Grade 7: Unit 4

Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change.

Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died.

In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients.

There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.

There was a strange stillness.

These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things.

But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst—though not all—of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis—a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal.

For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.”

We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable.

This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.

This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.

My ancestors call them
the keepers of doors
and the shore a realm to other worlds,
both ways and
water moves the deep shift of life
back to birth and before
as if there is a path where beings truly meet,
as if I am rounding the human corners.

So impotent our Wisdom is
To Her Sincerity—

But I work on, nor heed its lay,
Till, in neglect, it flies away.

Documentary photography aims to portray subjects objectively, or in a way that is based on facts and not influenced by feelings and opinions.

A photographer may use a particular vantage point in order to capture the subject in a particular position or in a certain light.

In early photography, all photographs were monochrome.

"We've got a fabulously deep hole! Scientists say it's at least five thousand meters deep! Perfect for the disposal of such things as waste from nuclear reactors."

Everyone disliked thinking about the eventual consequences.

But, it was thought, these problems too would gradually be resolved by the hole.