Lesson 1: Climate Justice and Global Activism (reading)

Main ideas

• Climate change is not only an environmental crisis but also a profound issue of global justice.
• Industrialised nations are largely responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions.
• Low-income and marginalised communities, particularly in the Global South, bear the brunt: rising sea levels, long droughts, food shortage and extreme weather events.
• Climate justice calls for fair policies, shared decisions and cooperation to correct the unequal burden.
• Youth are acting: the Youth Climate Lab empowers young innovators to design sustainable energy projects and waste-reduction programmes, producing tangible results such as community solar projects and recycling campaigns.
• At its core, climate justice is about equity, responsibility and voice: without justice there can be no true solution.

Cause-and-effect chain in the text

Idioms of blame and responsibility

Compound nouns

• A compound noun is made of two nouns used together as one unit; the first noun describes the second.
• Examples from the unit: climate change, greenhouse gas, carbon footprint, energy efficiency, rainfall pattern.
• Note the plural: greenhouse gases, rainfall patterns.

Reading comprehension — with answers

1. Which communities suffer the most from climate change? Low-income and marginalised communities, particularly in the Global South.
2. What does "climate justice" emphasise? Fair policies, shared decisions and cooperation to fix the unequal burdens of climate change, with equity and a voice for those often unheard.
3. According to the text, young people are demanding… c. immediate and ambitious climate action.
4. "bear the brunt" means… b. to suffer the worst effects.

Vocabulary matching — with answers

Reading strategy

• Summarise each paragraph in one sentence before you answer; most main-idea questions are answered by that summary.
• Watch for connectors: while, even though, as a result, so — they mark the cause-effect relationship the examiner asks about.