PUNY Global Environmental Processes Fracking in Pennsylvania Analysis

I’m working on a environmental science writing question and need a sample draft to help me study.

The main purpose of this assignment is to link global environmental issues to a specific local context. You may want to wait until later in the course, when you have viewed the material from a range of different units, before attempting this Assignment. I have broken down the steps of this assignment as follows.

1. Identify the location of your case study. It may be a city, a metropolitan region, part of a country, or possibly a whole country (but not a large one like the USA or China). It may be the place you grew up in, somewhere you know very well or want to find out more about.
2. Identify an environmental issue from four of Units 2-7, and describe and explain how it has, is, or is predicted to affect your case study area
3. Identify what is being done to deal with this issue – have local organizations forced changed? Have national or international organizations demanded change? Has the issue being solved? What are the reasons why a problem is not being addressed, if it is not?
4. Conclude the assignment by demonstrating how these issues are linked? For example, is resource extraction in an area contributing to local environmental pollution, but also global climate change. Are local environmental groups (or other activists) focusing on one problem, or trying to address multiple issues?

10% of the mark will be for appropriate identification of a case study location
60% of the mark will be for identification of issues associated with each of the four Unit’s chosen, and how they are being dealt with
20% of the mark will be for demonstrating how these issues are (or aren’t) linked
10% will be for overall coherence, and appropriate referencing

There is no restriction on where you choose to study, but it might help to focus on a place with on-going environmental issues. For example, I might choose the state of West Virginia. I might then explore:
Unit 2 – The impacts of climate change in this region
Unit 3 – The impacts of mountaintop removal/strip mining on West Virginia
Unit 6 – The 2016 floods in Southern West Virginia
Unit 7 – Challenges to agriculture in West Virginia

When linking these issues I might explore whether climate change is predicted to make farming harder, make flooding happen more frequently, and whether moves to move to non-fossil fuel sources (in order to address global climate change) affect the demand for the resource extracted in West Virginia (coal). I will happily help you develop your own appropriate case study, but please have a think before emailing me with questions.