Carbon Footprint

Hello everyone and welcome to Englishpod. My name is Marco,

My name is Catherine. And today's lesson is an advanced level lesson, that means we'll be speaking using our normal English tone of voice and using some very very difficult vocabulary and phrases. So this is a really good practice for all of you there.

That's right. We're gonna change a little bit the dynamic of how it works. We're not gonna look specifically at "Language takeaway" or "Fluency builder", we're gonna talking about the topic, we're going to pick up a couple of difficult words and phrases that are used in the dialogue, but we're mainly gonna talk, just have a conversation and you can just listen and study little bit of what we're saying.

So what is the topic today Marco?

Well today we're gonna talk about the environment, specifically about our carbon footprint.

Okay, that's the title of today's lesson, I encourage all of you to listen to the context of that phrase and we'll be back in a moment to talk about what it and some of the other phrases mean. Dialogue first time 1:00- 3:20

All right, we're back so as you probably guessed, carbon footprint -it's.. it's pretty easy, you're talking about a foot print- is the evidence you leave on eh if you are walking on sand for example.

Exactly.

And if we're talking about carbon, we're talking about the element right? Carbon.

Yep. So carbon is something that is in everything basically. Eh it's organic, but it can also, in the case of a carbon footprint, mean the amount of eh .. maybe waste or damage that we do to the earth, or to the environment.

Right, so e.g. you're driving your car, we all know that the gas that is emitted from the exhaust pipe is CO2. Right, and that contains carbon, so that's a way of saying that you're leaving a footprint of carbon, you are damaging the atmosphere a little bit by driving the car.

So and talking about a carbon footprint, we're talking about having a low carbon footprint, which is good. Or a very high carbon footprint, which is bad.

Ahem, right. So there were a lot of interesting things coming up in the dialogue, one of the first things was ..

Well the first things that they were talking about in this dialogue is that they're having a kind of argument about whether or not global warming and global climate change really exists.

Aha, yeah this is a very interesting part. Because some people say well global warming is happening, global warming is real. And there are people who say well it's not real, it's not really a problem, this is just a phase that the earth will go through, and eh like everything, it will disappear.

Well I agree with people who say that the earth go through phases, because sometimes there are centuries that are hotter, and sometimes there are centuries that are colder. But I think it's undeniable that there has been a large and immediate global climate change in the last maybe 20 years.

Yeah, we're definitely speeding up maybe that cycle right?

Exactly. And I think what's eh great evidence of this, a terrible evidence of this is the three earth quakes, mass of earth quakes that have happened in the last couple of months. And I think that eh earth quakes like last year and eh like this year, are really really important reminders that we do, as humans, influence the way that the world response to us.

I think eh, I always see it as the earth kind of just shaking its back and saying "get off me".

Stop it.

Stop it.

That itches.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's kind of the way I see the earth quakes sometimes. Eh but when they were talking about well is it real, is it not, they use a really interesting phrase, it says: it sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

Mumbo jumbo. So this is a way to say that sounds like a bunch of garbage. Or it sounds like a bunch of gibberish. It sounds like a bunch of people are talking about something that doesn't really exists. So mumbo jumbo is basically something that is not really real or true.

Right. I think don't you also .. can you use it as a somebody that's saying something that you don't really understand?

Right. So if maybe I'm talking to you about something that is very academic and very scholarly, you say: oh, sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me.

Right, exactly. So that's what the person said: ah you know, the environmental problems are a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Ahem but it was really interesting, because they were like: well we have to save the earth, and well and then well there was actually a phrase here that was really kind of hard for me to understand, when the person said: I mean honestly, we live in the boonies.

Boonies.

What does it mean by living in the boonies?

This is a very common word to hear in spoken English, especially with young people. Boonies means: we live far away from civilisation. We live far away from cities, we live far away from everything. So maybe these people live in the country side. Or in a small village. And they don't feel like they are effected by what people in the big cities do.

Okay. So if you say oh I live in the boonies, you're just saying ohI live very far.

Really far away. So this is a very common American word I think. You can also say boondocks. Which is like that movie Boondocks seems. But boondocks and boonies means very far away. So I could say: Oh Marco, I'm not gonna drive out to your house for a party, you live in the boonies.

Do you have any order words that you can say you live far away?

You live in Egypt.

You live in Egypt。

Which for us in America is obviously very very far away.

Sometimes we say

Yonks ??? 7:30

Ah the yonks? exactly.

Yonks. People in New Zealand say that.

I've also heard people say: oh you live where the wind turns around.

Really.

did you know that ????? 7:37

Yeah I like that.

You live so far, oh God you live where the wind turns around.

The end of the earth.

Yeah, exactly. So well there are a lot of different ways of saying that. So they were talking about different aspects of the environment. Like that we heard the word green, or energy-efficient.

Okay. So basically what they are doing is they are talking about some of the things they've heard in the media maybe, or on TV about what people are supposed to be doing. You know, these are very abstract, that means these are very can ???8:07 big terms. Go green, or be more energy-efficient.

Yeah, I've heard this like e.g. when people say oh you have to be more green, or go green. That means more friendly towards the eco-system right?

That's right. So this is a very general suggestion, and we can talk about specifics in a minute, but this is a very general suggestion, for thinking about the environment, and doing things to help it. And so Go Green, or Be Green, is a way to be more environment friendly. We also have using Energy-efficient computers, or light bulbs, or TV's. And the third thing that they talked about and this is something that comes up a lot, is sustainability.

Ahem, yeah that's a big word that a lot of people like to use in this type of topic, sustainability.

Right. So sustainability comes from the word to sustain. That means to hold out over time. Or to continue. So you think about something. Maybe .. sustainability is I think in many cases about eh doing or having habits, doing things that you can continue to do for a long time. E.g. driving a big SUV to work every day is not keeping in mind sustainability, because one day there will be no oil. So that won't we do. So that is not a sustainable action. Sustainable actions means that we have less impacts, negative impacts on the world.

Right, so basically what you're trying to do is to sustain, which means to .. to hold, to withstand these habits for example. So when you're talking about a sustainable ecosystem it means that it has everything it needs, and it can continue .. it can continue to work for a very very long time.

Right. So you can also talk about sustainable developments, which we talk about in aid, and giving aid to other countries. So sustainable development is trying to help other countries or other people in ways that they can keep continue to do for a long time.

It's also very popular with tourism. They talk about sustainable tourism.

Right. That means thinking about the environment and having tourism that can last forever. Not not tourism that will destroy the environment, because it's very harmful.

Ahem. It's a very interesting topic. And as you say, it's used in a wide range of cases, sustainable development, sustainable projects, sustainable tourism, there are a lot of different ways that people use this. But it's basically the same thing right? It's ..in essence it refers to that.

Yes, keeping something going over time. But I think the big question here is: if you wanna go green, if you want to be environment friendly, what do you do? Because it's not about big ideas, it's about specifics, it's about changing your everyday actions right. So these guys have a couple of ideas.

Yeah, they came up with something like e.g. hybrid vehicles, which is a big thing now, basically hybrid means two right, it's .. it's a combination of one of two, or more.

That's right. So you know the Sphinx, in Egypt, that's a hybrid.

Right, between a man and a lion.

Exactly.

Right, so a hybrid vehicle basically uses gasoline but also electricity. So they're very.. they're actually very very efficient because ..

and they're quiet ..

they're quiet, and usually what you use up most of your gasoline is in traffic. Because your car is on, you're accelerating, you're braking, you're accelerating, you're braking. So in this case I think hybrid vehicles run on the electric engine until they hit, I think it's 30 miles per hour yeah, and once you surpass that, then it switches to the gas engine, which obviously if you have a constant high speed, it uses .. it's more efficient the combustion of the gasoline.

Exactly. So a good example of a hybrid vehicle is the Toyota Prius.

Right. I think it's like the first one commercially available.

But now they have all kind, and actually they're trying to make entirely electric cars. So a lot of things to I jell 11:51?? for there. But they also talked about things for the house. Right, so if you want to, not just to have a nice car that is environment friendly, but it's also to do things with your house, what can you put on your roof?

Yeah, I think you've seen a lot of these, these are called solar panels.

Okay, solar has to do with the sun. So solar power, solar panel, that means energy that comes from the sun. So the sun. And a panel is like a pad or like a some kind of device that can take the energy from the sun.

Yeah, it's really really good. Basically you know in eh in some places you have anywhere between 8 and 12 hours of sunlight, so the whole day these panels are absorbing energy you can store them, maybe in batteries, and then just use them some later. So basically you don't really need to use electricity that comes from coal or from nuclear power plants, because you know you wanna turn on the light that doesn't use a lot of electricity.

and there's no waste..

and there's no wast. It's all clean.

So my question for you, does Ecuador have a lot of solar panels everywhere because you guys have so much sunlight on there.

Eh we don't really have a lot of them, it's not a big commercial thing yet, but there are a lot of projects going around to help implement these things a lot better. E.g. taking these technologies to the country side, where people don't have access to electricity by means of.. of cables right. So they're implementing that there, getting them to use it and , but it's still expensive that's the problem with solar panels is that's of course it's an energy efficient way of going, it will save you money in the long run. But ..

upfront

upfront you gotta spend a lot of money.

Well, here is a good way you use sustaining: if someone in the country side has solar panels on their house, it's a self-sustaining way to produce energy. You don't have to depend on another place, so its ??? 13:42

Exactly. Yeah, actually this is a very popular thing in many developed countries. I remember when I was living in Chili, big buildings were been marketed as energy efficient and green, and by showing that they can be self-sustaining. So basically they would have solar panels on the roof, they would collect sunlight all day, and then they had big batteries that would store this energy and then you can use it. They were more efficient in to keeping heat or keeping the cold and also - what we saw on the vocab today- what they also had was rain barrels. So basically collecting water from the rain, and then they can use this water obviously through a filtering system .. in order to be able to drink it, or to wash your clothes and stuff, but basically they would say that it could reduce your carbon footprint by more than 50% and also the amount of money you would spend. Cuz you wouldn't spend so much money on water, you wouldn't spend so much money on electricity, or gas and things like this.

That's awesome. Well one of the biggest concerns, as far as environmental .. environmentalism, is water. Where water will come from in 50 years.Because there is a limited amount of fresh water in the world. And if we can reuse rainwater, and collect it, I think it's brilliant. So a barrel basically is like a big container eh circular - it's like a circle - and it is stands up on the ground or on the roof.

And it's brilliant, because if you have a rain barrel, that collects all this rain, and you have solar panels, basically you don't need gas or electricity to take a warm shower. You just have the solar panels that can heat up the rain barrel water and there you have a warm water. Eh you have a warm shower ??? 15:21

It sounds so nice. You have sun-kissed warmth and you have like fresh rain water and ..

Yeah. But the whole water issue is a very popular topic. I recommend that any of our listeners read; this is a very interesting article, it talks about : don't worry about petroleum running out in 50 years, we're probably gonna run out of our water before that, and they project droughts, and huge famine in.. in places like India, like in the Middle-East, in .. in even places of .. of China.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, not so scare anyone.

But, but yeah it's interesting reading though, yeah it's really good.

Very serious stuff well. The last thing that I think we should talk about before we listen to today's audio file again is the compost bin. And this is maybe something that is hard to understand for someone who's never seen one before. But basically compost is ahem, well the verb is compost, to compost, but it's also a noun. But a lot of people they don't wanna throw away their food, and their you know organic material, things like flowers and food and bio-degradable things, they actually reuse them, So basic... they have a space in the backyard of the house where they throw away all the old food. Nothing plastic, nothing non- biodegradable and that over time, turns into fertilizer or.. or moulds (US: molds) for their gardens. So basically you.. you're putting it back into the earth.

Yeah, now this is .. this is a very good option. And I remember seeing that even in Brazil: they have huge compost bins or compost places that they fill up with.. with this garbage. And obviously, things that they composed start to emit methane gas. So they've found a way to harness this gas, transport it through tubes, and started using it. So actually having gas stoves, with this methane gas.

That's brilliant. So you can get 2 uses, fertilizer and methane gas.

Yeah, so there're a lot of options there: to go green, to do your part to help the earth.

Wow, so let's listen again to the dialogue that we had today, hopefully we've cleared up some of the things that were confusing for you, and we'll be back in just a moment. Dialogue second and last time 17:35- 20:00

All right we're back. So it's a very interesting topic, very debatable. We have Earth Day coming up, I think you have to turn of your lights for an hour.

That's right. Earth Hour, Earth Day, so remember: reduce, reuse, recycle, the 3 R's. Think about the way that you use things and you know, try and reuse them if you can.

Yeah, it's a very good topic, we wanna know what you think about it, and also if you have any suggestions or any comments about future advanced lessons, why don't you tell us, come to EnglishPod.com, and we'll see everyone there. C,M Bye