The impending climate crisis has much more to do with capitalist methods of resource extraction and distribution than an over-sized population.
At present, humanity is facing a multitude of global environmental crises on a scale never before experienced in our history, and frankly, we are to blame for all of them. Air and water pollution, deforestation, mass extinctions, and at the crux of it all, climate change, are the direct result of humankind’s own destructive and short-sighted behaviors, and they now genuinely threaten our very existence on this planet.
With the exception of certain groups of people that refuse to live in reality with the rest of us, most people around the world understand and accept that what I’ve just written…
Sometimes, you can’t see the big picture until you step far enough away.
A little more than three years ago, I found myself on a plane somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, in the midst of a 13 hour flight across the world — the longest leg of a journey to Vietnam where I’d long since planned to begin a new chapter of my life. Between fleeting moments of truly unrestful sleep, I kept thinking about the state of the world as a whole, and specifically about the way things were going back in my home country, the United States. Everything seemed to be falling apart, nothing seemed normal or to even remotely…
A collection of my favorite photos of life in Vietnam in 2020.
I still remember vividly the first time I learned about the virus that would define the entirety of 2020. It was a couple weeks before I was about to fly back to the US from Vietnam to visit my family during the Lunar New Year break, and a friend sent me an Instagram post about a mysterious illness in China that was beginning to cause some worry. I chalked it up to being just another passing news story at the time, but that idea ended up being quickly proven wrong.
Flying back to Vietnam via Tokyo a few weeks later…
The Southeast Asian nation has, once again, been a shining example of how to quickly and effectively control the spread of COVID-19.
From the very beginning, Vietnam has undoubtedly been one of the world’s best stories in regards to managing the COVID-19 pandemic.
After decisive action was taken to mitigate the spread of the virus way back in February, which eventually culminated in the decision to ban all public gatherings of more than two people for the entire month of April, the country of nearly 100 million, which shares a long border with China, virtually eliminated the virus from the community. …
A photo-essay highlighting some of the abandoned projects that help shape Ho Chi Minh City’s unique and ever-changing urban landscape.
Ho Chi Minh City, the commercial and financial center of Vietnam, is a bustling, rapidly modernizing megacity. Still colloquially known as Saigon, its former name from prior to the reunification of the country in 1975, it is the largest city in a country that features one of the fastest growing economies on the planet, and is thus constantly undergoing massive changes to its landscape and infrastructure.
One of the side effects of the huge growth that the city has seen — the official population of the city proper has almost doubled in the last 20 years from about 5 million…
A look at the US’s problematic incompetence at a crucial yet often misunderstood subject.
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a university student who studies geography. You are having this conversation for the 11th time this week, and unfortunately, you know that it won’t be the last time.
“What’s your major?”
“Oh, I study geography.”
“Cool! Like studying rocks and stuff. So you’re going to be a teacher?”
“No, that’s not exactly…”
“…so what are you going to do with that degree?”
“………”
This was a typical experience during the four (okay, five) years that I spent at the University of North Texas as an undergraduate student; having to regularly explain my major (and…
Every left-leaning American has probably heard it at some point.
“If you love socialism so much why don’t you move to a socialist country?”
It’s a tired trope, but one that Republicans and other conservatives have latched onto for quite awhile. Fox News pundits have certainly expressed similar sentiments on-air fairly often in recent years, possibly even more so prior to Trump’s presidency during the Obama years.
In the lead-up to Trump’s election in 2016, I definitely heard it a bunch. At the time, I was a passionate Bernie supporter reluctantly planning to vote for Hillary and, being that I…
With much of the world still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic fallout that has followed, the sports industry has of course been deeply affected. Around the globe, professional sports leagues were abruptly stopped in their tracks as the virus began to take its hold, in some cases before new seasons could even get off the ground. However, in the past couple of months, sports leagues have finally begun to slowly resume play, offering a slice of normalcy for a world that so desperately needs it.
While the return of major professional sports, such as Europe’s top football…
In recent years, there’s been a marked uptick in the number of foreign visitors in Vietnam as the country has exploded in popularity as an international tourist destination. As the war for which the country is unfortunately most well-known drifts further back in the collective memory of both its citizens and the global community, Vietnam is becoming increasingly associated with its breathtaking landscapes and pristine beaches, its delicious cuisine and vibrant culture, and the immeasurable kindness of its people, rather than just its tragic history.
However, in a country far vaster than most realize, there are always going to be…
67 days.
It’s been 67 days (as of publishing) since the last confirmed community transmission of COVID-19 in Vietnam, a country of nearly 100 million people that shares a 1444-km border with China, its neighbor with which it has, for all its political and social complications, an extremely active and productive trade and economic relationship.
Meanwhile, in the United States, my home country and where I spent the first 24 years of my life, there’s been somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000–30,000+ new cases confirmed every day, averaging out to a new infection occurring somewhere in the country every 3–4…
