Read this interview and make some ex-s in your book.
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So, Mr. McKibben, you’re an environmentalist. What do you
actually do?
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Our environment is our planet. Human activities have a big
impact on the environment. People are becoming more aware that their activities
can seriously damage the planet and the animals and plants on it.
Environmentalists assess this damage and give advice on what can be done to
help clean up and protect our planet.
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What environmental issues are most important today?
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There are many of them and they’re all interdependent. The
most dramatic of them is, probably, climate change. It is the biggest
environmental challenge facing the world today. Climate change refers to
changes in the Earth’s temperature over the last 100 years. In Europe , for example, climate change results in hotter and
drier summers; warmer and wetter winters; more storms and rainfall; other
extreme weather conditions and rising sea-levels.
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That sounds really threatening. But is it only climate change
that worries scientists?
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Not only, of course. There are different types of pollution:
air pollution, water pollution, even noise pollution. Radioactive contamination
is a form of pollution, too. So, nuclear plants are very hazardous. Take Chernobyl or Fucusima,
for example.
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Nuclear waste is also a huge issue, isn’t it?
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All types of waste, actually. However, it is widely recognized
that waste materials are a valuable resource, too. An English proverb says
"One man's trash is another man's treasure." But let’s get back to
the treasures of our planet. There’s the issue of resource depletion, as well.
In the last decades people have been cutting down lots of trees, especially in
tropical areas. Forests are being destroyed at the rate of 40 hectares a minute!
Deforestation destroys the environmental balance and reduces biodiversity.
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Talking about biodiversity. More and more animals and plant
species are becoming extinct.
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Biodiversity is a term which describes how rich the Earth is
in the amount of species. So here we’re dealing with another environmental
issue: conservation. Environmentalists and conservationists are trying to save
the endangered species. But as an American astronaut said, “If you want to see
an endangered species, get up and look in the mirror."