Trash Talk
This single-use plastic tube for sipping drinks has been banned in many places, but don’t worry — you’ll still find 10 of them floating in the Inner Harbor.
What is a Straw?
When the Wi-Fi crashes during course registration, the chain reaction of chaos feels less like one broken router and more like this natural disaster that can cause fires, tsunamis, and is measured on the Richter scale.
What is an Earthquake?
This endangered bear eats bamboo almost exclusively — kind of like how I eat ramen exclusively until my stipend comes in.
Heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere create this “effect,” which sounds cozy until you realize it’s cooking us alive.
What is the Greenhouse Effect?
This black rock powered the Industrial Revolution — and now mostly powers asthma.
What is coal?
This material is technically recyclable, but only about 9% ever actually makes it — the rest is probably in your bloodstream by now.
What is Plastic?
Finals week torches your REM cycle just like these events torched California in January of this year — except this natural phenomenon doesn't charge you $80k a year for it.
What are wildfires?
Melting Arctic ice is destroying the hunting grounds of this predator, who now looks as stressed out as a Hopkins sophomore in orgo.
What is a Polar Bear?
These massive frozen bodies are melting into the sea, raising levels faster than Hopkins raises tuition.
What are Glaciers/ice sheets?
These giant turbines use moving air to make electricity, and moving neighbors to complain about the “view.”
What are Wind Turbines?
This floating island version of this isn’t a vacation spot; it’s a swirling soup of garbage roughly the size of Texas
What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
Finals week at Hopkins feels like this ancient catastrophe that buried Pompeii — except instead of lava, it’s coffee cups and panic covering everything in sight. (Be specific)
What is the eruption of Mount Vesuvius?
This famously extinct bird couldn’t fly, couldn’t fight, and apparently couldn’t survive European sailors who thought it was dinner.
What is a dodo?
This 2015 agreement in France promised to save the planet, but most countries treated it like a group project they never showed up for.
What is the Paris Agreement?
This radioactive fuel powers nuclear plants — and your nightmares about Chernobyl and our future as a species.
What is uranium?
Rotting food in landfills releases this gas, which is also produced every time someone eats at FFC.
What is methane?
Hopkins midterms stack up until the whole week collapses at once, just like soaked hillsides give way to one of these natural disasters
What is a landslide?
These pollinators are vanishing fast and without them, you won’t even have coffee to cry into during finals.
What are bees?
Scientists warn of these “points of no return,” where ecosystems collapse permanently — kind of like your GPA after Orgo II, Cells and Systems, or Physics.
What are tipping points?
This form of renewable power captures Earth’s internal heat — basically using the planet’s stress levels to make electricity.
What is Geothermal Energy?
Known for their eerie screams and sly reputation, these animals thrive by digging through city trash, kind of like Hopkins students thrive by digging through Brody recycling bins for a half-empty cold brew.
What are foxes?
When Hopkins ignores problems for too long, they don’t trickle out — they burst all at once, the same way rising water drowns a city in this disaster.
What is a flood?
This migratory bird, once so common it darkened North American skies, was hunted into extinction by 1914 — proof that humans can erase billions of animals in under a century.
This “time bomb” stores more carbon than all human emissions combined, and is already thawing in Siberia.
What is the Arctic permafrost?
This dream energy source powers the sun itself, but on Earth, scientists joke it’s always “30 years away.”
What is Nuclear Fusion?