An Important Lesson

If there were one thing I could choose to teach my children, it would be geography.  There is nothing more important to a 21st century citizen then to have knowledge of the earth we live on and the culture's that inhabit it.  As globalization accelerates, interactions between historically distinct populations will increase.  Ignorance of the factors that play into these interactions will not only result in bad decisions, but also ignore the inherent beauty in the vast diversity of people and places our world has to offer.

The more we don't know about other cultures, the larger the tendency to "otherize" them.  We take what little we do know about them, reduce their entire culture down to those essences, a
nd strip them of their agency.  For example, very little was known about Afghan culture before our invasion. This led the US into a strategic blunder in terms of nation building.  We failed to recognize that there really wasn't a true "nation" to begin with as many people felt a stronger allegiance to a tribe rather than their country.  The mountainous and isolated terrain of Afghanistan as well as its long complicated ethnic history all played into this phenomena.  The lack of in-depth understanding of the issue led to tangible consequences, as establishing a democratic government in a country which doesn't feel a strong allegiance to the nation and has constant tribal infighting has turned out to be a massive failure.

The effects of being geographically literate also bleed into personal issues.  From knowing how the Silk Road played into the development of the Persian rice dish you are currently eating, to knowing why your Chinese friend is living with their grandparents, knowledge of different cultures enhances every day life.  There's too much out there to always be surrounded the familiar environment you grew up in.  In addition, while it might be hard to learn every major world language in order to communicate directly with foreigners, you can learn about their art, history, and philosophy.  That way you can understand their perspective and their actions seem less alien.

Thus, expand your educational inquiries to a global scale.  Think about things from a different culture's perspective.  Take out a globe and search for the most obscure place, then try to learn something about it.  Not only will you be doing your curiosity a favor, but the entire world.

Where Is Nature?

When someone says they are going to be in "nature", what do you usually think of? Is it a community park, a national park, or the middle of nowhere? A forest, prairie, mountain range, or ocean? Within 10 miles of human civilization, 100 miles of human civilization, or 1000 miles of human civilization?

I want to investigate this question of what constitutes nature through geography.  I am more interested in where I can find nature, whatever it might be.  Erase from your mind the image of your fantasy nature conjured up in the first paragraph.   Now imagine what places that already exist that would be called nature?

Through my own, personal thought experiments, I found that I tend to associate nature with the human frontier.  Places that were more "nature-ey" to me were places that human civilization was just starting to creep its way in to.  The "Wild West" of America is one of the first images that pops into my mind when I think of nature.  A lone log cabin dots the scenery as the only blotch of human interference within this snapshot of nature.  No coincidence that Westward Expansion was also the epitome of "the frontier".  From when I was a kid, stories like Little House on the Prairie have imprinted a certain vision of what constitutes nature into my mind.

This brings me to wonder what nature is like to societies that didn't have "frontier".  The Japanese have pretty much inhabited the same islands for the past few thousand years.  Could nature be the ocean to them?  What about Arabs?  Can something as lifeless as the desert be considered nature?  Comment on your own ideas about nature below.  

Not Quite Flat Yet

In 2005, Thomas Friedman's Book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century was published.  This painted a view of our rapidly globalizing world as one that is becoming "flat".  By this he meant that geography was increasingly becoming irrelevant.  For the average high school student, this viewpoint is easy to grasp as we spend a ridiculous amount of time on the internet accessing information that would otherwise be separated from us by thousands of miles of terrain.  In Glenview, I can watch a video of the war in Syria, experiencing the realities of the conflict.  Previously, I would have to traverse half the globe in order to find that experience.

However, the world isn't as flat as it seems.  Geography isn't dead quite yet.  The recent political flare up over the Senkaku Islands reveals that underlying globalization and technological innovation are natural resources and trade routes (which are shaped by and are subject to the interests of certain countries as a result of geography).  The island that are the subject of the dispute are basically glorified rocks.  They are uninhabited.

However, in the region supposedly lies a substantial reserve of hydrocarbons.  In addition, the Senkaku's lie on a major trading route. Control over the islands offers significant geopolitical advantages.  This issue doesn't only spark tensions between the big two, China and Japan, but have also brought Taiwan into the mix.  Taiwan isn't too fond of the Chinese or the Japanese, but have tended to work with Japan and the US (we are officially "neutral", but it is assumed we are on the Japanese side) in order to help contain Chinese expansion.  It is interesting to see how Taiwan is actually backlashing against Japan on this issue, further showing how vital to national interests geography is, even in the 21st century.  Thankfully, the conflict hasn't escalated militarily, yet.  Most anger has been expressed in passive aggressive moves that mirror how a moody teenager would fight with a sibling.  From Super Soaker fights to redrawing maps on passports, both sides are doing everything short of war to gain the strategic advantage in the East China Sea.

Escaping Our Collective Home

In 2007, China destroyed one of its own satellites by ramming it with a kinetic kill vehicle.  Security analysts speculated this was meant to send a signal of resistance to the United States in response to the President Bush’s calls for increased US militarization of space.   This was just one of many instances demonstrating that outer space is succumbing to the tragedy of the commons, as individual countries exploit a common resource to the detriment of the overall group.  Like the open oceans, nobody owns space, but everyone has a stake in it.  Space must be safeguarded as a resource for humanity.  To avoid the tragedy, space must be addressed through multilateral cooperation, not solely by individual state actors.  An internationally negotiated code of conduct for outer space would accomplish this by setting norms for the resolution of disputes and creating a framework for determining ownership of resources. 

Unfortunately, without this framework, the world is treading down the path towards the militarization of outer space.  China isn’t the only country resisting cooperation in space. The US already uses satellites for military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, and recently sparked international backlash by testing a military space plane.  Because space warfare is such a new concept to policymakers and the technology is so complex, if space is further militarized, there is a high risk of miscalculations and unintended escalation.  It would be unwise to risk another Challenger-like accident, but this time with a weapon pointed at China. 

In addition to increasing the probability of conflict, the 2007 anti-satellite weapon test contributed to another barrier to peaceful space development.  By releasing thousands of broken satellite pieces into orbit, it augmented the cloud of space debris.  This expanding cloud is a catastrophe waiting to happen.  It is approaching a tipping point, where it could turn into a one massive chain reaction collision.  Debris resulting from one satellite collision could crash into a satellite, creating more debris and so on.  By the end of this cycle, we would have lost the satellites that provide critical climate data, communications, and early warnings for ICBM launches.

Between debris and militarization, outer space is at risk of becoming unusable.  This has massive implications for our future.  Coal, natural gas, oil, and even uranium and tritium for our nuclear reactors are all finite resources.  New technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and discoveries of deposits like those off the shore of the North Slope in Alaska, can provide short-term solutions.  But no matter how efficiently we extract resources, the Earth will remain a sphere with a mass of 5.97×10^24 kilograms.  Even if we find a way to use every last molecule on Earth, resources will eventually run out.  Some argue that alternative energy is the solution, but it too has limits.  There is only so much space available for wind farms, solar panels, and plants.   Any sustainable plan for future energy production must rely on space in some form or another.  With the ability to use resources beyond Earth, the opportunities for human expansion would increase exponentially.  Not only would safe access to space allow us to grow beyond the limits of Earth’s resources, it would create opportunities for the population itself to expand spatially beyond Earth’s atmosphere.  While currently this may just be science fiction, the colonization of space would help ensure the survival of humanity.  It would improve our resilience to ecological catastrophe, asteroid strikes, and interstate warfare by not putting all of our eggs in one planetary basket.   

While all these risks to humanity seem extremely long term, negotiating a code of conduct for space does not mean giving up on short-term solutions.  We can still search for new terrestrial ways to sustain life.  The code of conduct would reserve space as our future escape hatch if all else fails.   The human race might not be mature enough to expand to beyond Earth yet, but we should not let this immaturity ruin the possibility for future generations.