ENVIRONMENT AND CONSERVATION

What are currently the most important environmental issues in your country, city or area?
What is being done to solve the problems related to these issues?
What is the general public attitude to environmental issues in your country?
Can you think of any examples where economic and environmental interests conflict?
Do you think these conflicts are occurring more often than they used to? If so, why?










The other population crisis

It is an unquestioned principle that has
dominated international thinking for decades:
we live in an overcrowded world teeming with
billions of humans who are destined to
suffocate our cities and squeeze our planet of
its precious resources. Our species is
inexorably wrecking Earth: flooding valleys,
cutting down forests and destroying the habitats
of animals and plants faster than scientists can
classify them. Our future is destined to be
nasty, brutish, and cramped.
Or is it? Now, it seems, population analysts
have suddenly started to question the self-
evident truth that we are destined eventually to
drown under our own weight. While accepting
that populations will continue to rise, they point
out that this rise will not be nearly as steep or as
long-lasting as was once feared. They even
claim they can envisage the day when world
population numbers will peak and begin to
decline.
As evidence, statisticians point to a simple, stark
fact: people are having fewer and fewer
children. In the 1970s, global fertility rates
stood at about six children per woman. Today
the average is 2.9 and falling. Such a rate will
still see the worlds population increase to nine
billion by 2050, a rise of fifty per cent on
todays figure. That is not good news for the
planet, but it is far less alarming than the
projections of fifteen billion that were once
being made. More to the point, statisticians
predict that after 2050 the number of humans
will go down. Such trends raise two key
questions. Why has the rise in world
populations started to die out so dramatically?
And what will be the consequences of this
decline?
Answers to the first question depend largely on
locality. In Europe, for example, couples will
have only one or two children when they might
have had three or four in the past. There are
various reasons for this. Women now have
their own career options, and are no longer
considered failures if they do not marry and
produce children in their twenties or thirties.
This has taken a substantial number out of the
pool of potential mothers. In addition, parents
have aspirations for their offspring, choices not
available to past generations but which cost
money, for example, higher education and
travel. These and other pressures have reduced
the average birth rate in European countries to
1.4 per couple. Given that a country needs a
birth rate of 2.1 to maintain its numbers, it is
clear to see that in the long term there will be
fewer Europeans.
The causes of declining numbers in other
countries are more varied and more alarming.
Russias population is dropping by almost
750,000 people a year. The causes are
alcoholism, breakdown of the public health
service, and industrial pollution that has had a
disastrous effect on mens fertility. In China,
the state enforces quotas of offspring numbers,
and it is expected that its population will peak at
1.5 billion by 2019 and then go into steep
decline. Some analysts suggest the country
could lose twenty to thirty per cent of its
population every generation. There is also the
exodus from the countryside, a trek happening
across the globe. Soon half the worlds
population will have urban homes. But in cities,
children become a cost rather than an asset for
helping to work the land, and again pressures
mount for people to cut the size of their
families.
The impact of all this is harder to gauge. In
Europe, demographers forecast a major drop in
the numbers who will work and earn money,
while the population of older people who
need support and help will soar. So, the
urging by a British politician that it is the
patriotic duty of women to have children makes
sense. There will be no workforce if people do
not have children. At present the median age of
people is twenty-six; within a hundred years, if
current trends continue, that will have doubled.
More and more old people will have to be
supported by fewer and fewer young people. In
China, the problem is worse. Most young
Chinese adults have no brothers or sisters and
face the prospect of having to care for two
parents and four grandparents on their own.
Pensions and incomes are simply not able to
rise fast enough to deal with the crisis.
There are people who cling to the hope that it
is possible to have a vibrant economy without a
growing population, but mainstream
economists are pessimistic. On the other hand,
is clear that reduced human numbers can only
be good for the planet in the long term. Until
we halt the spread of our own species, the
destruction of the last great wildernesses, such
as the Amazon, will continue.
Just after the last Ice Age, there were only a few
hundred thousand humans on Earth. Since
then the population has grown ten
thousandfold. Such a growth rate, and our
imperfect attempts to control it, are bound to
lead us into an uncertain future.

VOCABULARY
Threats and potential threats to the environment
Shrinking habitats are a threat to both plants and animal, and endangered species need legal
protection if they are to survive. Meanwhile, global warming will produce rising sea levels and
climatic changes, and carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are contributing
to the greenhouse effect. In addition, population growth exerts severe pressure on finite
resources, and the ecological balance may be upset by uncontrolled deforestation.
Demographic projections suggest the world population will grow before it begins to stabilise.
One of the worst case scenarios is that there will be no tropical forests left by the year 2050.
Our only hope is that pristine environments such as Antarctica can be protected from
development and damage.

- places where animals live and breed are decreasing in size .............
- types of animals/plants which are in danger of no longer existing ............
- steady rise in average world temperatures
- changes in the weather/climate
- a colourless, odourless gas from factories, vehicles, etc.
- coal, oil, etc.
- warming of the Earths surface caused by pollution
- puts great pressure on
- limited amount of things such as coal, trees, oil, etc.
- balance of natural relationships in the environment
- destruction/clearing of forests
- forecasts about the population
- the most unfavourable situation that could possibly happen
- perfectly clean/untouched/unspoilt areas

Make these sentences formal by using words and phrases from A instead of the underlined words.
Make any other necessary changes to produce a correct sentence.

1. All that carbon-whats-it-called gas put out by cars and factories is a major problem.
2. These flowers here are a type theres not many left of, so its illegal to pick them.
3. A lot of wild animals have to survive in smaller and smaller areas where they can live.
4. Most of Patagonia is a completely spotless area thats never been touched.
5. We have to look after the things we use on this planet because they wont last forever.
6. If the cutting down of trees continues, there will be no forest left ten years from now.
7. Burning coal and oil and stuff like that causes a lot of pollution.
8. The sea will get higher if this heating up of the world continues.
9. Increasing population puts really big pressure on economic resources.
10. The way things all balance one another in nature is very delicate.