate nuclear explosives underground in Pennsylvania to create a cavity to store natural gas.
• Project Plowshares: The American Experience with Peaceful Nuclear Explosions An information page on Project Plowshares which seems to contain actual documents though it does not give any contextual information. However the information appears to be reliable.
• Give AEC credit for realizing error of its ways An editorial with some personal reflections on Project Plowshare from a writer whose father was intimately involved.
• "Peaceful" Nuclear Explosions from Scientific American. Describes China's efforts to include exemptions for Peaceful uses of nuclear explosions in test ban treaties and describes both the U.S. and Russian experience with their respective PNE programs.

Colorado Project Plowshare Tests

• Information on Project Rulison and Project Rio Blanco the two Project Plowshare tests which occurred in Colorado from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment Laboratory and Radiation Services Division
• He felt the earth move when scientists nuked western Colorado by Chester McQueary from the High Country News December 12, 1994 (Vol. 26, No. 23) A first person account of the Project Rulison test.
  

Nuclear Testing

• The Atomic Duty of Pvt. Bill Bires An excellent documentary style web site. Lots of surprising information about the atomic testing program in the Nevada desert.
• The Bureau of Atomic Tourism Information for the Atomic Tourist
• Todd's Atomic Home Page Gobs of links to all things atomic
• Book Review: America declared war on ... Utah by John Marshall from the High Country News, September 6, 1993. A review of American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War by Carole Gallagher. Find out what happened to the "downwinders."
• Essay: We aimed for Russia and hit the West by Former Arizona congressman Stewart Udall from the High Country News, August 22, 1994.

Measuring Populaion

• Population Pyramids from the U.S. Census. This cool web site allows you to create population pyramids for different countries.

The Political Geography of Population

• Against Nature The website for a three-part British documentary that critiques Malthusian/environmentalist arguments about population growth. Includes transcripts, a discussion forum, and links to other resources. A nice complement to Hartmann that addresses environmental issues though possibly not in a way that many of you would necessarily like.
• The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) An Excellent web site with country specific information on refugee populations, photographs depicting the experiences of refugees, information on UNHCRs activities, and offical documents as well as an innovative multimedia presentation, titled Witness, of refugee narratives from Bosnia and Africa. For those having browsers equiped with QuickTime VR Witness is well worth a look. While perhaps the most interesting aspect of the web site is that it details the experiences and hardships that refugees worldwide face, it also explains the situations that help to create forced migrations. As you browse the UNHCR web site think about the push and pull factors that cause the various refugee populations described to move.
• The Doomslayer A profile of cornucopian Julian Simon from Wired magazine. Be sure to check out and perhaps participate in the on-line debate concerning the article to get a feel for some of the politics of population.
• The Day After Technology "A decade later, the contaminated zone surrounding Chernobyl has become a haven for those whose future has been taken away - by the disaster or by war, age, illness, or their own demons." In lecture we examined the case of Centralia, PA where residents chose to remain in their homes even though their town was on fire. In this article from Wired Masha Gessen documents the lives of people who've moved back to thier homes in the area surrounding Cherynobyl.
• The Population Research Institute An anti-population control web site.
• Negative Population Growth A pro-population control web site.
• The Overpopulation FAQ A non-Malthusian FAQ

Forced Migration and Refugees

• UNHCR The website of the UN High Commissioner for refugees. There's quite a bit of general and more specific information about refugees at this website. Particularly helpful is the State of the World's Refugees report which they have published online.
• Kosovo: One Last Chance The Fall 1999 issue of Refugees magazine focusing on the refugee crisis in Kosovo.

Rwanda

• Valentina's Nightmare and The Triumph of Evil. are both compelling programs from the PBS documentary series Frontline. The websites for these two programs are perhaps the best resources on the web on the subject.
• Coping with the aftermath of genocide An interview with Philip Gourevitch from 1998.
• Violence and Unrest in Central Africa from the Atlantic Monthly's Flashbacks website. A collection of articles that have appeared in the magazine over the years concerning Central Africa.
• The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience
  • From the Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, the chapters in this on-line "book" detail the history of Rwanda, the war in 1994, and its aftermath. Appendix 2: Chronology will be especially useful in helping to sort out the course of events in Rwanda. Annex 1: Rwanda in the Region places Rwanda in a regional context and makes comparisons with Burundi. This is an excellent resource.
• The Misty Future of Rwanda's Mountain Gorillas
  • "How are 600 gorillas relevant in a nation of 6 million people the size of Maryland that has lost over half a million non-combatants to senseless slaughter and another million and a half to ethnically motivated exile in the last year?"
  • An excellent article by Doug Fine. While it says it's about Gorillas, it's really about navigating the post-war social landscape.
• Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi By Neil Weiner
  • "What is this murder's source? If it is partly correct to label it ethnic or tribal, then it is also partly correct to label it post-colonial or Western."
• U.N.: Refugee 'disaster' looms in Zaire Aid workers evacuated from scene of fighting
  • Many of you have asked about what has happend since 1994. Here's an article from CNN Oct. 22 1996. There's a series links to related articles towards the end of this one.

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