A Young Geographer's Insights into the Modern World

The silent miracle of human progress. Unspoken, unpublicised and unexpected. World improvements are occurring faster than ever before, but because of the media and the influence of our instincts, less than 10% of people actually know that the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty has halved. Our perceptions of the world need to change. This is a great achievement, so why aren’t we celebrating our successes and broadcasting them for all of humanity to see?    It’s a journalist’s professional duty to present any event, fact or number as an overdramatic worldview. Although we have increasing access to the media, stories about gradual improvements rarely make the front page, even though they occur on massive scales and impact millions of people. Yes, terrorism, overfishing and deterioration of seas, species extinction and sea levels are rising and there are pressing issues we need to deal with before we reach a tipping point. However, there are ma...

Here is an excellent documentary produced by the BBC on why we should cut down our use of plastic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bmbn47/drowning-in-plastic# However, there are some reasons I have found of why plastics are better: Plastics can be used in cars where less strength is needed to reduce the overall mass and allow lower energy consumption of fossil fuels and production of atmospheric pollutants.  Paul Fahy reports in an excellent article entitled  Plastic Bag Propaganda  published in 'The UK Column' that plastic bags are manufactured from a form of plastic derived from a by-product of the oil industry. If the by-product wasn't turned into plastic bags it would have to be burned off - increasing carbon dioxide emissions. So people who use plastic bags are actually helping to save the planet - not destroy it. T he manufacture of plastic bags consumes less energy than the manufacture of paper bags. Plastic bags generate less solid waste than paper...

On Friday 28th September at 18.03, Sulawesi in Indonesia was hit by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, triggering a 6m tsunami caused by an underwater landslide. The most affected areas are Donggala, Parigi, Moutong, Sigi and Palu. The death toll on Thursday climbed to 1,424 with thousands more injured. More than 66,000 homes were destroyed and a t least 600,000 children have been affected by the quake, many sleeping on the streets among ruins. The b ridge is completely destroyed, roads are blocked and the airport was closed and reopened soon after. Flooding of turbid water polluting clean water supplies has led to increasing concerns over lack of food, fuel and water. The difficult terrain is making reaching people extremely difficult and it is taking 30 hours to transport supplies from the nearest functioning port, Makassar, to the worst-affected areas. Electricity pylons are also down causing power cuts and a t least 92 people have been arrested for looting goods in areas devastated ...

Phuket is an island, located below the south coast of Thailand. Over the summer, I visited this rainforested, mountainous island and learnt a few things on my travels. In 2017 ,Thailand had over 35 million visitors through the year. This has risen since 2016 and is continuing to rise with damaging effects on the environment. Hopefully by the end of this post you will choose to persue ecotourism in Phuket and not participate in the environmentally damaging activities on the island. Elephant riding is a popular but popular but detrimental tourist activity. Riding elephants forces them to be captured, brought into captivity and treated very poorly. Experts believe there are less than 2000 Asian elephants left in the wild and this is still declining at a rapid rate due to loss of habitat. In order to allow tourists to ride elephants, the elephants have to be tamed. In Southeast Asia, this taming process is carried out when the elephants are very young and is very brutal and is ca...

The media uses the same techniques time and time again to appeal to our emotions and instincts. It is their professional duty to entice people to read stories and frequently exaggerate to do so. Stereotypes are an easy way for the media to communicate using categories that we already have an immediate reaction to. Journalists know it is almost inhumane to look away from a person in pain or in need. The media picks up the negative and disastrous stories and rarely reports the good. In fact, our surveillance of suffering has improved making us more likely to see these events occurring in the past. Stories of gradual improvements would not make the headlines so statistics are often used in a dramatic way for political purposes. The media provides us with important news and information but is very selective in the stories it chooses and the way it reports.

Thankfully, one of the many small environmental problems is beginning to improve. All thanks to Sir David Attenborough. 14.01 million people tuned in to Blue Planet II , narrated by Sir David Attenborough. The series particularly brought to light the issue of plastic in oceans. Inspired, many people began to campaign and protest leading to large changes in public perception. People demanded improvements yet the government are still slow to do anything. England's 5p plastic bag charge was introduced in October 2015, a year before Mauritius began to fine the use of plastic bags at around £250 per use. Plastic bag use in England has dropped by 83%, yet still, 8 million tonnes of plastic are being dumped in oceans each year. The world needs to do more. Not just about this small issue but about the countless number of other environmental issues if the world aims to be sustainable . Small changes can have massive impacts.   “One planet, one people. As long as we remember that we ...

'Love Island' is undoubtedly one of this summers most watched programmes, but what is the philosophy behind it? 'Love island' is a reality show where people compete to be the best couple to win money. Although the idea is to find love, few apply for this reason alone. In philosophy this is called means to an end. You apply for a popular show to find love, to become famous, to win money and eventually to have a better life. This may be for some the supreme Good or eudaimonia.  Utilitarians foundation of their consequentialist moral theory is psychological hedonism. Psychological hedonism is the empirical idea that humans persue pleasure and strive to minimise pain. This in turn is the utility principle which is what contestants on 'Love Island' persue.  The contestants are often accused of playing a game in order to win the show and to discuss this we must first understand Kantian Ethics. In Kantian Ethics the emphasis is on the motive of the acti...