18 Reasons Why Fossil Fuel Companies Are Killing Our Planet

Universities, religious groups and cities are seeking to divest from fossil fuels. Read more at The Brandeis Hoot.

1. Glaciers are melting. This is generally attributed to global warming, but NPR notes that it could also be from pollution, to which fossil fuel companies particularly contribute.

2. Dark particles, created by pollution, might speed up the rate at which ice melts. This is because dark colors absorb more energy, so darker snow will melt more quickly.

3. Some attribute terrible storms (Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, and more recently Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines) to global climate change contributed by fossil fuel companies. Students at Brandeis are fasting to bring awareness to climate change caused by environmentally-harmful practices.

4. Multiple universities have committed to divest their resources from fossil fuel companies: College of the Atlantic, Foothill-De Anza Community College Foundation, Green Mountain College, Hampshire College, Naropa University, San Francisco State University Foundation, Sterling College, Unity College (as of December 2013).

5. When Glacier National Park was established in 1910, there were an estimated 150 glaciers. But now, there are less than 30 glaciers, and those left have only one third of their area remaining.

6.  In September 2013, there were about 1,760 active rotary drilling rigs in the United States. [Baker Hughes        Inc., Houston]

7. When drilling in the tar sands, sometimes massive spills happen. Oil can spew all over a neighborhood, hurting people in their own homes.

8. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in April 2010, caused 11 deaths and released 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the 87 days the pipe was open.

9. This represents the projected oil slick from the BP oil spill. Residents of the area still feel damage three years later. Fishing incomes have diminished; human health problems have increased.

10. Hydrofracking, a process of removing natural gas from the earth by creating a well and fractures in the bedrock, has caused some underground water reserves to become tainted with oil. This makes the water coming out of a tap flammable.

11. When drilling for oil in the tar sands, multiple pipeline leaks have occurred, covering homes in pools of oil. The oil comes up through the ground rather than flowing through the wells meant to gather it. This is becoming increasingly dangerous as companies drill deeper wells that have a greater likelihood of fracturing rock underground and creating spills.

12. College students, including some at Brandeis, have joined in protests advocating for an end to drilling in the Keystone pipeline.

13. Scientists say that the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere is about 350ppm. But they estimate that the amount of CO2 may already be 390ppm. This shows one year’s worth of CO₂ emissions in New York City alone.

14. The top 100 coal and top 100 oil & gas companies have a combined value of $7.42 trillion as at February 2011.

15. The Potsdam Climate Institute says that for the world to stay below 2^oC of warming, the global carbon budget needs to be 886 GtCO₂ for 2000-2050. But by 2011, we have already used about 282 GtCO₂, leaving just 565 GtCO₂ for the next 40 years.

16. In 2012, the top five oil companies, made $137 billion in profit—that’s $375 million per day.

17. Wind power represents only a part of clean energy techniques. $260bn was invested globally last year into clean energy.

18. At Brandeis University, 79.03% of students voted in favor of divestment from fossil fuels.

For decades, bed bugs were rarely heard of in the United States and other developed nations. They were effectively wiped out with the introduction of DDT. Then in the 1990s, they showed right back up again, having held onto luggage, clothing and other materials to catch a ride. DDT was banned by that point, and few exterminators still had the skills to wipe them out again. While they don’t typically transmit diseases, they can inflict physical and psychological damage. The tiny pests can easily hide, and even remain alive without feeding for 18 months.

Most people might assume that bed bugs are only seen in low income neighborhoods, associating the pests with poor living conditions. However, that is quite far from the truth. Bed bugs will go anywhere, regardless of how clean or how expensive a house might be. Just one female bug can lay 500 eggs and create a full infestation.

Although health department estimates may claim otherwise, New York City’s Upper East Side is widely infested with bug bites. Numbers are reported through 311 calls, but the only people likely to call the number are renters who want to make sure their landlords are held accountable for the infestation. If a wealthy family in an expensive building notices an infestation, they might be less likely to report it because the value of their house will decrease.

Because of this reluctance to document the problem, reports have emerged of buildings with enormous infestations because no one wanted to deal with it. It only takes one person to spread the bugs to many other people.

Bed bugs don’t care about dirt. They just want your blood. (Like a vampire. You don’t imagine vampires living in terrible conditions, do you?) It doesn’t matter how frequently you clean; bed bugs are experts at burrowing into fabric or wood to hide and lay eggs. They bite in the middle of the night, when you are sleeping and not moving around.

It is estimated that up to 30 percent of people don’t even know that they have bed bugs because they have no reaction to the bite. Bed bugs first inject an anesthetic before drinking blood. The anesthetic makes it so that the person can’t feel the bite itself. The swelling, redness and itchiness from the bites is really an allergic reaction to the anesthetic. For those that aren’t allergic, they won’t notice the bites and may never see the bed bugs, so they don’t know they have a problem. This is particularly an issue because they can spread the bugs throughout their community and to their friends without even knowing it.

Particularly for families that are well-off and travel around the world, they can pick up bugs anywhere and bring them right back to their homes. Bugs can hang onto luggage without anyone ever noticing. No one wants to talk about the problem, which only contributes to a larger infestation that is harder to remove.

Bed bugs aren’t going to go away anytime soon. It will be important to educate the public, and not just those in specific neighborhoods, about the telltale signs of bed bugs and how to remove them. It’s disgusting and terrifying, certainly. Who wants to go to sleep if they know they’re going to be bitten by tiny creatures in the middle of the night? But the only way to beat them is to be vigilant and thorough.

It’s not necessary to warm an entire building if people are cold – what if you could instead warm each person individually, saving enormous amounts of money for heating unused space? A team of engineering students at MIT have turned this idea into reality.

Using a model that looks like a wristwatch band, the prototype created by team Wristify is meant to cool or heat a singular person at a pulse point that can change the perceived temperature of the entire body. If you have ever run your hands under cool water on a hot day, you know that cooling your wrists can have an immense impact on what temperature your entire body feels. This is because there are blood vessels in your wrist that are very close to the outer layer of skin. When you induce a temperature change at the wrist, it changes the temperature of the blood rushing through your veins at that point. That blood then circulates throughout the rest of your body, bringing with it a different amount of heat, whether cooler or warmer.

The students found that if the body is heated at least 0.1 C every second, a person can perceive a temperature change in their whole body. Although the temperature change seems small, because it is so quick our bodies feel they have gotten a few degrees warmer or cooler. The students claim that their device can change the temperature 0.4 C per second.

The final prototype is chargeable for up to 8 hours by a lithium polymer battery. The model includes a heat sink, which is used to lower the temperature of the device itself. It allows heat to dissipate away from the device. The control system is automatic; it records the temperature of the both the body and the outside environment so it knows when to increase or decrease the temperature.

The team won $10,000 at a competition for sustainable engineering. They hope that the device can be used in large buildings, where each person has a personal device. Rather than using energy to change the temperature in the entire building, a smaller amount of energy can be devoted to each person individually. It is estimated that if a building lowers its temperature by 1 degree Celsius, it can reduce its energy consumption by 100 kW hours per month, a sizable change.

As with any new device, the team will need to find a way to scale up production if they intend to make a sizable reduction in energy use. It remains to be seen how effective the wrist devices are in practice. How cold can you make a building before the device makes no difference? Are the batteries and materials of the device sustainable for long term use?

“Flesh-eating bacteria” is probably the least pleasant-sounding phrase in the world. It might seem likely that flesh eating bacteria are only found in developing countries, where disease spreads quickly and living conditions are terrible. That’s not the case, though – there are plenty of flesh eating bacterial infections right here in the United States.

In Florida, there is currently an outbreak of flesh eating bacteria in the coastal waters. The Vibrio Vulnificus bacteria has infected 27 people in Florida in 2013 so far, and nine people have died. 2012 and 2011 saw comparable data: 27 infections and 9 fatalities, and 35 infections and 10 fatalities, respectively.

The bacteria occur naturally, and (in Florida, at least) it is generally transmitted by eating raw shellfish or in open water. The severity of the infection typically depends on the victim’s health. A suppressed immune system or poor liver condition can allow the bacteria to spread more quickly, leading to death. If the infection is caught quickly enough, antibiotics and surgical removal of infected skin can save a person’s limb. But if the test results take too long or a doctor can’t recognize the early stages of the disease, amputation may be necessary to stop the infection from spreading.

Besides living in the ocean, flesh-eating bacteria also live in the hospital. After a minor surgery, c-section, or even a skin graft, a patient can contract the bacteria and need to fight for her life. Perhaps the infection occurs in the hospital, or perhaps the infection happens after the patient leaves the hospital and the open wound is exposed in the wrong place.

Necrotizing fasciitis is the medical term for an infection from these bacteria. They don’t technically “eat flesh;” rather, they kill cells and spread very quickly. Bacteria release toxins into neighboring cells, and they divide very quickly to spread rapidly throughout the body. It seems that they “eat” skin because the skin progressively turns black and dies if the infection spreads.

The CDC reminds those concerned that necrotizing fasciitis is very rare in healthy people who take care of their wounds properly. Diabetes, kidney disease and cancer can suppress the immune system which makes a person more likely to contract the bacteria. It can be difficult to determine a positive case of the disease because symptoms start as pain or soreness, accompanied by purple and red swollen areas. Although the wound may look manageable by sight, patients describe terrible pain.

There are about 650-800 cases in the United States every year, though the number does not seem to be rising. Even if the number of cases remains comparable, the high number of infections indicates more research needs to be devoted to the study of the progression of the disease. Doctors need to know how to recognize it quickly and treat it effectively, while the public need to understand how to protect themselves.

Although HIV is no longer a fatal disease, infections rates are still high. Women in particular suffer from greater HIV infections in recent years. Research indicates that women are at risk, at least in part, because their partners may be unwilling to use protection and keep them uninfected. Women may have little bargaining power with their male partners due to relationship dynamics or power disparities.

To give women more power over their own bodies, researchers at Northwestern University have developed an intravaginal ring that women can use to protect themselves from HIV. If their partner refuses to use a condom, women can insert the ring hours before sex with their partner never knowing about it. The ring releases an antriviral that stops any virus particles from being able to infect the woman.

The ring can be left within the body for 30 days. It contains the drug tenofovir, which is currently used as treatment for HIV-positive individuals. The drug is an antiviral, and researchers hope it can be used to stop HIV before it can infect a person. The ring itself is made out of a special material. The plastic-like material expands when it becomes wet, and this allows more of the drug to flow out of the ring into the body. Previous efforts to create a ring were unsuccessful because the ring’s material made it more difficult from the drug to get into the body, over time.

It may be a while before the rings are widely available for use. They have been tested in monkeys and proven 100 percent effective, but they have not been tested in humans yet. Next month, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine will begin a clinical trial in women over the course of two weeks. This first clinical trial will only assess the safety of the ring, but future trials will test its efficacy.

When (and if) they are available, it will be important for many different organizations to put their support behind their use to encourage women to take advantage of their protective capabilities. New methods of prevention are only useful if a significant portion of the at-risk population chooses to use them.

Use your own voice to advocate on behalf of women. HIV does not discriminate on the basis of gender or race, but one can only avoid infection if she is empowered to understand the risk factors and prevention methods, as well as having enough strength in her relationships to advocate on her own behalf.