You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Some people think that there are things individuals can do to help prevent global climate change. Others believe that action by individuals is useless and irrelevant and that it is only governments and large businesses which can make a difference.
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
Write at least 250 words.
Model answer:
Climate change is a phenomenon affecting all people in all walks of life, from individual citizens to whole countries and huge multinational companies. The question of what we can do to prevent global climate change and whether individual action is effective or not is a hotly debated issue.
There are those who say that the majority of the damages is wrought by big businesses. By imposing restrictions on emissions and by strictly monitoring waste disposal from factories, plants and businesses, governments would go a long way towards preventing climate change. It is thought that governments around the world should come up with solutions to help prevent imminent environment disaster. Proponents of this view claim that individual action is irrelevant in the face of massive, wide-scale prevention policies set and controlled by governments.
On the other hand, there are a growing number of people who believe that individual action combined with governmental and business action will do a lot more to prevent climate change than if individual citizens were not involved. In a world of six billion people, if everyone thought about the number of water they use, how they dispose of their rubbish, whether or not something needs to be thrown away or if they can, in fact, re-use certain items then we would be giving the problem of climate change and its prevention a massive boost.
Taking both points into consideration, I firmly believe that individual citizens cannot sit back and say it is someone else’s responsibility to protect the environments; we must all play our part-individual citizens, governments and big businesses alike.
(264 words)
