Task 1
Read the text below and answer the questions.
For each question, choose the correct answer A, B, C or D.
Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world. They grow to be as high as 380 feet. Compare that to an American football field, which is 300 feet long. A redwood would impress you if you stood near one. But why do they grow so tall?
It's hard to see from the ground, but the redwoods are competing. They are fighting with each other to get the most sunlight. The trees that get the most sunlight grow taller. Trees that get stuck under other trees do not get as much light. They lose the opportunity to grow taller. So redwoods must grow taller to compete or they will get trapped on the bottom.
Growing so tall is risky. The wind is more threatening to a tall tree. It is also hard to grow so much. Redwoods use all their energy to grow tall. The trees might be better off if they didn't have to grow so tall to survive. Their lives would be safer and easier. But there is no way for them to coordinate. They cannot agree to stop growing as tall as possible. So they compete their whole lives.
People face similar challenges. For example, nations spend a lot of money to protect themselves from other nations. The US spends more than half its budget on defense. Most other nations spend 10-30% of theirs on arms and armies. That's a lot of money.
We could spend that money on schools, roads, and parks. We could spend it on feeding hungry people or helping the environment. We could spend it on advancing art, philosophy, or science. So why don't we?
The problem is that if a nation has no military, then they face the risk of invasion. A nation with a mighty army may take their resources and destroy them on a whim.
Like the redwoods, which grow taller to their own detriment, we are locked in a harmful race. Most people agree that world peace is better than an arms race. In a peaceful world, we could use all our resources to make our lives better.
That sounds nice, but what if one nation broke the agreement? What if they built an army in secret? What if they used their secret army to destroy us? Can we afford to take that risk? Most nations decide that they cannot. Rather, they choose to spend a lot of money on defense programs.
Task 2
Read the text below and answer the questions.
For each question, choose the correct answer A, B, C or D
Recently, campaigners have encouraged us to buy local food. This reduces ‘food miles’, that is, the distance food travels to get from the producer to the retailer. They reason that the higher the food miles, the more carbon emissions. Buying local food, therefore, has a lower carbon footprint and is more environmentally friendly.
issions, we must look at the whole farming process, not just transportation. According to a 2008 study, only 11% of carbon emissions in the food production process result from transportation, and only 4% originated from the final delivery of the product from the producer to the retailer. Other processes, including fertilisation, storage, heating and irrigation, contribute much more.
In fact, imported food often has a lower carbon footprint than locally grown food. Take apples, for example. In autumn, when apples are harvested, the best option for a British resident is to buy British apples. However, the apples we buy in winter or spring have been kept refrigerated for months, and this uses up a lot of energy. In spring, therefore, it is more energy-efficient to import them from New Zealand, where they are in season. Heating also uses a lot of energy, which is why growing tomatoes in heated greenhouses in the UK is less environmentally friendly than importing them from Spain, where the crop grows well in the local climate.
We must also take into account the type of transport. Transporting food by air creates about 50 times more emissions than shipping it. However, only a small proportion of goods are flown to the consumer country, and these are usually high value, perishable items which we cannot produce locally, such as seafood and out-of-season berries. Even then, these foods may not have a higher carbon footprint than locally grown food. For example, beans flown in from Kenya are grown in sunny fields using manual labour and natural fertilisers, unlike in Britain, where we use oil-based fertilisers and diesel machinery. Therefore, the total carbon footprint is still lower.
It’s also worth remembering that a product’s journey does not end at the supermarket. The distance consumers travel to buy their food, and the kind of transport they use will also add to its carbon footprint. So driving a long way to shop for food will negate any environmental benefits of buying locally grown produce. Furthermore, choosing local over imported food can also badly affect people in developing countries. Many of them work in agriculture because they have no other choice. If they are unable to sell produce overseas, they will have less income to buy food, clothes, medicine and to educate their children.
Recently, some supermarkets have been trying to raise awareness of food miles by labelling foods with stickers that show it has been imported by air. But ultimately, the message this gives is too simple. Lots of different factors contribute to a food’s carbon footprint besides the distance it has travelled. And even if we only buy local food which is currently in season, there are ethical implications. What’s more, our diets would be more limited.
