Prime Time 6, Coursebook mit Audio-CD und DVD

Environmental footprints Before you read Answer the following questions. • What is meant by the expression “carbon footprint”? Use any source of information available (e. g. books, the internet) to find out. • Who should think about this concept and why? Skimming: Do food miles matter? a) Read through the following article very quickly. b) Do you find it easy to understand? Explain why or why not. c) Say what the text is about. 1 2 On a typical spring day, lunch for Seattle-based writer Sage Van Wing includes pasta with pork sausage from a small local farm. e peppers, cheese and shallots on top come from the nearby farmers’ market. Van Wing is a locavore – she tries to eat only locally grown foods whenever possible. For many people, “food miles”, the distance food travels from farm to plate, are a simple way to measure the impact of food on climate change. But it’s how food is produced, not how far it is transported, that matters most for global warming, according to new research. In fact, eating less red meat and dairy products can be a more ežective way to lower an average US household’s food-related climate footprint than buying local food, says Christopher Weber of Carnegie Mellon University. Weber found that transportation creates only 11 per cent of the 8.1 metric tonnes (t) of greenhouse gases that an average US household produces annually as a result of food consumption. e agricultural and industrial practices that go into growing and harvesting food are responsible for most (83 per cent) of its emissions. Altogether, food accounts for 13 per cent of every US household’s 60 t share of total US emissions. By comparison, driving a car for 12,000 miles per year (the US average) produces about 4.4 t of carbon dioxide. Switching to a totally local diet is equivalent to driving about 1,000 miles less per year, Weber says. A relatively small shi in one’s eating habits can lead to about the same greenhouse gas reduction as eating locally, Weber adds. Replacing red meat and dairy with chicken, sh or eggs for one day per week reduces emissions equal to 760 miles per year of driving. And switching to vegetables one day per week cuts the equivalent of driving 1,160 miles per year. Several other recent studies have analysed foods and poked holes in the food miles concept. For example, it can be more energy e©cient for a British household to buy tomatoes and lettuce from Spain than from heated greenhouses in the UK. Van Wing read Weber’s paper and found it a “helpful” look at food miles. But she says she will continue to buy from local growers, whose production practices she can see rsthand. (Erika Engelhaupt, Science News ) Writing: An e-mail to the editor   WG 4 You have read the article above and would like to comment on the issue of food miles, so you write an e-mail to the editor. In your e-mail to the editor you should: • describe details of modern food consumption • discuss new findings concerning food miles • suggest sensible steps to deal with the problem Write around 200 words . 3 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 41 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv