Situation A student forum on climate change takes place at your school. The talks and follow-up discussions are all in English as a number of international speakers and students are present. Individual Long Turn (about 4 minutes) You are going to present some basic facts about renewable energy. In your presentation you should: ■■ give an overview of the various types of renewables available today (attachment 1) ■■ explain how renewable energies contribute to reducing CO2 emissions ■■ argue why increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix is essential both for the environment and for economic development Attachment 1 Speaking 4 Speaking i i I can present my opinions on technologies. I can talk about climate change. Interaction (about 8 minutes) After the first talks you have a discussion with another student about the issue of geoengineering. You should: ■■ briefly summarise the article (attachment 2) ■■ discuss any other geoengineering technologies you know of ■■ come to an agreement on whether we should use these technologies or not Attachment 2 Geoengineering – is it now an option? Once seen purely as sci-fi, geoengineering to halt runaway climate change is now being looked at with growing urgency. A number of scientific warnings that the world community can no longer delay major cuts in carbon emissions, coupled with a recent surge in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, has left a growing number of scientists saying that it’s time to give the controversial technologies a serious look. “Time is no longer on our side,” one geoengineering advocate, former British government chief scientist David King, told a conference last autumn. “What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years.” King helped secure the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, but he no longer believes cutting planet-warming emissions is enough to prevent disaster. He is in the process of establishing a Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University. It would be the world’s first major research centre dedicated to a task that, he says, “is going to be necessary.” Technologies earmarked for the Cambridge centre’s attention include a range of efforts to restrict solar radiation from reaching the lower atmosphere, including spraying aerosols of sulphate particles into the stratosphere, and refreezing rapidly warming parts of the polar regions by using tall ships to pump salt particles from the ocean into polar clouds to make them brighter. 160 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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