Selection 2 : Questions and answers...
1. Why do writers often use statistics when writing about environmental problems? What is the potential danger of using statistics?-Writers try harder to convey the impact of environmental problems, they rattle off still more numbers, and our sense of hopelessness grow. Pollutants and billion of cubic feet to sense smog.
2. Why aren't statistics necessary to understand that our environmental is threatened?-It does not require a giant leap of consciousness to accept that our world is truly threatened.
3. Using El Chompipe as an example, describe a rain forest.-A large hill or small mountain among many larger mountain, cloud, thick clouds form and cover the hill, wetting the trees and brush and grounds plants almost constantly.
4. Why are tropical rain forest important?-Remains almost vibrates with life, mahogany trees, birds, animals, and a staggering variety of plants compete for sunlight with the leaves of the big trees themselves. This is the source of about 3o percent of the oxygen in our air.
5. Why are tropical rain forest shrinking?-Because they are being cleared for agriculture, specially for grazing land and plantations, and for timber and charcoal.
6. What is the difference between clearing forest for potatoes and for grazing cattle?-In the case of forest cleared for grazing, the land has only a few productive years before it will not support cattle grazing or other farming. Others might support grazing for up to ten years.
7. Why doesn't rain forest land last long when animals graze on it?-The compacting action of animals feet is well known to farmers. Narrow hooves pressing down into the soft earth around the ground and stop the leaks.
8. What could be done to be sure cattle don't destroy the land they graze on?what will the economic effect of this action be?-The cycle of degradation, cleared grazing land will no longer support a practical or economical number of cattle.
9. According to Inglish, what will happen if Americans stop importing beef produced on land that was once rain forests?-The cost of rang eland beef would rise dramatically to perhaps five or ten times its present cost.
10. Why aren't wealthier nations able to convince less-developed nations to protect their rain forests?-The world population is growing, and its beef consumption is growing per capital. With such an expanding demand on a world commodity, it doesn't matter where the hamburger we eat is grazed.