9. Time off

Working hours are shorter, holidays are longer, and people have more

time off now than ever before. What do they do with it?

In both Britain and America, people watch TV for many hours every

week. In America there is a very big choice. Many cities have twenty or more

channels, sometimes going for twenty-four hours a day. In Britain there are four

channels.

Many well-off Americans have a “camper” or “trailer” which they can use

for weekends away. Some have holiday houses in the country, and spend as

much time as possible on outside activities like fishing and water skiing.

Fewer British people have caravans or second homes, but many have

gardens, where they spend a lot of their free time. Home owners often take time

doing jobs round the house. They paint, put up wallpaper, build cupboards and

even make furniture. There are a lot of DIY (Do It Yourself) shops all over the

country selling everything they need.

But for some, time off means music and dancing. In London and New

York, one or two new discos open every week. Some close again after a night or

two, but some, like Tramps in London, go on, and on, and on ...

Americans love to get out of town into the wild, and many go for holidays

or long weekends into the thirty-five fabulous national parks. These magnificent

areas of countryside include tropical forests, high mountains, dry deserts, long

sandy coasts, grassy prairies and wooded mountains full of wild animals. The

idea of these parks, which cover 1% of the whole area of the USA, is to make “a

great breathing place for the national lungs”, and to keep different parts of the

land as they were before men arrived. There are camping places in the national

parks as well as museums, boat trips and evening campfire meetings.

Americans really enjoy new ways of travelling. In the winter, the woods

are full of “snowmobiles” (cars with skis in the front). In the summer they ride

their “dune buggies” across the sands or take to the sky in hang gliders.

But Americans do not only spend their free time having fun. They are

very interested in culture too. Millions take part-time courses in writing,

painting and music, and at the weekends the museums, art galleries and concert

halls are full.

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9. Environmental Protection

The twentieth century is known to be the century of the scientific and

technological progress. The achievements of the mankind in mechanization and

automation of industrial processes, in chemical industry and conquering outer

space, in the creation of atomic power stations and ships are amazing.

But at the same time this progress gave birth to a very serious problem –

the poisoning of our planet, its land, its air and water. The ecological harmony is

disturbed. The seas are filled with industrial and nuclear waste, chemicals and

fertilizers. The concentration of smoke in the air is so high in some industrial

centers that it is deadly dangerous just to breathe there.

Many species of flora and fauna have disappeared. Some of them are on

the brink of extinction, many have been put down into the “Red Book of

Nature”. Every hour some kinds of animals and plants die out for ever.

Acid rains, the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion caused by harmful

substances emitted by industrial enterprises are much spoken about.

Unfortunately some means of transport can be regarded as offenders in

poisoning the environment.

Atomic power plants are worth mentioning as a grave threat to the

environment nowadays. The pollution of the environment is hard to ignore.

The problem of environmental protection has become an extremely

important part of political programmes in many countries nowadays.

The Environmental Movement had gained a lot of supporters long before

our country joined it. Many laws and vital decisions on the problem have been

adopted, many measures have been taken to protect our forests, rivers, lakes and

seas.

However, the Mediterranean is already nearly dead; the North Sea is

following. The Aral Sea is on the point of vanishing. The environmental

problems have grown beyond the concern of a single country. Their solution

requires the cooperation of all nations.

It is obvious, that only our joint effort will help to avoid a global

catastrophe.

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