Secondhand smoke kills. Environmental Tobacco Smoke, a human carcinogen, was found to be the cause of premature death in people who do not smoke, and there is no risk-free level of exposure, according to a 2006 U.S. Surgeon General's report. ETS is the cause of more than 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the United States, and any exposure to it increases the risk of developing lung cancer by up to 30 percent.
With crude oil prices rising rapidly across the globe, there is pressure to find alternative sources of energy. One source of great interest is oil shale. The World Energy Council conservatively estimates the world's oil shale reserves at 2.8 trillion barrels of oil, 1.
Today people are more willing to express their opinion over the Internet and less likely to do so in person, according to communication research done by Shirley S. Ho and Douglas M. McLeod of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their study found that "fear of isolation, communication apprehension, future opinion congruency and communication setting significantly predict willingness to speak out.
Last year the U opened an Office of Sustainability and officially joined other U.S. colleges and universities moving toward a more sustainable, or "greener" future. Why are institutions that traditionally avoid rapid transformation making this shift in vision and operations? What has induced more than 550 college and university presidents, including the U President Michael Young, to commit to the non-trivial task of making their campuses climate neutral? How might this green campus transformation prepare graduates to live in a world with finite limits on resources and honor the needs of future generations? Consider the incoming 2008 freshman class.
