reading activities

Car Crisis
A
Fill the twelve gaps in the texts on Worksheet A with the correct words below. There are four words that you will not be able to use.
quality
relationship
convenient
manufactured
depend
polluters
air
healthier
surrounded
supermarket
environmental
pick
warming
contribution
person
weightlifter
ROBERT: Cars have now become a serious _____________ problem. As a society, we in Britain _____________ far too much on our cars – and the same can be said about most other rich countries. We are setting a bad example to developing countries. Just imagine if other countries like China and India, which both have populations of over a billion, end up having the same number of cars per _____________ as we do! That would mean a very big increase in the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and therefore the global warming crisis would become even more serious.
GEORGE: It’s wrong to say that cars make a significant _____________ to global warming. Of course I’m aware that cars produce carbon dioxide emissions, but the problem has been hugely exaggerated. What people don’t realize is that cars are actually getting cleaner, with the newest models producing fewer emissions than those that were _____________ five or ten years ago. And anyway, not all scientists think there is a _____________ between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, so I don’t believe the stuff the environmentalists are always saying on the TV and the radio. It’s just scaremongering, I reckon.
JO: For me, the contribution cars make to global warming is not the only issue. I think there are loads of other ways that our _____________ of life would be better if there were fewer cars on our roads. For a start, our streets would be less noisy and the air would be cleaner. But it’s not just that – I also reckon people who live in cities would feel freer if they weren’t always _____________ by hundreds of cars. Imagine if more areas of our cities were pedestrianized: it would suddenly become much safer and more enjoyable to walk or cycle from A to B, so people would start leading _____________ lifestyles.
SARAH: I don’t know whether the amount of cars in the world makes a difference to global warming, but I do know that every day I need to use my car to take my children to their school, which is two miles from our house, and then _____________ them up again in the afternoon. What else am I supposed to do? Make them walk? And then there’s my weekly shop at the _____________, which is at least ten minutes’ walk away. Do you think I’m strong enough to carry all those bags on my own? I’m not a professional _____________, you know!


B
There are ten mistakes in the text below. Find them and correct them.
CARFORCE UK
MOTORISTS OF BRITAIN, UNITE!
All over the UK, environmentalists are trying to make motorists feel guilty just because they choose to drive to their local shops to buy a newspaper or a pint of milk. But why should you to feel guilty? Why should they turn your comfortable one-minute journey by car in a physically exhausted twenty-minute hike, dodging puddles, rude pedestrians and aggressive dogs?
We at Carforce believe that everyone in the UK – and everyone in the world – have the right to use their cars to drive where they want, when they want. We are sick and tired of environmentalist scaremongring. They have always exaggerated the connects between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. (And even if they haven’t, so what? Wouldn’t it be quite nice if Britain is a little warmer, particularly in the winter?)
Why should we let the environmentalists push us of our cars and make us walk everywhere? Drivers have human writes too! The environmentalists might want us to live in the eighteenth century, but we don’t believe in live in the past: we believe in the future, and the future is full of cars – big, fast, shiny, beautiful cars!
Join us now!

Related Websites
http://www.mobilityweek-europe.org/
The homepage of the website of European Mobility Week 2006, containing articles on various initiatives aimed at limiting car use.
http://www.22september.org/info/en/camp.html
Article on ‘In town without my car!’ day, which takes place on September 22 as part of European Mobility Week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/netnotes/article/0,6729,371822,00.html
From the year 2000, a short article in the Guardian about European Car Free Day.
http://www.abd.org.uk/index.htm
From the website of the Association of British Drivers, links to various articles arguing that increasing car use doesn’t constitute an environmental problem.