You have learned about some ways that people affect their environment. For example, we saw that litter can kill animals. Then, we saw that species are dying out more quickly because of people. Finally, in the last lesson, we saw that people are causing global warming.

In this lesson, we'll see that people are affecting their environment more than in the past. You're going to learn about the “great acceleration”. Go to this website to read about it. The phrases below may help you.

The big picture
Impacted
Appears
Early
Hunters
Gatherers
Resouce
Utilisation (utilization)
Rapidly
Cursor

The last sentence of the page says, “Move mouse cursor over the images to learn more.” Let's do that now. Check each of the 15 things on the right side of the page. The phrases below may help you.

Population
GNP
Consumption
Motorized vehicles
Concentration
Atmosphere
Methane
Ozone
Depletion
Flood disaster
Decade
Tropical rainforest
Biodiversity

Next, do the comprehension exercise.

Creative Commons License Go Green! Online ESL Course by Elizabeth Lavolette is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.