Comprehension check

I. Answer the following questions:

1. What lias been one of the most significant Britain's successes?

2. What is the commonest air pollution and how do people try to combat with it?

3. What is understood by the term "noise pollution"?

4. What are the consequences of water pollution?

5. What are the problems connected with cars?

6. How do people try to find the way out?

2. Give Russian variants to the following English expressions:

Environmental problems

dreadful smogs

to spread over a wide area

threatening air pollution

to spoil the country-side

to bring noise pollution.

III. Complete the sentences using the information from the text:

1. London has become a smokeless zone because...

2. The commonest air pollution comes...

3. In order to reduce noise pollution...

4. France and Britain have similar problems because...

5. Only buses and bicycles should be allowed in the city centers because...

IV. You should make up a report about the present state of Brit­ain's environment. What are you going to tell about it?

CITIES' ARE DYING OUT

1. Pre-reading activity:

1. How can you evaluate the ecological situation in modern cities?

2. What do you consider the main sources of pollution?

Environmental problems have become an urgent global issue. They are real and need to be faced. The threat of ecological disaster is a scourge for all of us.

At the beginning of the 20th century the scientists, inspired by the scientific pro­gress, believed firmly that it would ensure a new happy era in the history of the mankind. However, it turns out that the development of technology drives us into a corner with a necessity to solve new and unexpected problems, which arose also because of dissipation of natural resources and a throwaway attitude.

Alas! People forget that the Earth is their only home and that they lay a trap for themselves by thoughtlessness and negligence to the nature. A man endangers the rivers, oceans, forests, and animals. This world is not made by a human hand though and has its own right for existence.

Now it is obvious that human creations are also under the threat of extinction.

Let's look intently at our cities, where the majority of us live. It is high time to include city environment in the question of envi­ronment protection.

Observing a city "landscape" one can see steaming smoke-stacks of different fac­tories, endless streams of cars. As a result the level of contamination of the air, water and soil increases every year as well as the number of landfills. The most perfect filters can not prevent releases of toxic substances which do much harm and may be of fatal consequence to the health of citizens. The trees which usually gladden the eye choke from soot and ash and are gripped by asphalt.

Charles Dickens, a famous author of the 19th century, in his novel "Bleak House" described frightening fog which rapped the streets of London: "Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollu­tions of a great (and dirty) city..."

The state of affairs is even more gloomy nowadays. Every day a huge number of factories release sulphuric and hydrochloric acids in the atmosphere of big cities. These acids are the most aggressive ones. They damage buildings and constructions, and we can see it with the naked eye as the facades need to be repainted very often.

To prevent cities from dying physically we must protect them as well as the nature itself. Cities are centres of our spiritual life. The newest scientific achievements and the monuments of millen­nia are concentrated there. The world of cities is as diverse as the world of nature. We must save both natural values and master­pieces of human hand.

A city is a complex system to which we all belong. We can make it a better place to live by healing its wounds, restoring its health. Often science has been blamed for a city's illnesses. Yet science can be used to help renewing its ecological well-being. Whatever we do to the city we live in, we do to ourselves. Our future is in our hands.