[00:09.30]Jackie is talking to Yang Pei about a conference which Jackie has just been to.
[00:16.67]What was the conference like?
[00:20.01]Very interesting.It was called "Saving the earth"
[00:25.05]and it was all about the damage that is being caused to the world.
[00:28.11]What did you do at the meeting?
[00:31.35]Well,we listened to lectures about pollution,
[00:36.31]agriculture,nuclear waste,radiation and so on.
[00:42.19]It's a good idea to hold such conferences.
[00:46.63]Yes.If we go on polluting the world,it won't be fit for us to live in.
[00:53.79]I agree with you.We've got to do something about pollution.It's getting worse.
[01:00.45]Yes,it certainly is.
[01:03.82]If people don't stop polluting the seas and rivers,there will be no fish left.
[01:10.06]That's quite true.
[01:13.12]We've got to think of ways of changing people's habits.
[01:17.87]Well,what else did you hear about at the meeting?
[01:22.23]There was a good talk about the increase in the world's population.
[01:27.28]If the population keeps growing so quickly,
[01:31.51]there will only be standing room left for us next century!
[01:36.47]That's a problem we Chinese must pay special attention to.
[01:41.51]Lesson 34 2 Reading comprehension
[01:52.46]Read the three passages.
[01:55.83]Find the places on the map of the world where the damage has happened.
[02:01.18]EARTH
[02:03.74]The area of desert in the world is growing every year.
[02:08.71]Many parts of the world,
[02:11.94]which once had large populations and produced plenty of crops,
[02:17.40]have become deserts.
[02:20.46]Dunhuang in China,deep in the heart of the Gebi Desert,was once a great city.
[02:27.44]Cattle are one cause of the problem.
[02:31.20]In good years,farmers increase the numbers of their cattle.
[02:36.55]Then one year,the rains fail to come.
[02:40.91]The farmers do not want to kill any of their cattle,
[02:45.28]so the cattle eat all the grass and anything that grows on poorer land.
[02:51.44]If this continues for several years,
[02:54.79]the grass never grows again and the land becomes a desert.
[02:59.83]One suggested answer is for farmers to limit the numbers of their cattle.
[03:05.50]Another problem is that good soil is gradually lost.
[03:10.46]When trees are cut down,
[03:13.70]there is nothing to hold the soil in place on the hillside.
[03:18.45]So when it rains,the soil is washed down the hills and into the rivers.
[03:24.51]Strong winds can also blow away the valuable soil that lies on the top of the fields.
[03:30.08]AIR
[03:32.53]Air pollution comes from factories,power stations and cars.
[03:38.59]Chemicals in the smoke from power stations cause a lot of damage.
[03:44.26]They can travel hundreds of miles in the wind,
[03:48.62]before falling to the ground in the rain
[03:52.46]But this "chemical rain" gradually destroys trees in the forests
[03:57.82]and kills fish in the lakes.
[04:01.79]In Germany,over 50% of the country's trees had been damaged by the year 1986.
[04:10.44]Time and time again there are serious accidents that pollute the air.
[04:16.68]In 1986 there was a bad accident at a nuclear power station in Russia.
[04:24.15]A cloud of radiation crossed the whole of Europe.
[04:29.30]It is said that 125,000 people died in Russia
[04:35.36]as a result of illnesses caused by this accident.
[04:40.11]In 1984 there was a serious accident at a factory in India
[04:46.35]and a cloud of dangerous gas covered the town of Bhopal.
[04:51.81]Over 2500 people were killed that night,
[04:57.40]and hundreds of thousands of people were injured.
[05:01.66]Many of the injured lost their sight.
[05:05.61]WATER
[05:08.17]Water pollution is caused by waste from factories and cities.
[05:14.23]Oceans are able to clean themselves,
[05:18.80]but certain seas,once they become dirty,are not able to do so.
[05:25.56]One example is the Mediterranean which lies between Europe and Africa
[05:32.23]It has only one narrow entrance to the ocean in the west.
[05:37.58]One quarter of the shores of the Mediterranean are polluted
[05:43.22]and are no longer safe for swimming,as a lot of diseases are present in the water.
[05:49.99]In most places it is not safe to eat the fish.
[05:55.03]Lakes also have the same problems.
[05:58.97]Lake Baikal in Asia was once the cleanest in the world,
[06:04.54]with over 700 different kinds of plant and animal life.
[06:10.29]Now,however,the waters of this great lake,
[06:15.43]which is also the world's deepest (over 1,740 metres),
[06:22.38]have been dirtied by waste from a chemical factory.
[06:27.34]In 1989 an oil tanker hit a rock off the northwest coast of Alaska.
[06:35.21]35,000 tons of oil poured into the sea.
[06:40.77]The accident was one of the worst in history.
[06:45.32]More than 34,000 birds and 10,000 animals were killed.
[06:52.08]4,800 square kilometres of ocean were polluted.
[06:58.25]Lesson 35 1 Reading comprehension
[07:09.32]ANIMALS IN DANGER
[07:12.77]Three billion years after life began,
[07:17.24]the earth is now the home to many different kinds of living things
[07:22.80]perhaps five to ten million kinds.
[07:27.06]However,many of these are dying out.
[07:31.21]It is thought that between the years 1550 and 1950
[07:37.38]an average of one kind of living thing died out each year.
[07:42.94]By 1985 this had risen to one per day.
[07:48.40]Between 1980 and 2000
[07:53.26]we may lose another half a million different kinds of living thing.
[07:59.03]There are many reasons for animals dying out,
[08:03.47]but the most important one is the part that humans have played.
[08:08.83]First,many animals have been killed for food.
[08:13.51]many of the places where these animals used to live have been destroyed.
[08:19.36]Dry lands have been watered.
[08:22.83]Wet lands have been turned into fields.
[08:27.09]Forests have been cleared.
[08:30.43]Much land has either been changed to farmland or used for building.
[08:36.36]Polluted rivers and lakes have also been a cause of death.
[08:41.64]One example of an animal in danger is the tiger.
[08:46.50]There are three types of tiger living in China:
[08:50.76]the South China,the Northeastern,and the Bengal.
[08:55.93]In all there are probably no more than a total of 400 tigers left in China.
[09:02.98]Many of the forests where they lived were destroyed.
[09:07.55]Also,tigers were hunted
[09:11.91]and killed until in many areas the entire population had disappeared.
[09:17.48]In 1900 there were about 100,000 tigers in Asia.
[09:23.36]In 1970 when the shooting of tigers was stopped there were just 5,000 left.
[09:30.91]In India,however,the population of tigers has increased,
[09:36.37]from 2,000 in 1972 to about 5,000 in 1989.
[09:43.84]Perhaps the same progress can be made in China.
[09:48.38]3 Reading comprehension
[09:52.64]Read the text and mark all the past participles which you can find in it.
[09:58.91]A DAY IN THE FOREST
[10:02.07]Last Monday our class went on an organized trip to a forest to study the wildlife.
[10:09.44]We travelled by bus.
[10:12.60]It took us two and a half hours to get to the forest.
[10:17.35]When we arrived,we were given printed question papers.
[10:22.81]We had to fill in the answers in our notebooks.
[10:27.17]The purpose of the trip was to record all the wildlife
[10:32.35]and plants that we could find in the forest.
[10:36.60]Whenever we found an unknown plant,we had to describe it in our notebooks.
[10:42.85]If none of us knew the name of the plant,we wrote "unknown" in our notebooks.
[10:49.82]The gate into the forest was open,so we entered it.
[10:54.55]We all started looking for new types of plant.
[10:58.78]Sun Yao,our monitor and I remembered a programme
[11:03.74]that a well-known film director had made about the forest.
[11:08.89]She had shown pictures of a plant that had recently been discovered.
[11:14.35]She had not said,however,where it could be found.
[11:19.21]She said it was a well-kept secret.We decided to try and find this plant.
[11:25.87]We had our picnic lunch in the forest next to a fallen tree
[11:31.33]After lunch we put some water into a bottle
[11:35.80]and did tests to see if it was polluted.
[11:40.06]We were all very interested to see the results.
[11:44.50]In fact,the water was not at all polluted.
[11:49.04]In the afternoon,we all went off separately to look for new plants.
[11:55.08]At five o'clock we started walking back to the entrance to the forest.
[12:00.82]Suddenly someone said,"Has anyone seen Sun Yao? He must be lost."
[12:07.59]Three of us walked back about one kilometre and found Sun Yao.
[12:13.05]He was busy measuring a plant and taking photographs of it.
[12:18.40]Pointing to the young plant,
[12:21.64]he asked me if that was the type of plant we had seen in the film.
[12:26.79]To my great joy,the plant did look exactly like what we were looking for.
[12:33.14]All of us felt very happy.
[12:36.90]Words and expressions Unit 9
[12:42.36]damage lecture pollute pollution
[12:46.22]vt.& n.毁坏损害 n.讲课演讲 vt.污染 n.污染
[12:50.09]nuclear nuclear waste radiation fit
[12:54.46]adj.原子核的 核废弃物 n.放射,放射物 适合的
[12:58.84]be fit for hear about room standing room
[13:02.93]适合于 听说 n.空间地方余地 立足之地
[13:07.02]turn...into... desert area limit
[13:11.25]把……变成…… n.沙漠 n.面积,地区 vt.限制
[13:15.48]gradually in place hillside blow away
[13:19.50]adv.逐渐的 在适当的位置 n.山腰,山坡 刮走,吹走
[13:23.53]power power station mile chemical
[13:27.11]n.力,动力,电力 发电站 n.英里 adj.化学物,化学的
[13:30.68]chemical rain time and time again Russia Bhopal
[13:35.06]酸雨 多次,不断的 n.俄罗斯 博帕尔(印度中部城市)
[13:39.43]sight lose one's sight the Mediterranean shore
[13:43.86]n.视力 失明 n.地中海 n.滨,岸
[13:48.29]present Lake Baikal dirty
[13:51.32]adj.在场的,出席的 贝加尔湖 vt.弄脏
[13:54.35]tanker Alaska pour
[13:57.47]n.油船 n.阿拉斯加 vi.倾泻
[14:00.59]square square kilometres living die out
[14:05.01]adj.n.平方的 平方公里 adj.活着的;现存的 消失,灭亡
[14:09.42]human farmland probably entire
[14:13.51]n.&adj人的,人类(的) n.农田;耕地 adv.很可能;大概 adj.整个的,全部的
[14:17.60]text notebook monitor
[14:20.53]n.课本,课文 n.笔记簿 n.班长
[14:23.45]test go off separately
[14:26.64]n.试验,测验;检查 走开 adv.单独的,各自的
[14:29.83]point to joy to one's joy
[14:33.00]指向 n.欢乐高兴 令人高兴的是 |