Focus on speaking

1. Comment on the statement by P. Snow: “Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other”.

2. Using the material of the unit, express your point of view on the following: A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong. The Holy Bible

Unit 2 Business and Ecology: Consequences of Polluting

Pre-text exercises

1. a) Make sure that you know how to pronounce the following words, consult the dictionary if necessary:

acid, depletion, extinction, deforestation, gasoline, respiratory, congested, severity, climate, lethal, oxide, dioxide, vehicle, vapor, acidity, consequently, aquatic, to corrode, layer, coolants, propellants, stratosphere, polymer, scenario, atmosphere, effect, radiation, species, biodiversity, (in)organic, to leak, to contaminate, pesticides, minute, invertebrate, meteorite, aesthetic, ethic

2. Translate these words into Russian.

Now read the following text and do the exercises after it.

Text

The direct costs of the Industrial Revolution and consequently industrial manufacturing are air, water and soil pollution, acid rains, ozone depletion, global warming, extinction and deforestation.

Air pollution. Since the dawn of the industrial age, air pollution has become a fact of life in all major cities. It is the growing industrial activity that has caused the massive increase in the scale, intensity and variety of air pollution over the last 200 years.

Many modern industrial processes, based on the burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline release primary pollutants – gases such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and many other gasses, volatile compounds and suspended particulate matter, for example, lead (Pb) – into the atmosphere. Plant emissions and car exhausts contain high levels of pollutants.

The most conspicuous form of pollution is smog (a mixture of polluted smoke and fog). The frequency and severity of smog depends on a combination of factors including local climate and topography. Wind eventually clears the smog, but in cities such as Los Angeles and Mexico City that are surrounded by mountains, the lethal cocktail of gases can be tapped for months on end. Around 100 million Americans live in areas where pollutants exceed the current “air quality standard” (the officially recognized level at which pollution begins to be harmful to health). Various respiratory diseases, eye and skin irritations, nervous disorders and brain damage can all be attributed to high concentrations of gases and particulate matter in the atmosphere. The effects are obviously most severe in congested cities and areas of intense industrial activity where there are inadequate pollution controls.

Acid rain. One of the greatest threats to the world ecology resulting from the air pollution is acid rain. It is caused by oxides produced by industrial and motor vehicle processes. When released into the atmosphere, they chemically react with sunlight and water vapor and produce droplets of pure acids floating in smog. These acids entering the water cycle and being carried by winds pollute places far from the points where they are released into the air.

Indeed, acid rain has far-reaching damaging effects. The airborne acids are very harmful for lungs, causing respiratory diseases, and skin damage. They also harm the ecosystems. Today vast stretches of forest in Europe have been killed by acid rain. Acid rain raises the acidity in the lakes, rivers, making them unable to support the life of their inhabitants, and consequently kills fish and other aquatic life. Acid rain reduces soil fertility, increases soil acidity, which reduces forest growth in ecosystems that take limestone to neutralize acid. Acid rain can corrode railroad tracks and attack buildings.

Ozone depletion. The Earth has had a global sunscreen, the ozone layer, for the past 450 millions years. However, a lot of evidence indicates that we are thinning this screen. Different coolants (in air conditioners, refrigerators), propellants (in aerosol spray cans), cleaners (used for cleaning computer parts) and some other chemicals are considered to be harmful to the ozone layer.

With less ozone in the stratosphere, more biologically harmful UV radiation will reach the Earth’s surface. This will give us worse sunburns, earlier wrinkles, more cataracts, and more skin cancers. Other effects from increased UV exposure are:

• suppression of the human immune system, which would reduce our defenses against a variety of infectious diseases

• lower yields of crops such as corn, rice, soybeans, cotton, beans and wheat

• degradation of paints, plastics, and other polymer materials

In a worst-case scenario most people would have to avoid the sun altogether. Even cattle could graze only at dusk. And farmers and other outdoor workers might measure their exposure to the sun in minutes.

Global warming. The roots of this problem lie in the so-called “greenhouse effect”. The atmosphere is largely transparent to incoming solar radiation. The atmosphere gases (for example, CO₂), water vapor and the earth absorb part of this radiation in form of infra-red energy. The greenhouse effect maintains a temperature range on the earth that is hospitable to life.

But the amount of the gases in the atmosphere that absorb radiation rises very fast due to the development of industrial production. Since 1850 there has been a mean rise in global temperature of approximately 1C^o. In 1995 the United Nations convened a panel of leading scientists to evaluate the causes and the probable effects of global warming. This panel attributed the warming to human influence and predicted that if the greenhouse-gas emissions are not reduced, in the middle of the 21^st century the average global temperature will rise by 3-5 C^o.

Here are some possible effects of a global warmer climate:

1. Food production. Food productivity could increase in some areas and drop in others.

2. Water supplies. Lakes, streams, and aquifers in some areas that have watered ecosystems, crop-fields, and cities for centuries could shrink or dry up altogether, forcing entire populations to migrate to areas with adequate water supplies – if they could.

3. Biodiversity. Large-scale forest death would also cause mass extinction of species that couldn’t migrate to new areas. Fish would die as temperatures soared in streams and lakes. Any shifts in regional climate would threaten many parks, wildlife reserves, wetlands, and coral reefs.

4. Sea level. If warming at the poles caused ice sheets and glaciers to melt even partially, the global sea level would rise by 1,5m. But even a moderate rise in sea level would flood low-lying areas of the world’s major cities, as well as lowlands and deltas where crops are grown.

5. Human health. A warmer world would disrupt supplies of food and fresh water, displacing millions of people and altering disease patterns in unpredictable ways.

Water pollution. Water plays a key role in moderating climate, and diluting pollutants. Fresh water is a vital resource for agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and countless other human activities. But at the same time water is one of the most poorly managed resources on the Earth. We waste it and pollute it. Water pollutants result from many human activities but industry is considered to be the main one. Industries discharge pollutants into city sewers, or pour them out through the outfall pipes. Pollutants may leak from pipelines and underground storage tanks. Contaminated rivers carry numerous pollutants (organic and inorganic such as toxic metals, acids, salts, fertilizers, oil, solvents, detergents, radioactive isotopes etc.) and fall into the oceans which are the ultimate sinks for much of the waste industry produces.

Pollution of the water supply affects the health of all the living organisms that depend on it. Many pollutants are known to cause cancers. For example, pesticides, which concentrate in the tissue of living organisms, pass up the food chain from minute aquatic invertebrates to fish, birds, and eventually humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 1 million people are poisoned by pesticides every year, causing up to 20,000 deaths.

Extinction and deforestation. The industrial activity results in species extinction. Most biologists estimate that the Earth is losing approximately 74 species per day. This extraordinary rate of extinction has occurred only 5 times before. Mass extinction of the geological past was caused by climate changes or meteorite impacts, which destroyed and disrupted ecosystems around the Globe. Today’s 6^th extinction is also primarily caused by ecosystem disturbance, but this time the destroying force is not the physical environment, but rather humankind.

Humans have radically transformed the face of the planet. The conversion of forests, grasslands, and wetlands into farmlands, coupled with the multiplication and growth of urban centers and the building of dams and canals, highways, and railways, has physically altered ecosystems to the point that extinction of species has reached its current alarming pace.

In addition we have cleared forests for lumber, pulp, and firewood. A global demand for lumber rises, increased harvesting has developed in tropical countries. Logging companies in search of valuable rain forest hardwoods, or, less often, oil companies in search of petroleum, are often the first to enter a remote area of rain forest. Disregarding their uniqueness and extraordinary value, tropical rain forests are being destroyed and badly degraded at an unsustainable rate.

There are many reasons for protecting species and their habitats:

1. Economic importance. Agricultural scientists and genetic engineers will need to use existing wild plant species to develop new crops, and some may become important sources of food in the future.

2. Medical importance. About 75% of the world’s population relies on plants or plant extracts for medicines.

3. Aesthetic and recreational importance. Wild plants and animals are a source of beauty, wonder, joy, and recreational pleasure for many people. Wild tourism, sometimes called ecotourism, generates as much as 12% billion in revenues each year.

4. Scientific importance. Because every species contains a vast amount of information about the world, how it evolved, how it continues to develop, the loss of a species is the loss of a biological library.

5. Ecological importance. Wild species supply us and other species with food from the soil and the sea, recycle nutrients essential to agriculture, and help maintain soil fertility. They also produce oxygen and other gases in the atmosphere, moderate the Earth’s climate, help regulate water supplies, and store solar energy. Moreover, they detoxify poisonous substances, break down organic wastes, control potential crop pests and disease carriers.

6. Ethics. Each wild species has an inherent right to exist. It’s wrong for us to hasten the extinction of any species. The Earth is our common enormous house and all of us should live on it in peace and mutual tolerance.