Радио. Глобальное потепление.
проект по английскому языку (11 класс) на тему

5 minute English. Global Warming

N: Hello and welcome to 6 minute English. I’m Nastya….

E: And I’m Evsey. I’m feeling a bit chilly today, Nastya.

N: Yes, it is unseasonably cold today – which means not normal for the time of year. But the weather is very unpredictable these days.

E: I know what you mean.

N: Well, global warming is the subject of today's show.

E:  Is global warming really something to worry about? Some people say that the Earth has warmed up in the past and nothing terrible has happened.

N:   The Earth has warmed up before, but this was the result of things like wobbles in the Earth's orbit, not because of an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

E:  Can we reverse the changes?

N:   No, it's too late, and now we have to find ways to adapt to extreme weather, rising sea levels, and melting polar ice caps. However, we can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – or make them less harmful.

N: But, do you know any ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions?

E: I do, actually. An Argentinian company has started collecting cow … emissions and converting them into energy.

N: Well, as the world eats more meat, methane emissions from livestock are actually becoming a bigger climate concern.

E: And one day's worth of cow emissions provides energy to run a car for 24 hours.

N: OK, moving on now, so the world is going to have to adapt to global warming since we can't turn back the clock on climate change. And rich countries have the resources to do this, while poorer countries don't.

N: The rich countries have already pledged and promised a hundred billion dollars a year, starting from 2020, to cover all kinds of climate change activities which in climate change are either going to be called mitigation or adaptation.

E: A hundred billion? But that's an enormous sum of money!

N: Not that enormous compared to what they gave to the banking system when it collapsed. Climate change is a much bigger problem than the banking crisis. For example, after the damaging effects of Hurricane Sandy, New York City invested ten billion dollars to protect Manhattan – and Wall Street. And countries like Australia, China, and Spain, have built some plants, which remove the salt from seawater to produce drinking water.

E: OK, Nastya, and thinking about radical proposals for adaptation – did you know there's a Dutch company that wants to build floating cities for us to live in?

N: No, I didn't.

E: Yeah. Plans include 15-storey buildings and floating food production.

N: It sounds incredible. Has anyone actually built one?

E: No, not so far. I don't think it's really cost-efficient and  in practical terms, a large floating city probably couldn't work

N: On the other hand, the logistics of teaching farmers in Bangladesh to breed ducks instead of chickens, for example, would be simple and cost-efficient – and since ducks float and chickens don't, it's a sensible adaptation to climate change!

E: I am not sure in that, Nastya. But I do know which words we learned today.

They are:

unseasonably

mitigate

pledged

homegrown

cost-efficient

logistics

N: And that's the end of today's 5 Minute English. Don't forget to join us again soon!

Both  Bye!