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In 2000, almost every one of the world’s ten biggest carmakers came from Japan, Europe or North America.

By 2025, China had become the world’s largest car market, the world’s largest exporter of cars and home to some of the fastest-growing manufacturers on Earth.

For most of the twentieth century, the global car industry was dominated by a handful of famous names. Companies such as Ford, General Motors (GM), Volkswagen and Toyota built millions of vehicles every year and became symbols of industrial success. But over the last 25 years, the industry has undergone one of the biggest transformations in its history. New technologies, changing consumer tastes, environmental concerns and the rapid rise of China have reshaped the global automotive landscape.

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If you’ve been half-listening to the news this summer, you might have noticed something odd: hurricane season is underway, but the Atlantic has been almost silent. For anyone studying geography, this is actually a brilliant real-world case study — it shows how weather systems on opposite sides of the planet are secretly wired together, and how “quiet” doesn’t always mean “safe.” Let’s unpack it.

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Climate change, landslides, and the science of predicting disasters

Imagine standing beside a beautiful glacier lake in Alaska. Tour boats move across the water. Mountains rise high above the valley. Everything looks calm.

But hidden inside the mountains, the ground is slowly moving.

In some places, entire sections of rock are creeping downhill by several feet every year. Scientists fear that one day these slopes could suddenly collapse, creating enormous landslides and giant tsunami waves.

And climate change is making the danger worse.

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Just after midnight on 2 June 2026, a magnitude 6.26.2 earthquake struck deep beneath the sea off southern Italy. Although this sounds serious—and it is—the effects at the surface were surprisingly mild. Most people only felt light shaking, and there was no major damage.

Why? The answer lies in how deep the earthquake occurred.

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If Germany is such a leader in renewable energy, why are electricity bills still so high there? And why do France and Spain often have cheaper power?

That’s the big geography question today. The answer is not just about how much renewable energy a country uses. It’s about the whole energy system — what kind of electricity is produced, how it gets to homes, and how governments set prices.

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Electric cars are becoming a big part of the global shift away from fossil fuels. In 2025, about one in four new cars sold worldwide was electric, up from one in five the year before. That is a major change in transport geography because it shows how quickly technology can spread from one country to another.

China is leading the way, with electric cars making up more than half of new car sales. In Norway, nearly all new cars are now electric, and Denmark has also made very rapid progress. By contrast, the United States has seen much slower growth, with electric cars stuck at around 10% of new sales for several years. These differences show that transport change is not happening evenly across the world.

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Picture two places on a hot summer day. One is a city full of roads, rooftops, and concrete. The other is full of trees, grass, and shade. Which one feels cooler?

Most of us would say the green place — and that’s exactly what geography tells us. Cities are often much hotter than the countryside, especially during heatwaves. But trees and parks can make a huge difference.

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When you hear the word Ebola, you probably think of a deadly disease — and that’s because it is. But Ebola is also a geography story. It’s about where the disease starts, how it spreads, and why some places are much harder to protect than others.

In 2026, Central Africa was dealing with a fast-growing Ebola outbreak, with most cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and some spreading into Uganda. Within weeks, the number of cases rose sharply. So what makes Ebola so dangerous, and why is geography such a big part of the story?

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