Preparation to Cambridge English Advanced, level c1 The assignement was: Ideas for influencing young people to be more environmentally friendly: -laws and taxes -education -media Write an essay discussing two of the ideas for influencing people. You should explain which way would be more effective and provide reasons to support your opinion. Environmental issues in today's world are poorly addressed. This constitutes a big problem because future world crises will have as their main cause global warming and pollution. These two issues have already generated devastating effects such as oxygen depletion in the oceans, increased number of floods and droughts all over the world, as well as hurricanes which devasted whole countries and of course the ice melting of the North Pole and glaciars, which is provoking the rising of sea levels. These are just a few examples of a wider and more complex scene of the consequences that global warming has had and will continue to have in what will be a dramatic escalation. The media never addresses these issues or they do not give them the importance they actually deserve, instead they relegate environmental topics at the end of their news programmes. The power to inform people is nowadays directly in the hands of the media. If it were to be a drastic change in how the media addresses environmental issues, for instance making the headlines of news programmes about the increase of environmental disasters and keeping track of scientific research in the field, people would definitely start perceiving these issues way more seriously. However this possibility is far from becoming reality and so this is where education comes into play. Education can be an essential tool to raise awareness about environmental issues and teach kids the importance of caring for our planet. The younger generations will be the ones who will have to confront a world devastated by industrialization, so it is absolutely necessary to provide them knowledge so they hopefully will come up with solutions. In conclusion I think education plays a key role in teaching kids a certain behaviour, this is why schools must compensate the lack of awareness present in most of the families, as it can be the most effective way to influence their kids to be environmentally friendly.