GEO 230 Spring 2022

 Two California Cities Take Initiative to Fight Climate Change https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/26/climate/26cli-lawsuit1/26cli-oil1-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp In 2018, two cities, San Francisco and Oakland, were engaged in a lawsuit vs. some major fossil fuel companies. As the article,  J udge Dismisses Suit Against Oil Companies Over Climate Change Costs ,  describes, the judge threw the lawsuit out- citing that the court is not the place to handle matters such as climate change (Schwartz, 2018). While it was not particularly successful, I still think that this was a good example of cities trying to take the initiative on climate change, without a state forcing them to do so.   In this case, the California cities wanted the defendants (companies such as BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell), to help pay for the costs of dealing with climate change (Schwartz, 2018). If it hadn’t been for the cities’ defeat, they would have made these companies pay for proj...

 US vs. UK Immigration Policies The United States and the United Kingdom are facing different immigration situations as we speak. While the UK is tightening up it's borders and denying refugees, the US is still adhering to the COVID-19 immigration policies that were supposedly to be lifted. In this post, we will compare the two.      Recently, Britain has announced that they will be sending asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing/settlement, reportedly becoming one of the first major powers to turn away refugees without even considering their cases (Castle, et al., 2022) . As  UK Plans to Send Some Asylum Seekers  details, if this is implemented, it would support Boris Johnson's main argument for Brexit, that Britain would "take back control of it's borders (Castle, et al., 2022)." While human right's groups claims that this violates international agreements, and could encourage other countries to do the same, a tactic deemed "offshoring (Castle, et al., ...

Reorganization of the Former Soviet Territories The Soviet Union, or now lack thereof, is the perfect example of boundaries changing over time. In a 1998 Journal by Frank Cass, he delves into the changing territories post-collapse of the Soviet Union. As Cass goes to explain, the 1990s brought upon a new era of geopolitics, surrounding the “changing territorial dimensions of the world order (Newmann, 1-2).”  shutterstock-290167274.jpg For some background, the Soviet Union (1922-1991), also known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR), was comprised of what are now the separate nation-states of Armenia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia (Kiprop, 2018). In 1922, a legalized union of “several Soviet republics” is what bound these territories together (Wikipedia, 2022).   As Cass argues, while some places in the world’s boundaries were becoming more permeab...