山西农业大学第四册大学体验英语视听说教程Unit_7.pptVIP

Task 2 Expanding Your Vocabulary Alternative debate: Developed countries should spend more money healing the earth. Global pressure on freshwater resources As argued for some time by the WWF9 global pressure on freshwater resources is increasing, mainly through changes in global population and income levels, which have led to an increase in demand for water intensive products such as meat, sugar and cotton. It’s easy to take for granted how much water it takes to produce some of the world’s most consumed products. For example, for just a kilogram of rice over 3000 litres of water must be used and for one litre of milk it takes almost 1000 litres. The world’s apparent warming climate has caused fresh water reserves to fall across the globe consequently waking people up to the importance of our “water footprint10”. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business, as described by WaterFootPrint.org. 9. WWF abbr. World Wildlife Fund, 世界野生动物基金 10. footprint n. 足迹? Sixty percent of the world in danger The science behind climate change remains complex and confusing to much of the global population, but what cannot be argued is that increasing population, industry, economic growth and urbanization11 put additional stress on the provision of clean water from dwindling12 reserves. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC13) predicts that by the year 2050 around 60 percent of the world’s population will experience severe water shortages, with 33 percent thought to be already under water stress. But a lack of access to water is likely to change the economic environment irreparably14 and also has a vital role to play in the power and energy sector15 as w