How Tetris Can Simply Explain the Most Important Issue Facing Humanity

Climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time. But as globally significant as it is, it’s also incredibly complicated to explain.
That’s why the geniuses at TED-Ed have put out a new video that uses the game of Tetris as an analogy of this critical problem. Their short lesson clocks in at just 2:49 minutes so it won’t take up too much of your time.
The video simply shows that as we continue driving our cars and burning more fuel at factories and power plants, carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere as “blocks” that warm the planet (also known as the greenhouse effect). It also doesn’t help that we’re mowing down the forests that suck up this CO2.
And just like the video game, if we can’t clear these CO2 blocks, they’ll just build up faster and faster until it’s game over.
MORE: These Scientists Were Fed Up with Climate Change Deniers. Here’s What They Did About It.
“Ultimately it’s a game we are all stuck playing,” says narrator Joss Fong. “And unlike in Tetris, we won’t get a chance to start over and try again.”
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ALSO: Earth Day 2014: 5 Surprising Things That Harm the Planet (and 5 Simple Ways to Help Save It)

How Used Cooking Oil Can Have an Extraordinary Second Life

The next time you’re frying something in the kitchen, don’t pour the used oil down the drain; not only can that lead to clogged pipes, you’re throwing out precious fuel. As this TED-Ed video explains, we all should be recycling our used cooking oil because that muck can have an amazing afterlife as biodiesel. Simply funneling the grease into any plastic container and occasionally sending your stockpile to a processing plant can help make sustainable fuels and protect the environment.
Not convinced it’s really worth the hassle? Check out this slick fact: If everyone in New York contributed the grease they throw out in a single day, it would make enough jet fuel to fly to Los Angeles a few hundred times. Visit oil4good.org to learn more about how you can recycle goop into good.
MORE: How Much Food Could Be Rescued if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?