Shadowing Practice: Climate Change Debate | Barry Gardiner MP | Proposition (3/8) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I now look to Barry Gardner to continue the case for the proposition.
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Mr. President, it's the Chamber of Secrets.
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Harry Potter has just killed the basilisk, and he's in Dumbledore's office, and he's troubled.
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He's troubled because he's seen all these similarities between himself and he who must not be named.
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And he wants to know why was it that the sorting hat put him in Gryffindor and not in Slytherin?
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And Dumbledore, not unreasonably, reminds him that he actually asked the sorting hat to put him in Gryffindor.
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And that is the moment.
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That is the moment that Dumbledore utters the most important and profound line in the entire seven volumes of the Hogwarts saga.
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Hogwarts saga.
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You see, Harry, it's our choices that show what we truly are far more than our abilities.
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Our choices.
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Whatever the science, whatever the technology, whoever happens to be in the White House,
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whatever the economics, we We have to choose to do something about climate change.
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Apathy is the antidote to choice.
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It's the kryptonite of the superman that is actionable.
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You're students.
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You know all about it.
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Apathy is your worst self.
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Apathy is that student Essie syndrome that says, Due tomorrow?
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Due tomorrow.
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Apathy, indifference, lack of interest, impassivity, detachment, coolness, lack of concern.
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Lack of concern.
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You see, the problem is not the 13% of the people of the United Kingdom
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who refuse to accept the science that tells us that climate change is being caused by human activity.
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The skeptics aren't the problem.
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Facts don't stop being facts because some bonehead disagrees with them.
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You don't actually need a majority of the population to agree that dolphins exist.
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They just do.
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You wouldn't decide to take a poll to find out whether seven is the square root of 49.
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It just is.
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The problem is not the skeptical minority who don't believe.
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It's the apathetic majority that know damn well what the science says, but just can't be bothered to do anything about it.
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The danger lies in the otherwise thoroughly rational person who accepts the science,
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knows that sea levels are rising, that adverse weather events are increasing in both frequency and severity,
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that desertification on the equator is leading to famine,
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but says What is it to me if in 30 years' time people in Bangladesh have nowhere to go,
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or people in the Horn of Africa have nothing to eat?
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Why should that make me sacrifice my standard of living now?
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Don't expect me to do without my 4x4 Chelsea tractor for them.
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It's their problem, not mine.
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Because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth.
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That's what St. John the Divine says in the book of Revelation about those who are apathetic.
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For most people, distance in miles and distance in time matters,
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particularly when it comes to how much we care.
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You see, for many people, the cost of immediate action to tackle climate change is simply too great
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when set against that more distant benefit of a sustainable future.
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In economics, it's known as the discount rate.
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Some people think it is simply an economic problem,
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that you have to show that it makes economic sense for people now to change their behaviour by changing the discount rate.
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But I think it's not an economic problem.
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I think it's a problem of ethics.
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It's a problem of how we overcome human apathy with human empathy.
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Tonight, the opposition are going to try to reassure you that apathy is okay.
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Indifference to the future survival of, well, our species is not something to be overly concerned about.
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They'll try to get you to be apathetic about apathy.
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So who are these guys?
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Well, he is the former Secretary of Energy of a country where most of the population believe that climate change is fake,
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but that professional wrestling is the real thing.
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This is the Energy Secretary who publicly tried to justify bragging for shale gas
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and dismiss claims about the damage from methane emissions by reassuring the public
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that they don't last as long in the atmosphere as CO2.
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Shame he forgot to mention that even though they don't last as long, over a 100 year period,
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they are between 28 and 36 times more potent in their warming effect on the planet than CO2.
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This guy was so apathetic he couldn't even be bothered to tell the public the truth,
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even though it was the official scientific finding of the US Environmental Protection Agency of the administration in which he served.
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Natalie Bennett will ever so earnestly try to persuade you
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that the danger to our climate comes from a lack of energy efficiency and the need for more renewables.
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She'll tell you that there are 19 million homes in the UK rated D or below.
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She will point to the waste of money
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and the burning of fossil fuels that are contributing to high household bills and to global warming and climate change.
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But she won't tell you that the biggest impediment to achieving these savings is
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that people don't want the hassle of having to clear out their loft to lay down layers of rock wool insulation.
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They can't be bothered to redecorate their living room after they've put thinsulation on their walls
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or ruined the look of their home by sticking cladding on the outside.
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It's inertia, it's apathy that is holding us back from doing the things
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that she will rightly tell you we need to do.
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We know how to avoid global warming above pre-industrial levels of more than two degrees.
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Eighty percent of all the identified reserves of fossil fuel must stay in the ground.
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you've got to wonder why companies keep searching for
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more yes of course I'd
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love it well
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look it's a wonderful point and
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and and it places the blame fairly and and squarely on the corporations,
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like Chris did, the corporations and the politicians.
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But if the solution is about top-down and not bottom-up, if the solution is Donald Trump,
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if the solution is from the top-down, down, the world hasn't done very well at building that solution and achieving progress so far.
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We know how to avoid global warming.
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You've got to wonder why companies keep searching for more and more fossil fuel, and the answer is that it shows up in their reserves and in their accounts as an asset,
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and it keeps their share price high.
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But as the world starts to implement the Paris Agreement, it becomes increasingly apparent that these companies have stranded assets, fuel that they can't burn,
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plant that is increasingly redundant as the world relies more
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and more upon renewable technology to achieve its goal of below 2 degrees and as close to 1.5 as possible.
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The largest institutional investors are pension funds.
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And up to now, they have not bothered.
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They just haven't been worried about the overvaluation of their companies that their money's been invested in.
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But Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg broke through that apathy.
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They launched and led the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure,
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More than 100 firms with market capitalisation over 3.3 trillion,
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24 trillion in assets have now supported the need for climate-related disclosures.
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That's what can be achieved.
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These are the sort of resources that can be mobilised to combat climate change when you overcome individual apathy.
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And you know this, because it was you, the students of Oxford, that lobbied your university to look at its own investment portfolio.
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It was you that started the campaign to get the university to divest from fossil fuels.
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The university authorities had been apathetic.
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You were not.
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You engaged with the university's investment committee, you got the university council to move the fund,
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so it now has no direct holdings in coal or in tar sands companies.
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So when you vote at the end of this evening, vote for yourselves.
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Vote for your achievement in overcoming apathy.
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Vote in favour of the motion that individual apathy is the greatest danger to our climate and pledge yourselves.
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pledge yourselves to live as the inspiring, the empathetic, the justice-seeking, the change-embracing,
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the wonderful human beings that you are.
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Because you see, Harry, it's your choices far more than your abilities that show who you truly are.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 113 sentences and 1396 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:18. The speaker talks at a steady 123 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| bother verb | /ˈbɑðɚ/ | To annoy, to disturb, to irritate; to be troublesome to, to make trouble for. |
| fossil noun | /ˈfɑsl̩/ | The mineralized remains of an animal or plant. |
| overcome verb | /ˌəʊ.vəˈkʌm/ | To surmount (a physical or abstract obstacle); to prevail over, to get the better of. |
| asset noun | /ˈæsɛt/ | A thing or quality that has value, especially one that generates cash flows. |
| yourselves | /jəˈsɛlvz/ | You (plural), used to intensify the subject as the group addressed. |
| economics noun | /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/ | The study of resource and wealth allocation, consumption, and distribution, of capital and investment, and of management of the factors of production. |
| increasingly adverb | Increasing in amount or intensity. | |
| discount noun | /ˈdɪskaʊnt/ | A reduction in price. |
| pledge noun | /plɛd͡ʒ/ | A solemn promise to do something. |
| renewable adjective | /ɹɪˈnu.ə.bl̩/ | Able to be renewed; capable of renewal. |
| saga noun | /ˈsɑɡə/ | An Old Norse (Icelandic) prose narrative, especially one dealing with family or social histories and legends. |
| household adjective | /ˈhaʊshoʊld/ | Belonging to the same house and family. |
| atmosphere noun | /ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/ | The gases surrounding the Earth or any astronomical body. |
| sand noun | /sænd/ | Rock that is ground more finely than gravel, but is not as fine as silt (more formally, see grain sizes chart), forming beaches and deserts and also used in… |
| whoever | /huˈɛvɚ/ | Who ever: an emphatic form of who. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| break through verb | To gain popularity. |
| clear out verb | To completely empty. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| lie down verb | To assume a horizontal position. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 23 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, can't, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, ethics /ˈɛθ.ɪks/, thoroughly /ˈθʌɹ.ə.li/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/, methane /ˈmiːθeɪn/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, pension /ˈpɛnʃən/, politician /ˌpɑ.ləˈtɪʃ.ən/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, disclosure /dɪsˈkləʊʒə(ɹ)/
- Long words — get the stress right: economics /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/, minority /maɪˈnɒɹ.ɪ.ti/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, sustainable /səˈsteɪnəbəl/, politician /ˌpɑ.ləˈtɪʃ.ən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like bother, fossil, overcome.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | must not be named · being caused · can't be bothered |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has just killed · they've put · hasn't done |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person who accepts · those who are |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.