Questões de Inglês

Doomsday Clock: Nearing the
stroke of madness

(By Derek Johnson)

 

 

  As the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists sets its Doomsday Clock ahead 30 seconds -- to two minutes before midnight -- the lesson seems clear: our time is nearly up.

  It is tempting to argue the increasingly long odds of humanity’s survival correspond to the rise of an erratic celebrity apprentice to the White House. The enormous destructive capability at his fingertips -- coupled with his ignorance of international affairs and disdain for diplomacy, his fetish for violence and dehumanizing worldviews, and his consistently ballistic tendencies -- has us balanced on the razor’s edge. Rightly so.

  But in truth, this problem is bigger than any one president. Even Donald Trump.

  While many factors contribute to the setting of the Clock, it is the terrible prospect of nuclear conflict that lies at the heart of today’s announcement. There are still more than 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Beyond all reason, the United States and Russia keep thousands of them on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch at any moment. Bear in mind that a single modern warhead has more destructive force than all of the bombs detonated in World War II combined, including the atomic weapons dropped on Japan.

  Confronted for the first time with multiple geopolitical hotspots that could go nuclear with little or no warning, the world is in dangerous and uncharted waters.

  This parade of nuclear-tinged crises has steadily worsened over the last year: North Korea and the United States appear to be on a collision course, fueled by schoolyard taunts, missile tests and threats of “fire and fury.” NATO-Russia tensions are intensifying and are spilling over into the arms control arena, threatening to unravel vital agreements like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and New START. Nuclear arms-racing India and Pakistan are once again clashing in Kashmir, with casualties mounting on both sides. And another nuclear crisis may be brewing in the Middle East as the White House actively works to undermine the Iran deal.

  Meanwhile, as you read this, all of the nuclear-armed states are marching to upgrade, expand or operationalize their arsenals. Rather than continuing decades of slow but steady progress to eradicate them, nations are sinking trillions of dollars globally into building a whole new generation of civilization-ending weaponry. “Nuclear buttons” sit on the desks of more authoritarian men than at any moment in history.

  As this march continues, the role of nuclear weapons will be further cemented in national security policies and inoculated against stigmatization. And the risks that they will be used -- by accident, by unauthorized action, by mistaken launch on false warning, by deliberate decisions stemming from crisis escalation, or in a fit of pique -- will rise.

  These are not the hysterical musings of armchair analysts and activists. The draft of Trump›s radical new Nuclear Posture Review leaked this month confirms just how far and how fast the United States is backsliding toward nuclear warfighting. Without urgent intervention, it only gets worse from here.

  We have spent decades in comfortable and dangerous denial of the inherent risks of nuclear weapons and the fault lines buried in “red button” systems geared for first strike and quick launch. Now, thanks to Trump, it is impossible to ignore -- and not a moment too soon.
  Confronting these dangers will require the relentless work of many years -- more time than we likely have if nothing changes soon. We can buy ourselves some breathing room with any number of emergency measures currently circulating in Congress, like the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act; by starving Trump’s nuclear ambitions of the eye-popping funds they require; and by demanding diplomatic engagement with nucleararmed adversaries, first and foremost the North Koreans.
  But there are only two ways this story ends: We either find the wisdom and courage to reduce and ultimately eliminate these weapons, or the Clock strikes midnight.
  We are running out of time to decide which future we will live to see.
(Adapted from https://www.cnn.com, January 25, 2018)

The title of the article, “Doomsday Clock: nearing the stroke of madness”, correlated with its content, means:

The word IT in the second frame refers to:

Clean energy won’t save us –
only a new economic
system can

By Jason Hickel

  Early in 2015 media outlets around the world announced that February had broken global temperature records by a shocking amount. March broke all the records too. In June, our screens were covered with surreal images of flooding in Paris, the Seine bursting its banks and flowing into the streets. In London, floods sent water pouring into the tube system right in the heart of Covent Garden. Roads in south-east London became rivers two metres deep.
  With such extreme events becoming more commonplace, few deny climate change any longer. Finally, a consensus is crystallising around one all-important fact: fossil fuels are killing us. We need to switch to clean energy, and fast.
  This growing awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels represents a crucial shift in our consciousness. But I can’t help but fear we’ve missed the point. As important as clean energy might be, the science is clear: it won’t save us from climate change.
  Let’s imagine, just for argument’s sake, that we are able to get off fossil fuels and switch to 100% clean energy. There is no question this would be a vital step in the right direction, but even this bestcase scenario wouldn’t be enough to avert climate catastrophe.
  Why? Because the burning of fossil fuels only accounts for about 70% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 30% comes from a number of causes. Deforestation is a big one. So is industrial agriculture, which degrades the soils to the point where they leach CO2. Then there’s industrial livestock farming which produces 90m tonnes of methane per year and most of the world’s anthropogenic nitrous oxide. Both of these gases are vastly more potent than CO2 when it comes to global warming. Livestock farming alone contributes more to global warming than all the cars, trains, planes and ships in the world. Industrial production of cement, steel, and plastic forms another major source of greenhouse gases, and then there are our landfills, which pump out
huge amounts of methane – 16% of the world’s total.
  When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.
  Think of it this way. That 30% chunk of greenhouse gases that comes from nonfossil fuel sources isn’t static. It is adding more to the atmosphere each year. Scientists project that our tropical forests will be completely destroyed by 2050, releasing a 200bn tonne carbon bomb into the air. The world’s topsoils could be depleted within just 60 years, releasing more still. Emissions from the cement industry are growing at more than 9% per year. And our landfills are multiplying at an eye-watering pace: by 2100 we will be producing 11m tonnes of solid waste per day, three times more than we do now. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
  The climate movement made an enormous mistake. We focused all our attention on fossil fuels, when we should have been pointing to something much deeper: the basic logic of our economic operating system. After all, we’re only using fossil fuels in the first place to fuel the broader imperative of GDP growth.
  The root problem is the fact that our economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption. Our politicians tell us that we need to keep the global economy growing at more than 3% each year – the minimum necessary for large firms to make aggregate profits. That means every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy – double the cars, double the fishing, double the mining, double the McFlurries and double the iPads. And then double them again over the next 20 years from their already doubled state.

  Our more optimistic pundits claim that technological innovations will help us to de-couple economic growth from material throughput. But sadly there is no evidence that this is happening. Global material extraction and consumption has grown by 94% since 1980, and is still going up. Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world’s shipping miles, air miles, and trucking miles – along with all the material stuff that those vehicles transport – almost exactly in keeping with the rate of GDP growth.
  Clean energy, important as it is, won’t save us from this nightmare. But rethinking our economic system might. GDP growth has been sold to us as the only way to create a better world. But we now have robust evidence that it doesn’t make us any happier, it doesn’t reduce poverty, and its “externalities” produce all sorts of social ills: debt, overwork, inequality, and climate change. We need to abandon GDP growth as our primary measure of progress, and we need to do this immediately.
  This is not an impossible task. A number of countries have already managed to achieve high levels of human development with very low levels of consumption. In fact Daniel O’Neill, an economist at the University of Leeds, has demonstrated that even material de-growth is not incompatible with high levels of human well-being.
  Our focus on fossil fuels has lulled us into thinking we can continue with the status quo so long as we switch to clean energy, but this is a dangerously simplistic assumption. If we want to stave off the coming crisis, we need to confront its underlying cause.
(Adapted from www.theguardian.com, July 16th , 2016)

The main idea of the text is:

Clean energy won’t save us –
only a new economic
system can

By Jason Hickel

  Early in 2015 media outlets around the world announced that February had broken global temperature records by a shocking amount. March broke all the records too. In June, our screens were covered with surreal images of flooding in Paris, the Seine bursting its banks and flowing into the streets. In London, floods sent water pouring into the tube system right in the heart of Covent Garden. Roads in south-east London became rivers two metres deep.
  With such extreme events becoming more commonplace, few deny climate change any longer. Finally, a consensus is crystallising around one all-important fact: fossil fuels are killing us. We need to switch to clean energy, and fast.
  This growing awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels represents a crucial shift in our consciousness. But I can’t help but fear we’ve missed the point. As important as clean energy might be, the science is clear: it won’t save us from climate change.
  Let’s imagine, just for argument’s sake, that we are able to get off fossil fuels and switch to 100% clean energy. There is no question this would be a vital step in the right direction, but even this bestcase scenario wouldn’t be enough to avert climate catastrophe.
  Why? Because the burning of fossil fuels only accounts for about 70% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 30% comes from a number of causes. Deforestation is a big one. So is industrial agriculture, which degrades the soils to the point where they leach CO2. Then there’s industrial livestock farming which produces 90m tonnes of methane per year and most of the world’s anthropogenic nitrous oxide. Both of these gases are vastly more potent than CO2 when it comes to global warming. Livestock farming alone contributes more to global warming than all the cars, trains, planes and ships in the world. Industrial production of cement, steel, and plastic forms another major source of greenhouse gases, and then there are our landfills, which pump out
huge amounts of methane – 16% of the world’s total.
  When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.
  Think of it this way. That 30% chunk of greenhouse gases that comes from nonfossil fuel sources isn’t static. It is adding more to the atmosphere each year. Scientists project that our tropical forests will be completely destroyed by 2050, releasing a 200bn tonne carbon bomb into the air. The world’s topsoils could be depleted within just 60 years, releasing more still. Emissions from the cement industry are growing at more than 9% per year. And our landfills are multiplying at an eye-watering pace: by 2100 we will be producing 11m tonnes of solid waste per day, three times more than we do now. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
  The climate movement made an enormous mistake. We focused all our attention on fossil fuels, when we should have been pointing to something much deeper: the basic logic of our economic operating system. After all, we’re only using fossil fuels in the first place to fuel the broader imperative of GDP growth.
  The root problem is the fact that our economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption. Our politicians tell us that we need to keep the global economy growing at more than 3% each year – the minimum necessary for large firms to make aggregate profits. That means every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy – double the cars, double the fishing, double the mining, double the McFlurries and double the iPads. And then double them again over the next 20 years from their already doubled state.

  Our more optimistic pundits claim that technological innovations will help us to de-couple economic growth from material throughput. But sadly there is no evidence that this is happening. Global material extraction and consumption has grown by 94% since 1980, and is still going up. Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world’s shipping miles, air miles, and trucking miles – along with all the material stuff that those vehicles transport – almost exactly in keeping with the rate of GDP growth.
  Clean energy, important as it is, won’t save us from this nightmare. But rethinking our economic system might. GDP growth has been sold to us as the only way to create a better world. But we now have robust evidence that it doesn’t make us any happier, it doesn’t reduce poverty, and its “externalities” produce all sorts of social ills: debt, overwork, inequality, and climate change. We need to abandon GDP growth as our primary measure of progress, and we need to do this immediately.
  This is not an impossible task. A number of countries have already managed to achieve high levels of human development with very low levels of consumption. In fact Daniel O’Neill, an economist at the University of Leeds, has demonstrated that even material de-growth is not incompatible with high levels of human well-being.
  Our focus on fossil fuels has lulled us into thinking we can continue with the status quo so long as we switch to clean energy, but this is a dangerously simplistic assumption. If we want to stave off the coming crisis, we need to confront its underlying cause.
(Adapted from www.theguardian.com, July 16th , 2016)

According to the article:

Clean energy won’t save us –
only a new economic
system can

By Jason Hickel

  Early in 2015 media outlets around the world announced that February had broken global temperature records by a shocking amount. March broke all the records too. In June, our screens were covered with surreal images of flooding in Paris, the Seine bursting its banks and flowing into the streets. In London, floods sent water pouring into the tube system right in the heart of Covent Garden. Roads in south-east London became rivers two metres deep.
  With such extreme events becoming more commonplace, few deny climate change any longer. Finally, a consensus is crystallising around one all-important fact: fossil fuels are killing us. We need to switch to clean energy, and fast.
  This growing awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels represents a crucial shift in our consciousness. But I can’t help but fear we’ve missed the point. As important as clean energy might be, the science is clear: it won’t save us from climate change.
  Let’s imagine, just for argument’s sake, that we are able to get off fossil fuels and switch to 100% clean energy. There is no question this would be a vital step in the right direction, but even this bestcase scenario wouldn’t be enough to avert climate catastrophe.
  Why? Because the burning of fossil fuels only accounts for about 70% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 30% comes from a number of causes. Deforestation is a big one. So is industrial agriculture, which degrades the soils to the point where they leach CO2. Then there’s industrial livestock farming which produces 90m tonnes of methane per year and most of the world’s anthropogenic nitrous oxide. Both of these gases are vastly more potent than CO2 when it comes to global warming. Livestock farming alone contributes more to global warming than all the cars, trains, planes and ships in the world. Industrial production of cement, steel, and plastic forms another major source of greenhouse gases, and then there are our landfills, which pump out
huge amounts of methane – 16% of the world’s total.
  When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.
  Think of it this way. That 30% chunk of greenhouse gases that comes from nonfossil fuel sources isn’t static. It is adding more to the atmosphere each year. Scientists project that our tropical forests will be completely destroyed by 2050, releasing a 200bn tonne carbon bomb into the air. The world’s topsoils could be depleted within just 60 years, releasing more still. Emissions from the cement industry are growing at more than 9% per year. And our landfills are multiplying at an eye-watering pace: by 2100 we will be producing 11m tonnes of solid waste per day, three times more than we do now. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
  The climate movement made an enormous mistake. We focused all our attention on fossil fuels, when we should have been pointing to something much deeper: the basic logic of our economic operating system. After all, we’re only using fossil fuels in the first place to fuel the broader imperative of GDP growth.
  The root problem is the fact that our economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption. Our politicians tell us that we need to keep the global economy growing at more than 3% each year – the minimum necessary for large firms to make aggregate profits. That means every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy – double the cars, double the fishing, double the mining, double the McFlurries and double the iPads. And then double them again over the next 20 years from their already doubled state.

  Our more optimistic pundits claim that technological innovations will help us to de-couple economic growth from material throughput. But sadly there is no evidence that this is happening. Global material extraction and consumption has grown by 94% since 1980, and is still going up. Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world’s shipping miles, air miles, and trucking miles – along with all the material stuff that those vehicles transport – almost exactly in keeping with the rate of GDP growth.
  Clean energy, important as it is, won’t save us from this nightmare. But rethinking our economic system might. GDP growth has been sold to us as the only way to create a better world. But we now have robust evidence that it doesn’t make us any happier, it doesn’t reduce poverty, and its “externalities” produce all sorts of social ills: debt, overwork, inequality, and climate change. We need to abandon GDP growth as our primary measure of progress, and we need to do this immediately.
  This is not an impossible task. A number of countries have already managed to achieve high levels of human development with very low levels of consumption. In fact Daniel O’Neill, an economist at the University of Leeds, has demonstrated that even material de-growth is not incompatible with high levels of human well-being.
  Our focus on fossil fuels has lulled us into thinking we can continue with the status quo so long as we switch to clean energy, but this is a dangerously simplistic assumption. If we want to stave off the coming crisis, we need to confront its underlying cause.
(Adapted from www.theguardian.com, July 16th , 2016)

Observe the following compound structures used (and underlined) in the article and select the correct alternative below:
all-important, best-case, non-fossil, eyewatering, ever-increasing, de-couple, degrowth.

Read the text below and answer the following question based on it.

 

Indian surgeons separate twins joined at the head
Two-year-old Jaga and Kalia underwent 16 hours of surgery, and are now in the intensive care unit, doctors said.

 

A team of 30 doctors carried out the surgery - the first of its kind in India - at a state-run hospital.

 

The boys were born with shared blood vessels and brain tissues, a very rare condition that occurs once in about three million births.

 

The director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Randeep Guleria, told the Press Trust of India that the "next 18 days would be extremely critical to ascertain the success of the surgery".

 

The twins, hailing from a village in eastern Orissa state, were joined at the head - a condition known as craniopagus.

 

Even before the operation they had defeated the odds; craniopagus occurs in one in three million births, and 50% of those affected die within 24 hours, doctors say.

 

"Both the children have other health issues as well. While Jaga has heart issues, Kalia has kidney problems," neurosurgeon A K Mahapatra said.

 

"Though initially Jaga was healthier, now his condition has deteriorated. Kalia is better," he added.

 

Doctors said the most challenging job after the separation was to "provide a skin cover on both sides of the brain for the children as the surgery had left large holes on their heads".

 

"If the twins make it, the next step will be reconstructing their skulls," plastic surgeon Maneesh Singhal said.

 

The first surgery was performed on 28 August when the doctors created a bypass to separate the shared veins that return blood to the heart from the brain.
Adaptado de: <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india- 41772987> Acessado em 27 de outubro de 2017.

One of the greatest difficulties after the surgery