Toxic wasteland

In satellite photos of the Eurasian landmass at night, the brightest pools of light do not emanate from London, Paris or Rome. The largest glow, covering hundreds of thousands of acres can be found in the northern wilderness of Siberia, near the Arctic Circle. It comes from thousands of gas flames that burn day and night in the Tyumen oil fields, sending clouds of black smoke rolling across the Siberian forest. During the past two decades, the steady plume of noxious sulfur dioxide has helped to ruin more than 1,500 square miles of timber.

The USSR has left the 290 million people of the former Soviet Union to breathe poisoned air, eat poisoned food, drink poisoned water and, all too often, to bury their frail, poisoned children without knowing what killed them. Even now, as the Russians and the other people of the former USSR discover what was done to them in the name of socialist progress, there is little they can do to reverse the calamity: the republics are too poor to rebuild their economies and repair the ecological damage at the same time, too disorganized to mount a collective war on pollution and sometimes too cynical even to try. Even when the energy and the resources needed to attack this ecological disaster do materialized, the damage is so widespread that cleaning it up will take decades.

A radiation map, which has never been released to the public but which was made available to US News, pinpoints more than 130 nuclear explosions, mostly in European Russia. They were conducted for geophysical investigations, to create underground pressure in oil and gas fields or simply to move earth for building dams. No one knows how much they have contaminated the land, water, people and wildlife, but the damage is almost certainly enormous.

Alexei Yablokov, science adviser to Russian President Boris Yeltsin claims that roughly one out of every 10 barrels of oil produced are spilled every day in Russia. To speed up construction of oil pipelines, builders were permitted to install cutoff valves every 30 miles instead of every 3, so a break dumps up to 30 miles worth of oil onto the ground. One pool of spilled oil in Siberia is 6 feet deep, 4 miles wide and 7 miles long.

According to Yablokov, the Siberian forests that absorb much of the world’s carbon dioxide are posing a bigger threat to the world environment than the destruction of the Brazilian rain forests. Most of the damage is caused by pollution and by indiscriminate clear-cutting, mostly by foreign companies.

Because the rivers that feed it were diverted, the Aral Sea is evaporating, altering rainfall patterns, raising local temperatures as much as 3 degrees and releasing so much salt and dust that the level of particular matter in Earth’s atmosphere has risen more that 5 per cent.

Although every year more than 270 malfunctions are recorded at nuclear facilities, economic pressure will make it difficult to shut down aging Soviet nuclear power plants. Yablokov warns that “every nuclear power station is in no-good condition, a lot of leaks”. In the short term, Russia has little choice but to stick with nuclear power, which provides 60 per cent of the electricity in some regions.

The loosening of political control from Moscow has already turned the provinces – especially Siberia – into the Wild West. Local authorities , particularly in the Far East, have extended vast timber-cutting rights to foreign companies, without either imposing strict controls on their methods or requiring reforestation.

Many scientists in fields such as nuclear physics hope to recast themselves as ecologists. Mindful that the Russian government does not have the funds for large projects, they are looking for foreign partners to join them in cleanup projects. So far, most Western groups have offered advice but not much money.

Some Western input may be necessary, however, to prevent the environmental effort from succumbing to own form of gigantism. One Central Asian academic’s plan for saving the Aral Sea, for example, calls for building a 270-mile canal from the Caspian Sea to divert water into the depleted Aral.

The spreading ecological disasters may yet force change on an impoverished and cynical people. We have a Russian saying: “The worse, the better”. This situation has now become so obvious for the people that a lot of decision makers began to turn their minds in this direction.

Task 1

Interpret the following words in English.

Wilderness, civilization, gigantism, nuclear facilities, cynical people, to materialize.

Task2

Answer the questions and give your own opinion.

1. Why are the problems of environmental protection so difficult to solve?

2. How serious are ecological problems in Russia? Give facts.

3. What are the reasons of careless attitude to nature?

4. What changes have you personally noted in surrounding nature?

5. Do you think the attraction of foreign ecologists and businessmen to the solution of our problems is a good practice?

6. What is needed to make authorities and people think of their home?

7. Do you believe that better economic situation will make us all think more about our town, streets, homes?

Task 3

Render the following text into English.