Comprehension check

I. Complete the sentences using the information from the text.

1. The scientillc progress, alongside with the advantages, brought...

2. City environment is an urgent global issue because...

3. The release of toxic substances causes...

4. The facades of the buildings need to be repainted very often because...

5. We must save both natural values and masterpieces of human hand in order...

2. Give Russian equivalents to the following word combinations:

A scourge, dissipation, throwaway attitude, extinction, con­tamination, landfills, to choke from, soot and ash, diverse, to heal one's wounds.

3. Find in the text words with the opposite meaning:

Particular, existence, a long-waited problem, to construct,

monotonous, to justify, gratification.

IV. Make up a monologue about the present situation in the city centers. Find the ways out of the situation.

MAN AND THE BIOSPHERE

Pre-reading activity

1. What arc the relations between men and nature?

2. What measures should be taken to make the situation better?

Interrelations between man and the biosphere are of a fairly complex nature. Man, like every other living organism, de­pends for his life on what the biosphere provides: Water, oxy­gen, food and shelter. On the other hand, the biosphere is strongly affected by all sorts of human activity.

Technology powerfully amplifies the effects of human beings on the biosphere. Prehistoric man withdrew from the atmosphere only the oxygen he required for respiration: technological man consumes a far greater amount of oxygen to support fires, power plants and chemical processes. The carbon dioxide produced by technological processes has measurably altered the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. Apart from the amplification of such natural processes in the biosphere, technology has introduced into the biosphere substances wholly new to it: Man-made radio-isotopes and a wide variety of synthetic materials such as plastics, insecticides, herbi­cides and numerous industrial materials. These, too, alter the bio­sphere.

The problem has already been discussed at a large number of conferences, some of them sponsored by the UN. However, rela­tively little has so far been done to check environmental pollution.

Two Courses Of Action

The problem of the environment crisis has recently assumed global proportions. Both scientists and politicians agree that unless some radical steps are taken before long, life on our planet may be irrevocably damaged if not destroyed altogether. It seems therefore worth while to consider the fundamental conflict which underlies the surface manifestations of the present crisis. For there undoubtedly exists a conflict, an incompatibility between the tenets of an industrial society and those of ecology.

Industry is bound to expand continuously, all ecological sys­tems tend toward stability and equilibrium.

There seems to be at least two general courses of action which might be adopted in order that the environmental doom may be averted.

One would be to curb the dynamics of industrial develop­ment; the other — to turn technology to the construction of physiologically and socially healthy environment. The former pos­sibility being highly unrealistic, the latter one seems to be the only path to follow.