Ejercicio Option A - 3 · Inglés PAU Castilla y León Extraordinaria 2022

OPTION A

HOW BAD ARE THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE GOING TO BE

It depends on how aggressively we act to address climate change. If we continue with business as usual, by the end of the century, it will be too hot to go outside during heat waves in the Middle East and South Asia. Droughts will grip Central America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa. And many island nations and low-lying areas, from Texas to Bangladesh, will be overtaken by rising seas. Conversely, climate change could bring welcome warming and extended growing seasons to the upper Midwest, Canada, the Nordic countries and Russia. Farther north, however, the loss of snow, ice and permafrost will invert the traditions of Indigenous people and threaten infrastructure.

Already, between 1961 and 2000, climate change appears to have harmed the economies of the poorest countries while boosting the fortunes of the wealthiest nations that have done the most to cause the problem, making the global wealth gap 25 percent bigger than it would otherwise have been. Similarly, the Global Climate Risk Index found that lower income countries — like Myanmar, Haiti and Nepal — rank high on the list of nations most affected by extreme weather between 1999 and 2018. Climate change has also contributed to increased human migration, which is expected to increase significantly.

Even the climate “winners” will not be immune from all climate impacts, though. Desirable locations will face an influx of migrants. And as the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, disasters in one place quickly spread across our globalized economy. For instance, scientists expect climate change to increase the probabilities of multiple crop failures occurring at the same time in different places, throwing the world into a food crisis. Warmer weather is aiding the spread of infectious diseases and the vectors that transmit them, like ticks and mosquitoes. Research has also identified troubling correlations between rising temperatures and increased interpersonal violence, and climate change is widely recognized as a “threat multiplier” that increases the odds of larger conflicts within and between countries.

So, climate change will bring many changes that no amount of money can stop. What could help is taking action to limit warming. (Fragment adapted from The New York Times.)

3) CHOOSE a OR b, ONLY ONE CHOICE IS CORRECT ACCORDING TO THE TEXT (1 POINT).

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