Environmental Protection

Ecological problems are among the greatest facing the world today. Ways of resolving them are sought by many countries and by the world community as a whole.

Nowadays numerous sciences join together to regulate the interrelations between man and nature. Man uses natural resour­ces as the material for his creative work, and nature itself as his workshop. But he will cease to be HOMO SAPIENS if he doesn't think about the consequences that may be brought by his trans­forming activities.

While creating machines and technologies, which save time and effort, people “consume” mountains and forests, overuse water resources, let myriads of factory stacks contaminate the atmosphere. Technological progress can often overstep the line when it becomes an enemy of the natural resources.

Billions of tons of raw materials are processed by the world’s industries every year. Millions of tons of smoke and dust are discharged every year into the atmosphere. One of the most significant changes in the earth’s atmosphere is that, which began with the industrial revolution in the last century. Industry demanded coal and oil, and we began to burn lots of it, so raising the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the air. Today the concentration of CO₂ is increasing rapidly each year. The scien­tists state that high levels of CO₂ will lead to the greenhouse effect slowly warming the earth’s climate.

Air pollution has been going at a fast rate. The smokes dis­charged by factories are carried by winds hundreds and thou­sands of km. away from industrial areas. On contacting atmosphe­ric moisture, compounds of sulphur and nitrogen turn into acid. Acid rains affect open-air plants, small animals, the amount of fish, the quality of forests, etc.

The heaviest impact has been on the world ocean and inland water bodies, such as lakes and rivers. Water pollution is a se­rious problem at the present time, as fast-growing cities dis­charge increasing amount of factory effluents into rivers. Be­cause of extensive extraction of oil, the world ocean is getting heavily polluted.

The world’s forests, which maintain the air and water balance on the planet, are also at risk. Tropical forests, account for 60 per cent of the world forests. The rate of the tropical timber production has already gone to 20 hectares per minute. At such speed vast territories of forests may even disappear soon.

Industrial waste gets into the soil of underneath large cities.

All these factors affect human health. A rapid spreading of diseases and growing number of cancer deaths are the consequences of environment pollution.

The rapid growth of towns, traffic and population also influence the pollution of air, water, soils and vegetation. These impacts are felt at a distance some 40-50 times greater than the city radius. The usage of motorcars is also harmful from the point of view of air pollution.

Among numerous ways of solving the ecological problems are the purification of industrial effluents and the development of low-waste, waste-free and resource-saving technologies.

Nuclear power can be an alternative to solid fuels, but lots of people are against the nuclear power engineering, especially after the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

Nowadays motor vehicles are being equipped with special devices to neutralize engine fumes. Industrial enterprises undergo ecolo­gical inspection. Trees are being planted in the cities.

Environmental protection is an important question in the state policies of all countries in the world. But one should remember that the world's ecological balance depends on every person par­ticularly. Each of us must take a greater responsibility for our environment.

Notes:

homo sapiens (лат.)		человек разумный
carbon dioxide	['kRbqn daI'OksaId]	углекислый газ
greenhouse effect	['grJnhaus]	парниковый эффект
sulphur	['sAlfq]	сера
nitrogen	['naItrqGqn]	азот
acid	['xsId]	кислота
waste	[weIst]	отходы
device	[dI'vaIs]	механизм, устройство
waste-free	['weIst frJ]	безотходный

Exercises:

I. Read the following words:

community	carbon dioxide	resources	hectare
natural	moisture	myriads	diseases
creative	acid	contaminate	environment
consequence	pollution	raw material	vehicle
machine	effluents	discharge	neutralize
technology	supply	atmosphere	purification

II. Complete the sentences:

1) Millions of tons of smoke… 2) One of the most signifi­cant changes in the atmosphere is… 3) … lead to the greenhouse effect. 4) Acid rains affect… 5) Because of extensive extraction of oil… 6) … has gone to 20 hectares per minute. 7) … influence the pollution of air, water and soils. 8) … are the main ways of solving ecological problems.

III. Find equivalents for the following word-combinations and use them in the sentences of your own:

регулировать взаимоотношения, последствия, экономить время, истощать ресурсы, выбрасывать в атмосферу, потепление климата, загрязнение воды, понижаться до 1/3, быть в опасности, здоровье человека, быть против, защита окружающей среды.

IV. Read the following passages and formulate their main ideas:

1. The term ecology was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel from two ancient Greek words: óikos (house, dwelling) and logos (science). Today, the term has been extended to denote a complex of science dealing above all with the interrelations between man and nature. Early in the beginning of the 20^th century, Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) pioneered work on the problems of optimizing relations between society and nature. It was largely to his work that the concept of man’s absolute domination of nature has given way to that of relations between equal part­ners.

2. One of the most famous lakes in Russia is Lake Baikal. It's the world's deepest freshwater lake. The volume of its water body is about 23,000 cubic kilometres. Lake Baikal is approximately 25 million years old. It is entered by 336 rivers. The wildlife of Lake Baikal is diverse – there are over 1,200 animal and 600 plant species in the area. That's why in '80s the whole country became involved in the debates on the future of Lake Baikal. There was a need for a compromise between the economic and the environmental interests. So, the territory surrounding the lake was given the status of reserve. From 1988 on, no commer­cial tree-felling has been permitted there. The timber-produ­cing industries in the area have been reorganized to maintain and reproduce stock.

3. The Caspian Sea is unique in its natural features and commercial importance. It yields 90 per cent of the world's catch of sturgeon. But the water reserves of the Caspian Sea are being overused. The indiscriminate industrial utilization of the ri­vers run-off and extensive irrigation programmes have reached a critical point. The sea is reported to "self-cure", but there occurred a natural rise of the water level only to 27.9 m below ocean level – still, to preserve the unique stock of sturgeon fish, the Caspian Sea level should not be below 28.5m.

4. Four-fifths of Russia's forest reserves are in Siberia and the Far East. The fact that the Siberian forests are not inex­haustible has not been fully realized. The best forest lands located in the southern parts of the region and adjacent to the Trans-Siberian railway have been substantially cleared. In the past 40 years these forests have lost nearly 40 per cent of pine stock and most of their cedar.

5. There is a great diversity of wildlife in Russia. The country has about 100,000 species of plants and up to 130,000 spe­cies of animals. Human interference has had a considerable impact upon the abundance and composition of wildlife: some spe­cies became extinct, or decreased in number. Information on the rare species can be found in the Red Data Book.

V. Answer the questions using the information from the previous exercises:

1) What does the term ecology mean?

3) What is Lake Baikal famous for?

3) What do you know about the problems concerning the Caspian Sea?

4) What is the Red Data Book necessary for?

5) Why is the problem of forest protection important nowadays?

VI. Translate and render the article (magazine “The Economist”, May 30, 1992).

Nature is no respecter of national bound­aries. Across those dotted lines on the globe, winds blow, rivers flow and migrating species walk or fly.
The dotted lines may carve up the earth, but the sea and the atmosphere remain open to all, to cherish or plunder. When people in one country harm that bit of the environment they assume to be theirs, many others may suffer, too.

Such problems pose new issues for diplomats and economists. Reaching agreement often means resolving conflicting goals and priorities. Even among countries of similar wealth, environmental goals may differ: think of the rows with Iceland and Japan over whaling, or the reluctance of Britain to curb sulphur dioxide from power stations.

International agreement is the best way to solve environmental problems that transcend national borders. These are of three main kinds. First, neigh­bouring countries may share part of the environ­ment: a river such as the Rhine or the Jordan, a stretch of water such as the Mediterranean or the Great Lakes. Regional problems – acid rain is one example – fall into this category. Second, some environmental resources, such as the atmosphere, the oceans and Antarctica, are shared by the whole planet. The build-up of climate-changing green­house gases, the thinning of the ozone layer and the killing of whales fall into this group. Lastly, some environmental assets clearly belong to individual countries, but their future may affect others, in either material or (more often) spiritual and emo­tional ways. The disappearance of coral reefs or ele­phants may not show up as more than a microscopic blip on gross world product, but it gives people in many countries a sense of loss.

The best way to protect wildlife is by international agreement. Wildlife protection was, indeed, the goals of some of the earliest environmental treaties. Under a treaty of 1911, Japan and Britain (on be­half of Canada) agreed to stop pelagic sealing. In exchange, they were guaranteed a share of the seals killed by the other two countries at their island breeding-grounds. The arrangement was a success. Having fallen to about 300,000 in 1911, seal numbers recovered to over 2m by the 1950s.

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b) Look at more vocabulary from the text in the box below. Ask other people in your class for the meanings of the words you don’t know. Then look up the words in a dictionary. How do you pronounce the words? Which words have more than one meaning?

adolescent	a school (of whales)	the coast	to sizzle	rubbish
to swallow	hot dogs	to splash	clumsy

c) Read the beginning and the end of a story entitled The Great Whale’s Mistake. In groups, invent a possible storyline.

A mother whale and a father whale were swimming along the coast with their adolescent son whale when the mother saw a school of people on the beach…

…The young whale was so excited by this news that he spout­ed, and the people on the shore saw it and cried, ‘Whales!’ and somebody threw a beer bottle at them. The whales made for the deep distant water and later that night as they drifted off the Gulf Stream admiring the stars a large ship passed by and spilled oil over them, but they remained at peace with the world as it was, and afterwards dreamed of the unfortu­nate people far behind them making rubbish through the sweet summer night.

d) Read the whole story once quickly and try to summarize it in one sentence.

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