Answer the following questions:

1. What can the environmental crisis be divided into?

2. Where will the growth of the population lead to?

3. What is the worst and basic form of the environmentalpollution?

4. What is falling into short supply?

5. Why can the resources be depleted despite the capacity toregenerate?

6. How many hectares become desert every year?

7. What do the biologists fear of?

8. What problems lie at the root of environmental crisis?

9. What kind of pollution is the most visible sign of thepollution crisis?

10. How does the pollution influence the health of the people?

Вариант IV

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Pressing problems

1. Atmospheric pollution raises problems of several types. First, there are local problems due to the production of smoke and offensive gases by factories. Secondly, there are regional problems created by industrial agglomerations which may spread the same harmful effects over whole areas. Thirdly, there are some types of pollution, such as those arising from nuclear explosives, which cover a considerable portion of the globe. And lastly, there appeared one more type of pollution which is threatening the globe as a whole.

2. Recent scientific research suggests that the protective layerof ozone around our planet is under severe attack. Alarm bellswere sounded in 1982 when reseachers in the Antarctic first identified a yawning (зияющий) hole over the Antarctic where theozone layer is thinnest.

3. This was the first sign of a hole. Five years later it was reported that the hole had grown to an area the size of the UnitedStates.

4. The major cause of this weakening of the ozone layer is believed to be the increasing amount of harmful chemicals that are being released into the atmosphere by humankind.

5. Environmentalists and scientists point out that a further oneper cent drop in the overall ozone layer can cause an increase ofskin cancer.

6. The fundamental importance of the ozone layer is that it actsas a filter intercepting moat of the sun's radiation includingpotentially harmful Ultra Violet B-rays which can cause melanoma - skin cancer.

7. The appearance of the Antarctic hole has intensified the searchfor a cause. Strong evidence now suggests that it is the growingindustrial use of chlorine compounds called chlorofluorocarbons(СРСs) which is responsible.

8. CFC is a propellent (движущая сила) gas commonly used in aerosolsprays, air cooling systems in fridges (холодильник) and air-conditioning. Once released CFC can hang around in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some eventually reaches the upper atmosphere to be broken down by the sunlight. In the process chlorine is released which combines with oxygen atoms thus reducing the amount available for ozone production.

9. According to measurements recorded by the US Environmental Protection Agency one chlorine atom has enough kinetic energy todestroy 100,000 molecules of ozone. US space agency NASA has predicted that a rise of 2.5 per cent in CFC emissions would cause an extra one million cancers over the lifetime of the present US population.

10. Researchers suggest that the level of CFCs in the atmosphereis actually increasing by 5 per cent each year. Since 1969 theozone level has fallen by 3 per cent over the densely populatedcities of the US, Canada and Europe and by 4 per cent over Australia and New Zealand.

11. In its "worst prediction scenario" NASA claims that an ever thinning ozone layer could eventually allow a more harmful form of radiation, known as Ultra Violet C, to hit the earth. Laboratory experiments have shown that Ultra Violet С can penetrate cells in the body and irreparably damage the nucleic acids and proteins which are the building blocks of life.

12. There is the need for an international agreement that wouldcompletely stop CPC production.