Prime Time 8. Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks, Schulbuch

Goals • Discuss climate change and possible ways to prevent global warming. • Talk about sustainable housing and future cities. • Convince people with arguments and rhetorical devices. • Use the future tenses correctly. Renewable energy One of the pictures on these two pages shows a windpark in the United States. But wind power is not the only way to generate renewable energy. a) Work in a group of three or four. Research one type of renewable energy each under the following headings. • How do they work? • What are their advantages and disadvantages? • What about the costs? • How far are they developed? b) Give a short presentation and tell your class more about your findings. 2 Word bank Renewable energy to turn/convert sunlight/wind/ heat/waves into energy • (wind) turbines run by airflows • collected by solar cells • (un)reliable • (in)efficient • (in)expensive W In South Africa, a recent poll found that nearly half the respondents thought global warming would not affect them personally. “When you come from a place where people are looking for their next meal, you might not care what is going to happen to the environment in 50 years.” Kushmika Singh (a student of Environmental Sciences at Witwatersrand University) China is one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, yet climate change came 13 th on a list of 14 environ- mental concerns in a recent opinion poll, far behind food safety and air pollution. “The sense of urgency is still not as big as in other countries because here air and water pollution threaten people’s health directly every day.” Ma Jun (*1968, head of the Institute for Environmental and Public Affairs, a Beijing think tank) 21 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv