Pratica di Shadowing: How much progress have we made on climate change? - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube
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Planet Earth is amazing.
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Planet Earth is amazing.
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510 million square kilometers under a blue sky.
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Granted, most of that is salt water,
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but the planet also hosts lush rainforests,
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scorching deserts, grasslands, tundra, mountains,
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and plains, inhabited by a rich diversity of life.
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It is in fact the only place in the known universe capable of supporting life as we know it.
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But for the past three centuries,
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that blue sky has become increasingly choked with pollution.
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The level of invisible carbon dioxide gas has increased by more than 50% since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
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As carbon dioxide is very good at trapping heat,
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this has raised the average temperature of the planet by more than one degree Celsius.
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At the start of the 21st century,
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it was predicted that continuing carbon emissions would warm the planet by about 4 degrees by the year 2100.
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This would be catastrophic.
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Food networks would collapse.
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Extreme weather events like heat waves would become devastating.
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Life on Earth would enter into unprecedented territory.
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But preventing this future seemed impossible.
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Almost every human activity produced carbon dioxide,
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mostly because our energy was overwhelmingly supplied by burning fossil fuels to generate electricity,
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produce heat and move ourselves around.
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But the Earth as we knew it was at stake,
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so people all around the world got to work.
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This video is about what they did and what a difference they've made.
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The single largest source of carbon emissions is the production of electricity and heat,
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representing almost one-third of all emissions.
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Because burning fossil fuels, especially coal and gas,
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have historically dominated power generation.
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But they're no longer the only options.
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Renewable sources like solar panels and wind turbines emit far less carbon per unit of power generated over their lifetimes.
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And globally, over 4,000 GW of renewables capacity has been built,
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almost all since the year 2000.
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but 30% of all electricity now comes from renewable sources.
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But that's the global average.
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In Uruguay, around 90% of electricity comes from renewables,
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largely wind, but also hydropower.
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And last year, the country went for 10 straight months on a 100% clean grid.
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South Australia may also hit a 100% clean grid as soon as 2027,
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thanks to wind and solar.
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And other places are not far behind.
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The North Sea might be the best place in the world for offshore wind,
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and the current rollout of wind power here enables the UK
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and Denmark to aim for a clean grid by 2030 and the Netherlands by 2035.
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India aims to power 10 million households with rooftop solar,
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adding 500 gigawatts of capacity by 2030.
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But we can't discuss the rollout of renewables and not mention where most of them are being installed.
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China.
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China is building approximately twice as much new wind and solar as the rest of the world combined.
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It's still the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide,
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though that's because of its huge population.
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The average person in China has a carbon footprint only two-thirds the size of the average Americans.
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And its emissions have been rising sharply,
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but not for much longer.
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The huge surge of solar and wind construction in 2024 kept overall Chinese emissions lower
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than in 2023 for 10 months of the year,
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and every year the amount of renewables added to the grid increases.
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This emissions reduction almost certainly isn't a one-off, but a systematic change.
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Many analysts predict that China's emissions due to coal,
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its other major source of electricity,
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will start to fall this year.
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And a new phase of low-carbon to run,
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nuclear power is being built in China and around the world,
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with over 70 gigawatts currently,
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slowly, under construction, and generation hitting an all-time high this year.
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China's new electricity system will see its overall emissions,
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a huge fraction of global emissions,
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peak in the next few years.
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It may feel like we have made no progress in the fight against climate change,
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but the power sector shows that is not the case.
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In fact, carbon emissions due to generating electricity likely already peaked two years ago,
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and will fall even under high forecasts for growth in demand,
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such as for AI.
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We're just building that many renewables,
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and investing that much in grids and storage to overcome the intermittency of renewables.
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In Chile, the Oasis de Atacama project is being built a 14.5 gigawatt-hour battery,
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enough to power peak demand in the country on its own.
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But peaking electricity emissions is not the same as overall emissions peaking,
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because because not everything runs on electricity.
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The next two largest sources of emissions are heating and transport.
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Around the world, most people heat themselves and water by burning a fuel,
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often natural gas, in a boiler,
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and move themselves around by burning an oil-based product,
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like petrol, in an engine.
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This has long been the case,
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but in some parts of the world,
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alternative approaches are now more popular.
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And where they are more popular tells us something about the near future.
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Let's look at China and Norway.
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In Norway, most households are not heated by a boiler,
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but by a heat pump,
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a fridge running in reverse, basically, powered by electricity.
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And last year, 9 out of 10 new vehicles bought in Norway were EVs,
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with the country set to phase out the sale of non-electric vehicles soon,
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maybe even this year.
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Meanwhile, in China, most cars now sold are electric or hybrid.
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Uptake has just exploded in recent years.
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That's partly because China dominates the manufacture of EVs,
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but also because of what it has in common with Norway.
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Cheap electricity.
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In Norway, it comes from hydropower.
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In China, from solar and wind.
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Where electricity is cheap, it just makes financial sense to electrify heating and transport.
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In fact, while on average around the world a little over 20% of all energy is used as electricity,
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in Norway it's 47%, in Guangdong province it's 49%,
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and in Zhejiang province it's 51%.
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As renewables, particularly solar, roll out across the world,
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the price of electricity will fall,
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making electrified systems, such as in transport and heating,
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but also industrial processes, much more appealing.
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As well as being more efficient,
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those systems are then tied to the carbon emissions of the electric grid,
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which, being based on renewables,
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will be low, much lower than running them on fossil fuels.
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These sectors will see their emissions start to tumble in coming years as electrification percentages rise.
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Of course, decarbonising transport is much more complicated than just replace cars with electric cars.
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You can watch my whole video about that.
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And this process can be accelerated with appropriate government policies.
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This has happened in China and Norway, but now elsewhere too.
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In East Africa, Ethiopia banned the import of internal combustion engine vehicles in 2024,
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encouraging the development of EV infrastructure.
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While in Kenya and Rwanda,
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policies are buildings charging stations and shifting both public transport and two-wheel mobility,
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like scooters, to electric vehicles.
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Both to reduce emissions, but also improve the poor air quality in cities.
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A win-win.
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The world has made huge progress,
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reducing emissions from power generation and to a lesser extent heating and transport.
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At the start of the century,
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scientists predicted four degrees of warming, maybe more, by 2100.
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Now, based on current actions by our governments,
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we will most likely see between 2.2 and 3.4,
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with the best guess being 2.7, degrees of warming.
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Global emissions may have already peaked,
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and if not, will do so soon.
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Emissions in advanced economies are already back to their levels from 50 years ago.
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That's huge, but obviously still not enough.
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At 2.7 degrees, we will still see enormous negative impacts on wildlife,
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agriculture and public health.
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Every tenth of a degree of warming extra makes the world a more unstable, dangerous place.
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But that 2.7 degrees is based on real-world government policies,
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what we're actually doing now.
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It doesn't account for increasing our ambitions or recent innovations becoming practical at scale.
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If governments announced 2030 targets are reached,
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along with any legally binding longer-term targets,
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we're likely looking at 2.1 degrees by the year 2100.
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Yes, that's still too high,
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but every tenth of a degree makes a difference.
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And there are many areas where we've only just started to see real alternatives to the status quo,
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practical ways to reduce emissions in the coming decades.
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We haven't, for example, talked about iron and steel.
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Long labelled as hard to decarbonise because of the huge energy required to melt iron,
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supplied by burning coal, but industry represents around 7% of all emissions.
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But in recent years, alternatives to coal have become economical and supported by government policy,
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such as using green hydrogen and using electric furnaces,
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which can of course be powered by clean sources, producing green steel.
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Globally, 43% of planned new steel furnaces are electric,
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and China, which produces half the world's steel,
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now only approves new electric furnaces that process scrap metal.
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Cement is another industry with a large carbon footprint,
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only slightly less than steel,
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due to its energy-intense production,
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but also the fundamental chemical reaction that produces cement, releasing CO2.
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Some are pushing the industry to change the recipe for cement,
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but as it's the second most traded commodity in the world,
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only second to water, that's a tall order.
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So the industry will likely need to rely on carbon capture units being retrofitted to existing cement plants.
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And these already exist.
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They are currently being slowly implemented.
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I actually made a video visiting one of them.
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With the right policy support,
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both steel and cement have potential to slash their emissions,
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over 10% of global emissions, in the coming decades.
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We've also not yet mentioned work on the other side of the carbon equation.
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By protecting natural carbon sinks,
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like forests, we not only suck more CO2 out of the air,
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but also reduce emissions of carbon through deforestation,
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and of course, protect biodiversity.
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And since the year 2000,
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carbon emissions due to land use change,
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about half of which is due to deforestation, have reduced by 30%.
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In the Amazon, deforestation has halved in the past two years.
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All around the world, small local projects seek to restore lost tree cover,
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plant new mangroves, and protect land from development.
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There are also enormous projects like one billion trees in New Zealand and the Great Green Wall of Africa,
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though these have many problems of their own.
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Deforestation is still occurring at far too fast a rate,
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but slowing it in the tropics has been a quiet small victory for the past few decades that looks set to continue,
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and in temperate regions we've actually been net gaining forest cover since the year 2000.
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Clearly, it can be done.
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Working with, rather than against,
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natural systems will play a key role in our trajectory this century.
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But you may have noticed something about this video,
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an area of the world where no large projects have been mentioned.
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What about America?
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Here emissions have decreased by 20% since the year 2000.
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But earlier this year, the US elected Donald Trump back into the White House,
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who made it clear that climate change was not a priority,
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that environmental protections will be rolled back,
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and that the country will leave the Paris Agreement again.
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This is obviously going to have negative impacts on emissions both in America and around the world.
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Confidence in climate progress has been shaken.
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Many seem to believe that his re-election has killed the clean energy transition,
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slamming the door on our future.
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This is not true.
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For one thing, America represents around one-eighth of global carbon emissions.
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That means that while American emissions may plateau for the next few years,
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I personally think a big increase is unlikely,
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they represent a small minority.
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And as we have seen,
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other large emitters like China and Europe are making ambitious plays to reduce their emissions.
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But more importantly, do you know where else is investing huge amounts into renewables that we haven't mentioned yet either?
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The Middle East.
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In fact, the Middle East is the fastest growing renewables market outside of China.
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Companies like Oman, the UAE,
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Qatar and Saudi Arabia are developing huge solar projects.
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Just last month, the UAE announced the world's largest round-the-clock solar and battery facility,
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even larger than the Oasis to Atacama,
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coming online in the next two years.
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These countries are built on oil and gas,
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and they're now ploughing money into renewables because they recognise it as the future.
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Globally, twice as much was invested last year in clean energy technologies and grid upgrades as was invested in fossil fuels.
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The fact is, the energy transition isn't happening because it's the environmentally right thing to do,
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it now just makes economic sense.
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Solar and to a lesser extent wind are now so cheap that they are preferable to burning fossil fuels in many cases,
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making electric systems cost competitive.
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It's for this reason that heat pumps will continue to outsell gas boilers in the US,
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Individual states will continue rolling out renewable power generation and investing in geothermal power.
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The US has the real potential to lead the world here,
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and after all, it does involve drilling, baby.
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Drilling.
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One person, even if they are the most powerful person in the world,
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is not going to derail the transition to clean energy,
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and by extension, massively reduced carbon emissions.
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That transition is now inevitable and happening at pace around the world.
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The question is, just how quickly will it happen?
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Will it be fast enough?
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Will we get to net zero fast enough?
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We've already brought expected warming down from 4 to 2.7 degrees.
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If we follow through on our medium-term targets,
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we can get that down to 2.1.
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If we are ambitious and push for net zero and utilise all the strategies in this video and more besides,
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we can still limit warming to less than 2 degrees.
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We have lived through a period of ever-increasing climate impacts,
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but also ever-increasing ambition on climate.
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We need this to continue.
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Every tenth of a degree saved matters.
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But as the re-election of Trump shows,
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we cannot take it for granted that progress will continue to accelerate.
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I don't want you to come away from this video thinking we have done enough on climate change
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or we are moving fast enough,
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because sadly that is still not the case.
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The great adventure of securing our future is in jeopardy
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if we do not keep climate as a core concern in who we vote to lead us,
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who we choose to work for,
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and how we spend our money.
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But most importantly, it's not an adventure we need to start.
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It's an adventure that has already made great strides.
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An adventure we need to continue and see through to its final destination.
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Maybe you can be a part of this great story keeping our Earth amazing.
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I built this 1 to 100 million scale Earth from scratch over the course of two weeks and also filmed the process.
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So if you would like to see an extra video of me talking through how I made this,
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You can watch that right now if you have a Nebula subscription.
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I post all my videos on Nebula a day before releasing them on YouTube,
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as well as exclusive content like this model-making video,
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but also me playing Daybreak with a team of climate scientists,
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and a whole documentary about making my new YouTube studio.
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All of these videos can be watched ad-free,
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downloaded to your device to play offline,
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and each view of a video on Nebula supports me as a creator more than each view on YouTube
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because of how Nebula works.
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It's a collective of hundreds of video creators who co-own the platform,
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and who share the revenue subscriptions users pay based on the watch time their channels get.
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Nebula also finances big new projects with creators,
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like Boomers by Tom Nicholas and Modern Conflicts by Real Life Law.
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Obviously I'm biased because I'm a co-owner,
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but increasingly on my lunch breaks I've just been watching Nebula instead of YouTube because it's just a better viewing experience.
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There's no ads, the design of the site is actually good,
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and I don't have to hunt for a creator to watch
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because the entire feed is creators who are making interesting, thoughtful stuff.
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If you would like to get a Nebula subscription,
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then you can pay monthly,
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annually, or once for lifetime access.
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If you choose to pay annually,
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then you can use my link,
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go.nebula.tv slash simonclark, and you'll get a 40% discount,
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which works out to $3 a month.
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That'll be linked down there in the description, by the way.
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Three dollars a month I think is incredible value.
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So that link again is go.nebula.tv slash Simon Clark,
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so get access to heaps of exclusive content including my making of video attached to this video.
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Thank you for watching,
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and a massive thank you to JD who 3D printed most of the icons that you saw me place around the globe.
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You may have heard of JD's band,
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they're called The Longest Johns.
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Her sisters died from Perk and mine,
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but she'll run for decades more.
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She'll run for decades more.
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And also thank you to Nick from The Progress Playbook for chatting to me
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and suggesting some of the projects featured in this video.
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Do check out The Progress Playbook,
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which is linked in the references down below,
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for regular good news stories about the energy transition.
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I also could not have made this video without the support of my patrons.
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People who support me on patreon.com forward slash Simon Oxfiz get early access to my videos,
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exclusive content every month, notably a vlog that goes behind the scenes.
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This month's vlog is going to be all about basically how this project came to be,
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a little bit about how I sourced the materials and how I wrote this video.
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So if you'd like to watch that,
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and if you would like to vote on a video topic a month,
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you can do at the producer tier and above,
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then you know where to sign up.
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It's down there in the description,
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patreon.com forward slash Simon Oxfiz.
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And this just in, this body of water will now be known as the Gulf of Zak Subin.
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Wait, no, sorry, it's been changed.
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The Gulf of Ali Pasha Sadri.
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No, wait, I'm just hearing.
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It's actually the Gulf of Dan Hanvey.
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Thank you so much for supporting my work.
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If you like this video,
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then please consider checking out a previous video I made in
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a similar style looking at how we can turn cities into carbon sinks.
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If you like this video then please do the YouTube pleasantries,
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drop it a like, share it with somebody who you think would also enjoy it
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and that just leaves me to say thank you once again for watching.
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I'll see you in the next one.
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Perché praticare la conversazione con questo video?
Questo video offre un'opportunità unica di pratica di conversazione in inglese, incentrata su un tema di grande attualità: il cambiamento climatico. Parlando di argomenti rilevanti e complessi come la produzione di energia e le fonti rinnovabili, gli studenti possono non solo migliorare la loro fluency, ma anche acquisire vocabolario specifico e capacità di argomentazione. Utilizzare questo video come materiale di studio incoraggia una pratica attiva e consapevole, dove l'ascolto attivo e la ripetizione dei concetti espressi aiutano a consolidare la memoria e la comprensione.
Grammatica ed espressioni nel contesto
- Condizionali e futuri ipotetici: L’uso di strutture come "se continueremo a produrre emissioni di carbonio" offre l'opportunità di esplorare come formulare ipotesi in inglese.
- Frasi passive: L'espressione "l'energia rinnovabile è stata costruita" introduce gli studenti alla forma passiva, utile per mettere l'accento sull'azione piuttosto che sul soggetto.
- Connettivi logici: Parole come "ma" e "però" vengono utilizzate per contrapporre idee, mostrando come collegare frasi in maniera fluida.
- Terminologia tecnica: Lessico come "fonti rinnovabili", "emissioni di carbonio" e "inquinamento" è cruciale per sviluppare un discorso informato sugli argomenti di sostenibilità.
Trappole comuni nella pronuncia
Ascoltando il video, potrebbero emergere alcune trappole di pronuncia. Parole come "carbon dioxide" possono risultare difficili a causa della presenza di suoni simili. Inoltre, l'uso di termini tecnici come "renewables" richiede particolare attenzione all'accento, affinché venga pronunciato correttamente. Un consiglio efficace è quello di utilizzare la tecnica del shadowing in inglese per ripetere le frasi ascoltate, cercando di imitare non solo le parole ma anche l'intonazione e il ritmo del relatore. Attraverso la migliorare la pronuncia inglese mediante la pratica regolare, si potrà rafforzare la propria capacità di comunicazione in contesti diversi, rendendo il discorso più naturale e fluido.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.
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