Research about climate change in Australia. Cite and annotate (make notes about) 5 sources. List the source (author, date, title, journal, publisher, and URL if its a website), then answer the following questions about each source:
-What is the source about, or what is the author’s point?
-How does this specific source contribute to your research? What did you learn from it?
Use this as an example for the annotated sources:
Simon, Julian L. The Ultimate Resource 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
What I learned: Julian Simon is an economist who, for decades, has done battle with demographers and scientists over issues of human population growth and its effects on economic development, natural resources, and environmental degradation. Simon’s basic premise that so many people have a hard time with, is that human beings are making the world a better place, and that more people can only improve it. Any environmental problems that may arise due to population growth are only temporary, because as he wishfully asserts, more people on the planet means there is more brain-power to solve these problems, and therefore, people are the ultimate Resource.
Simon’s chapters on pollution emphasize microbial pollution, and how we’ve overcome traditional diseases like cholera and typhus through improved sanitation in our cities, which relates most to my research for this project. He admits that his “definition” of pollution is different from that of other, and barely mentions the types of man-made pollutants, such as synthetic organic chemicals, that often leave a decades-long legacy in the soil and water. He reluctantly admits that these do pose a problem, but he has no remedy to that. The reader is left to infer, based on Simon’s repeated mantra, that someone someday will solve that problem, so in the meantime we should just keep happily applying them to our textiles, houses, forests and crops.
After reading for a while one comes to understand that Simon’s approach to these subjects are driven by his underlying philosophy that people are the only things of value on the planet. While many people share this view, what makes Simon unique is his militant denial that any scientific evidence indicates human activities and consumption patterns might threaten the lives and welfare of people around the globe. Despite a significant body of scientific evidence, he denies there is any problem and that we should to consume our way through the current stage of global economic development.
How this relates to the topic of the class: Simon has chosen to look only at one tiny indicator of the effect of population growth: price declines of certain resources. He doesn’t acknowledge the imbalance in consumption of the western world (but not just them: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc) This is very convenient for Simon, because for many applications, plastics have now been substituted for metals, for example, and consumption is less clear than having more children. He makes no mention of the impact on natural ecosystems, tropical forests, coastal and marine resources, arable land, and most importantly, adequate fresh water. He also doesn't identify how this is different in different places. In his narrowly defined scope, which denies the intricate web of relationships between species, the biosphere, regions, cultures, nations, etc., Simon says the biggest threat to the world is the “thought pollution” of the doomsayers like Paul Ehrlich. It might be easy to write this as an academic as part of a book, but much different when you look at how people live differently throughout our world. This suggests that there is still some obvious difference in the ways the world is conceptualized and written about.
-Having completed your research, what have you learned?
-What does what you’ve learned have to do with themes, concepts or issues we’ve covered in the western world?
-What claims can you make about your topic and the Geographies of the Western World more generally?
-What are the major/relevant themes/issues mentioned in what you’ve found?
-Give a reason to focus on this topic?
-What are the 3 questions you used to guide your research?
Sample Solution