- •Навчальний посібник
- •Why we should feel responsible for future generations
- •Vocabulary
- •Before you Read Reading Without Understanding the Meaning of Every Word
- •Ecology or Egology? The Role of the Individual in the Environmental Crisis
- •Analyzing Topic Sentences
- •Find the topic sentence in each paragraph.
- •Be sure you know the vocabulary:
- •Vocabulary
- •1 Choose the best answer.
- •2 Give the English equivalents to the following words:
- •3 Give the Ukrainian equivalents to the following words:
- •4 Discussion questions.
- •The Environment and Homo Sapiens
- •Vocabulary
- •1 Checking comprehension.
- •2 Match the words below with the following definitions:
- •Pollution
- •The Nuclear Disaster at Chernobyl
- •Vocabulary
- •1 Comprehension Questions:
- •2 Match the words below with the following definitions:
- •3 Choose the right answer:
- •Pollution and What We Can Do About It
- •Vocabulary
- •1 Checking comprehension.
- •2 Find the English equivalents to the following words and phrases in the text:
- •4 Think of some interesting ways of recycling each of these:
- •5 Comment on the following words by Professor Gerald Darrell of the University of California. Do you agree with these words? Justify your answer.
- •Prereading Task Reading for a Specific Purpose
- •Ecological Issues of Canada
- •Comprehension Check
- •Vocabulary
- •Using New Words
- •Vocabulary
- •1 Comprehension Questions:
- •2 Match the following words and definitions:
- •3 Choose the right answer:
- •Saving the World’s Tropical Rain Forests.
- •Vocabulary
- •Speaking
- •Translate the text orally: Ecological Solutions to Flooding and Water Supply Problems in Woodlands
- •Vocabulary
- •1 Comprehension Questions:
- •2 Match the following words and definitions:
- •3 Choose the right answer:
- •Population Explosion
- •Extinction
- •Global Warming
- •A brief history of the future
- •Read the article and find out what Stephen Hawking’s predictions for the areas in 3 are.
- •Work with a partner and answer these questions:
- •Look at these extracts from the text. Use prepositions to complete the sentences.
- •Check your answers with the text.
- •Use the expressions in italics and the prepositions from 4 to complete these sentences.
- •Compare your answers with a partner. Are any of the sentences true for you or your country?
- •1 Complete the article using the following phrases.
- •Think of five more predictions for the future of the world. Work in groups and decide which predictions are:
- •How would you like to see the world change in the future? Write five sentences using the prompts:
- •Work in small groups and share your ideas. Which are the most common, interesting or unusual ideas? references
Why we should feel responsible for future generations
Read and translate the text in writing:
Why We Should Feel Responsible for Future Generations.
“Why should I feel obliged to future generations? We’re inevitable separated by time and space. My presence here on earth now will have no influence on someone living 200 years from now.”
You may have heard this opinion expressed by your friends-perhaps you even hold it yourself. But if you have ever explored a wilderness preserve, used a library; or visited a historical monument, you already have some reasons for being responsible. Much of what we value in our family, our society, and our world has been provided by our predecessors, sometimes at considerable cost and effort on their part.
In today’s world we face a number of issues that will affect future generations even more profoundly than they affect us now. Exploding world populations, shrinking nonrenewable resources, and plant and animal organisms threatened with extinction all add up to one thing-an ailing environment.
These are not isolated problems. Each stems from a common perception of our relationships to the world and our future. This perception can be characterized by a description of people and things as unique, immediate, individual, and separate from everything else. Any solutions we might use to resolve our problems would have to start by challenging this perception.
There are four basic considerations that may suggest a new paradigm for understanding our relationship to the world and our future.
Future generations will be essentially the same as we are. They may have different wants and priorities, but they will manifest the same basic needs for food, water, air, and space. In addition, they will have the same basic physical and mental capacities with which to interact with their environment. Once born, they too will claim a right to life and protection from life-threatening conditions, such as extreme temperatures, toxins, famine, and disease. To give them life without also providing the basic means to sustain and enhance life would be cruel. If we expect the species to continue, we are obliged to leave a hospitable environment for those still to come.
One is born into a given generation by historical accident. None of us chose when to be born, or to whom. Because we have no special claim to the time and place of our birth, Justice would require that we have no more rights over the world and its resources than anyone else.
Our survival as a species is more important than our individual survival. This is confirmed in nature every day; parents, whether they be rabbits, wolves, whales, or humans, spend their energies to reproduce and care for their young before they themselves die. Many will even risk their own lives for their offspring. This is because life is not ours to keep, but to share with others.
Even after we die, the effects of our life continue. We will be present in the memories of others and in the habits and traditions we shared with the. Our ideas will continue to enlarge the range of options for others; and even when these memories and ideas are no longer consciously a part of the future, they will ripple onwards, actively influencing the course of future events and people. What has been can never die. We are what we have been given and what we have chosen to make of these “gifts”. In short, we are the product of our ancestors-all that they died for and believed in-and we are the product of our decisions. Future generations will be the result of what we are now and how they use what we leave them.
If we accept these four simple ideas, it is easy to see why we have an obligation to future generations. Our obligation is based on the truth that we are more than unique and separate individuals, living only the immediacy of the now. We are, rather, parts of a much larger whole, one that transcends space and time.
As John Locke, the great English philosopher, once said, we owe the future “enough and as good” as we received from the past.
Learn the vocabulary by heart: