Questions from Collège Sacré-Cœur (2)

Elderly woman:

Climate change is shocking; the media makes such a big fuss about it, maybe they are exaggeratting a little; However, I do what I can (recycling, low-energy-bulbs, no car,...) I'm a bit sceptical because I've heard that low-energy-bulbs release toxic emissions (too much mercury in them). In my opinion cars aren't as bad as everybody says either. Just one person can't decrease the release of CO2 so that it would make a difference. There have always been changes in our environment, so one should just leave it at that. The next generation will simply have to adapt to their changes.

A man who sells hats:

I don't like the winter because I injured my back when I went snowboarding so I don't care if it gets warmer. But i don't drive a car. (From then on he just joked about the climate change and said: We should live in the mountains because there would be more space and the environment could recreate again)

Finnish hockey fans:

Last summer was quite hot, which is quite unusal (One of the fans made a joke: We can also feel the climate change in our saunas, there it's not only 120°C but 130°C) But the winter before it was really cold, we had snow the whole summer. And as long as we can watch hockey the world is okay. (Then they have to leave the train)

young man (20):

We have to be carful with our CO2-emissions, but since Switzerland ist such a small country, we can't change much anyway. But the industrialized countries should reduce their CO2-emissions. Fish, trees and animals are endangered.

elderly couple (70):

We are afraid of the future and hope that the predicitions won't come true. Possible consequences could be storms, strong winds and a higher sealevel (not in Switzerland =)).

woman (50):

The climate change is a terrible thing but at the moment I'm not really thinking about it.

young man (20):

Shit, we should protect the natural world we live in! There will be storms, the glaciers will melt and the treeline will rise.

woman (35):

It's terrible and I'm shocked that the predictions are about to come true. the glaciers will melt and it's already getting hotter.

Lena, Simone, Martina and Lukas

a) The article says that the climate change is almost irreversible - no matter how much we reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide.

b) According to the article, there is no solution.

c) It was only a small article.

d) and e) see Gian's articles

a) The main problem that the article mentions are that there will be more droughts, storms and floods. In the following six years, about 375 million people will be endangered.

b) Especially the rich countries now have to solve the climate problem. The international help system that is provided when there is a natural disaster should be organized differently. In addition, the help organisation Oxfam wants the money that is given for the international help system per year to be risen from 14.2 billion dollars to 41 billion dollars.

c) It was a quite long article.

d) and e) see Gian's articles

a) Due to the rising temperatures, the harvest of corn and rice in tropic areas will decrease and will be decreased further by the drought and by the water shortage. This will lead to a massive food shortage for half of the world.

c) They wanted to shock the people so that they would change something.

a) Soot and sulfate aerosols have an impact on the climate in the arctic regions. The sulfate content in the air has been decreasing which has lead to higher temperatures, because the sulfate particles would reflect the sun rays. The temperatures have been increasing further because of the larger soot content in the air.

b) The soot emissions should be lowered by means of soot filters. The sulfate emissions have already been decreased which had negative consequences on the temperature. That’s why some scientists proposed to increase the sulfate emissions again. However, that’s dangerous because sulfate has a certain toxicity.

c) The aim of that article wasn’t in the first place to shock people, but to inform them about the fact that emissions have a direct impact on the temperature.

a) Too much CO2 is emitted per person in the city of Zurich. One of the reasons is the amount of traffic.

b) The percentage of renewable energy is supposed to increase to lower the CO2 emissions. (Annually one ton per person)

c) Too much CO2 is emitted but we can change that.

a) Coral reef and rain forests react more sensitively than assumed at first.

b) The government has to introduce new programs.

c) We have to react. If not, nature will be destroyed forever.

Eric, Mattia, Gian and Joey

Our emotions

We have different feelings about the topic climate change, anger, responsibility, hope, indifference and sadness.

In a way we are angry because part of it is our fault, but we know that we cannot change a lot as a little dot on this earth. We feel responsibility towards our world and we are absolutely aware of the fact that change is necessary.

Some people should change their way of living and not just say „devil-may-care“.

Our hope is that we can find an alternative energy source without any emissions and bad effects and that this can be converted in all countries.

We think indifference with regard to climate change is a very bad attitude and everybody should feel responsible for what is being done to our environment.

We are sad about the situation we are in and about the bad future prospects as far as this topic is concerned.

Lara, Yuri, Sophie

(no answer yet)

We want to get the people's attention with activities like bicycle-taxis and giving informations to them. The boys of our class had the idea to build a rickshaw out of old bicycle materials. Then we drive the people through our city and have some advertising on our rickshaw. While we're doing that, the girls will give informations about climate change to the people.

My family and I, we hardly fly and we don't have a car, but we use the train and other public transports. We also watch out that we don't buy food that had to be transported over a long distance to Switzerland and we buy a lot of organic food to support the organic farmers who don't pollute the fields.

Mattia

The most common means of transport in Switzerland is for sure the car. This does a lot of harm to our environment, due all the emissions. But Switzerland has also a very good public transport, which is improving all the time and more and more people are using it.

Martina

Madagascar is one of the biggest islands in the world. It's situated in the Pacific Ocean and belongs to Africa. The main language is French because Madagascar was a French colony. The capital of it is Antananarivo. We don't know where it is situated, but we would be intrested in finding out. Maybe you can tell us? Unfortunately, we don't know more facts about your country. So why don't you tell us a little more about it?

We all consume a lot of energy in Switzerland. But, in comparison to other countries, we saw that there is a problem and we try to find solutions. Fortunately, we have mountains with which we can produce electricity with reservoirs and we do not use any coal to produce electricity.

In general, we have still an intact environment, but we can feel the consequences of the climate change here in Switzerland too.

Eric

a) We think we would have tried to cary out more research on today's hybrid and electricity cars. If we had found a better hybrid/electricity technology, we wouldn't have used all this fossil fuels and we wouldn't have had that much CO2-emissions. We have the same thing with airplanes. Today we use kerosin to fly but if we had had another 100 years, we would have found a better way to fly.

b) The global temperature is increasing because of the COs-emissions. This has lead to the glaciermeltings and all the changes in the environment. These meltings have lead to a higher sea-level, which can flood huge cities like New York or countries (the Netherlands, for example).

a) I like my life just how it is. Mostly I can choose what I wanna do. but sometimes it would be great if we had less school which means more freetime and so on.

b) My parents always tell me that they hope that I can choose freely, but I think sometimes you can't really do what you want but that's just rarely the case.

c) -

Lukas

a) I enjoy playing tennis, playing the saxophone and being out in nature.

b) During the week, I have difficulties finding space for my hobbies, especially when we have a lot of exams in school. But I always try to find some time for my hobbies and if I can't do that during the week, I postpone it to the weekend.

Eric

(no answer yet)

Sure, I hope that the world will be saved but I think this will take us a long time. We have to start with small thing on our way to "save" the world and I think it is not going to be easy to do so because we do our living from the damage we do (e.g. car industry). I hope the population wakes up and starts to improve things, even if there are small at the moment.

Simone

(no answer yet)

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a) What we particularly like about Zurich is that it has a lake. The end of it lies almost in the centre of the city. In summer, you can go swimming or go on a boat trip. When the weather's nice, the border's often very crowded. But nevertheless, we like the place very much because one can relax very well there.

b) A famous person wer admire is Roger Federer. We are very impressed by him because he managed to keep the number 1 position as a tennis player like nobody else. And even now, although he's number 2, he's still one of the best players in the world.

a) We can't name a certain moment but it happens every day in our lives. It is important that you know that you have friends or other people you can rely on.

b) Changing the climate has to be a group effort. Everybody has to get involved and not only some individuals.

(no answer yet)

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If I see how people are suffering around the world, it makes me wonder. Later in my life I would like to help those people and give them what they deserve. Here in Switzerland life is so easy and poverty isn't a big issue. I can't really imagine how it would be to live under such circumstances so I would like to give back what I recieved when I was a child and increase the standard of living. I know that as a single person this isn't manageable but if we work together as one every goal can be achieved.

Joey

I think the increase of CO2 is a big problem in our society. Nobody wants to obstain from vehicles that produce CO2, because they are too comfortable. The factors are for sure all the transport vehicles as aeroplanes and cars. Another important factor is the industry that produces about 20% of the CO2 emission. Not to undervalue are the households that emit almost as much CO2 as the vehicles.

To reduce the CO2 emission the big countries should make a pact to produce half the amount of CO2 they produce today, or even better, decide how much CO2 per capita would be acceptable, so that everyone has the same amount of CO2 he is "allowed" to produce. Everybody would have to accept this and I'm sure that would urge the search for alternative energies.

Lara

I've been to the United States lots of times already since my grandparents live there and the thing that shocks me the most is the use of cars. It is as if they didn't even know there was something called CO2 and global warming? It seams like they never have heard that expression before. Now back to the cars. All streets are like highways and this is only the beginning. The worst thing is actually that there's almost always only one person per car. Not only are there more cars but the cars are also much, much larger. My solution o the problem is to maximize the efficiency of cars. So in every car there should be at least two or three people. Like this the use of cars would be decreased by a huge margin.

Joey

We all emit too much CO2. We emit it even if it isn't really necessary. That's because there are people that drive big cars although they don't need them. In winter, we use much more heating oil than we would need if we caulked our houses better.

There are some things we can do about that:

-First, the parliament should increase the CO2 emission taxes so that people start thinking about if they really need this big car when they would have to pay more for using it.

-Those big cars ought to be forbidden for users that don't need them for their work, this means for private users.

-In the major part of the houses, the walls should be caulked, so that the warmth stays inside of the house and therefore, less new energy is needed for heating the house.

Mattia

Here in Switzerland we consume a lot of energy/electricity. That's why we need to try to cut down our energy consumption. We could do little things, which would have a big impact nevertheless; for example:

-recycling

-waste separation

-shut down our electronical devices

-use less water

-put off the light when we leave a room

-use public transport instead of cars