LISTENING: Environmental problems

Listen to the recording again with the script:

0. When we talk about the environment we mean everything in the world around us including the air, food chains, the water cycle, plants, animals and other humans.

1. The environment is very important; to survive, we get five essential things from the environment: we breathe oxygen from the air, we get water from the rain, we get food from plants and animals, we build our homes from the materials we take out of the earth and from trees. We get warmth from the sun, from fire and from different types energy.

2. Our planet is getting warmer. The ice in the Poles is melting very fast and on high mountains there is more snow every year. Sea levels are going up and experts believe that some of the world's most important cities like New York or Amsterdam will be under water.

3. Many people in the world can't get enough water to drink. In Ethiopia one person uses three litres of water a day but in the UK, it's fifty times more. And the deserts are getting smaller.

4. We are destroying forests to have more space to build roads, businesses and farms. In the last 20 years more than 200,000 sq kilometres of forest disappeared...Many animals and plants are now in danger of extinction.

5. We are more than 6 billion people on the planet and this number will double in less than 50 years. A huge population means many problems; the Earth cannot sustain such a big number of people