When I became a climate scientist in the US Government, I had to write monthly analyses of the ‘state of the climate’ for the United States. I had a little map taped to my cube wall, not with just the states, which after five years in the US I knew pretty well, but with hand-drawn lines of where the Ohio Valley was generally accepted to be, and where the North Carolina mountains transitioned to ‘the piedmont’, which transitioned to the ‘coastal plain’.
As a public servant, it felt incredibly important to get my geographic identities right. People (taxpayers!) would get fairly irate if you identified a flood in their town as in the Ohio Valley versus the Tennessee Valley (though in terms of watersheds, the distinctions are a bit blurry!)
After one particularly notable email I received, pointing out (not suuuuper politely) that in ranking states’ warmth, we had failed to use the same color for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as for the rest of Michigan, I vowed to get to know my new country in more geographic detail! It has served me well ever since - especially since I now have a little teardrop camper and know more about where I want to visit!
But here’s the thing, this is only one little part of ‘geography’.
Confession: I might be a bit biased. I am a geography major.
My undergraduate degree is a B.S. in Geography from the University of Wales, Swansea (now just Swansea University). I specialized in physical geography: the processes and patterns that shape the natural environment, including the atmosphere. This included glaciology, hydrology, geomorphology (landforms), climatology, biogeography. And much of what we studied dovetailed with related fields such as ecology, atmospheric sciences, geology, marine sciences. We also studied human geography of course, which focused more on the relationships between people and the environment, including urban and rural planning and systems, cultural geography, geopolitics, demographics, economic geography, and much more.
I loved studying geography - it seemed limitless and tangible all at the same time. It could be as quantitative or qualitative as the research demanded, and encompassed literally the whole world.
Those years in Swansea made me start to appreciate the role that climate had played in shaping Earth’s history, and I was hooked. I began to see and understand the story of our planet in ways that have intrigued me ever since. It’s no accident this newsletter is called Earth’s Next Chapter. It is the continuation of an epic story that is being written in the landscape.
I believe that learning geography is more relevant now than it’s ever been. The geography of today is far from simply memorizing state capitals - it is the study of Earth’s processes and our influence on them.
I’m not really sure there is a more pressing discipline to teach and learn.
And yet here’s what I recently discovered: As of 2019, only 20 states require students to take some geography in order to graduate high school. And in many of these 20 cases, geography can be folded into social studies, history, or other disciplines. Only six states require students to take a standalone geography class.
Pardon me America, but this seems a bit bananas.
While our world and our cultures are at clear inflection points, we’re relying on history and social studies curricula to incorporate what our next generation needs to know about the interaction of humans and environment? Hmm.
I’m going out on a very poorly-supported limb here, but I also think it’s entirely possible that we’re IN some of the mess we are because the discipline of geography hasn’t found its way into the center of our educational priorities. I can’t think of a field of study that has a better built-in integration between humanities and science, past and future, time and space, exploitation and conservation, urban and rural, social and environmental.
As I say, I might be a bit biased, but part of our current problem is that too many students reject disciplines on one side of the arts or sciences or the other, instead of being encouraged to understand the world in the context of both at the same time. The way we have designed curriculum, in some cases, doesn’t lend itself to an integrated picture of our complex world, when (I’m arguing at least), that’s what we most need.
Geography is a way of bridging the concerns and operating systems of people, places, and planet. A more integrated Earth’s Next Chapter requires us to put these pieces together a little more smoothly, it seems to me.
I’d like to suggest we revisit geography’s place in education and consider moving it from a peripheral or even optional field of study to be, instead, at its very center.
I can't figure out how to do a thumb's up!
Such a fascinating way of looking at things... thank you for this!