Think about your ideal place to live. Is it a
town or a village? Write six sentences with
There is ... / There are ... and the key phrases
in exercise 4. Use the phrases in the box and
your own ideas.
In my ideal place to live there are no factories.
a big shopping centre a skateboard park
schools factories old buildings
tall buildings a river a park
big forests hospitals
Lack of natural resources according to the latest report "Living Planet" World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Earth awaits a catastrophic shortage of natural resources, because our planet is being depleted biozapas "with unprecedented speed in the history of mankind."
The basis of the report are statistics accumulated Zoological Society of London, which cover about 5 thousand. Populations of more than 1,600 species of animals and reflect the "ecological footprint" of a person (a measure of human impact on the environment, which allows to determine the relationship between the needs of people and quantity of environmental resources available in stock). For example, if in 1960, "the majority of countries do not go beyond their environmental resources", that for the period from 1970 to 2005, biodiversity has declined by almost a third, and the "ecological footprint" has doubled. As the authors of the report, this loss is caused by the fact that natural resources are consumed by man faster than the planet is able to recover them.
"Biological reserves of the Earth is the total amount of biologically productive areas that can provide all the needs of mankind, and they include agricultural, pasture, forest, fishing grounds," - said in a statement. "By 2003, the" ecological footprint "exceeds the biological capacity of the Earth is 25%. This means that the planet is no longer able to replenish consumed human resources. " At current rates of consumption of resources by 2050 people's needs will be twice the capacity of the Earth.
The authors of the report suggest WWF five possible scenarios - from continuing vital unchanged until the transition to the use of renewable resources. Maybe humanity is worth thinking about the development of other planets to sustain their own lives?
Science fiction in his books already foresee a similar scenario of human development of the Earth. For example, in the famous book by Isaac Asimov «Academy» (Foundation), written in 1951, people have solved the problem of overpopulation and resource depletion of the Earth planet is very simple: they took all more or less suitable planets in the solar system, and then - and other star systems. It was created by another two dozen agricultural worlds to feed all this great community.
But it is much wiser it would not seek and explore other planets and their resources, and a more rational and economical use of the resources of their own planet.