How ‘green’ are you?

Here is a quiz to see how ‘green’ you are and how well informed you are about the environment. Try it now and again later, when you have taken some action.

Score one point for every ‘yes’ answer.

1. Do you read the list of ingredients on the food you buy?

2. Do you take a shower instead of bath?

3. Have you planted at least one tree?

4. Do you feed birds or squirrels in winter?

5. Do you insulate your house in winter to save heat?

6. Do you switch off lights if nobody needs them on?

7. Does you University / home use recycled paper?

8. If you ever organized campaigns on environmental issues, score 5.

9. For short journeys, do you regularly walk, if you can?

10. For long journeys, do you use public transport or a bike?

11. If your family has a car, does it run on unleaded petrol?

12. If your family does not have a car, score 2.

13. Do you buy ozone-friendly aerosols?

14. If you don’t buy aerosols at all, score 5.

15. If you have ever written to a manufacturer to complain about their products, score 5.

16. Do you belong to any environmental organization?

17. Do you take rubbish to an allowed place?

18. Do you collect paper for recycling?

19. If you are a non-smoker, score 5.

20. If coming back from the forest or from the beach, you always take your litter with you, score 2.

How do you score?

Add your scores to discover if you are:

Very pale green – scores under 5

Light green – scores 6-16

Mid-green – scores 17-27

Dark-green – scores 28-38

Text 1

Pre-reading task

The problems of ecology are very important now. Which problem is the most urgent, in your opinion? What can you and the people around you do to protect the planet?

Reading

Now you are suggested to read the text about urgent environmental problems and discuss them using additional information that you know about the situation in different regions.

Global Ecological Problems in the Beginning of the New Millennium

At the beginning of the 21-st century the various environmental problems have become perhaps the greatest challenge of the humanity and the most serious threat for the long-term well-being of the human population living on our planet.

The ancient problems related to soil fertility, erosion, desertification, salinization and loss of nutrients, are still with us and damaging the food production in different parts of the world. The air in many cities is more polluted than perhaps ever before. Millions of people are still drinking water that has been polluted by human wastes and industrial pollutants.

Besides these age-old problems there is a truly frightening array of new environmental threats that have been produced by modern industrial development within a very short period of time, in less than a century.

One hundred years ago we did not even know that there is something which is called the ozone layer. Now we know that it is threatened by destruction by various chemicals produced by the human civilization.

We started to use deep groundwater in a large scale only a couple of decades ago. At that time we thought that this would be a solution to all our water needs, replacing the traditional water harvesting and storing technologies that had been in use for thousands of years. After fifty years of ground water overuse we are facing with declining water-tables and with a huge problem of ground-water pollution, the most striking example of which is the vast arsenic poisoning epidemic in Bangladesh and in the states of West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh in India. While this is happening, the hundreds of thousands of traditional water harvesting systems are lying in ruins in South Asia, North Africa, Middle East, China, Latin America and elsewhere. In some cases the “answer’ to the acute water problems dreamed by our governments, like the overly ambitious river-linking schemes, are almost as frightening as the actual problems the projects are supposed to solve.

The strengthening of the greenhouse effect is threatening to destabilize the whole climate of our planet. This would make weather conditions very unpredictable and cause major problems for agricultural production. The melting of Himalayan glaciers could lead to the drying of some of the most important rivers in Asia. The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic glacier could raise sea levels and drown most of the world’s fertile farmlands, and also produce very large and dangerous tsunami waves.

While the worries related to global warming and its possible consequences are increasing, the US government has bluntly stated that it plans to increase the US carbon dioxide emission by 40 per cent.

Many observers claimed that the market mechanisms can take care of global warming and other environmental issues. However, in reality it seems that the present emphasis on market mechanism is leading to a nuclear power and to the production of natural gas with a technology called underground coal gasification. In other words, instead of solving the problems the market mechanisms are leading the world towards a massive use of the two most dangerous and harmful ways of producing energy anybody has ever been able to conceive.

Most of the people living on Earth do not want all this. They would like to have clean air and clean water, they do not support the destruction of the forests. They would like to use energy whose production is not stabilizing the globe climate. And they would like to leave a beautiful Earth which has not been contaminated with radioactive waste for their children, grandchildren and for the innumerable generations which should have the right to be born on Earth after them.

However, a very complex web of economic and political power relations often forces the people to support policies which they would not like to support and use the most polluting forms of energy. Therefore we cannot save ourselves and the future generations from an environmental disaster without tackling the issues of democracy and equality. Ecological democracy is an important dimension of democracy, and a prerequisite for sustainable human societies.

Task 1

Interpret the following terms in English: fertility, erosion, desertification, salinization, nutrients, pollutants, overuse, glacier, tsunami, gasification, prerequisite, epidemic, renewal, society.

Task 2

Give synonyms or close words of the following words: various, perhaps, well-being, damage, wastes, afraid, produce, decade, huge, acute, unpredictable, cause, raise, decline, emission, damaging, conceive, contaminate, innumerable, relation, disaster, dimension, sustain.

Task 3

Answer the questions and give your own opinion.

1. What ecological problems are considered to be the greatest?

2. Comment on the reasons of global ecological problems.

3. Why do people follow the dangerous and harmful ways of living?

4. How do global and environmental disasters effect you?

5. What environmental disasters could be eliminated on your opinion?

Task 4

Render the text into English.