Learning to maintain the ecological balance

1. Approaches to ecology have changed in the West over the past 20 years, moving toward a more responsible use of the environment. This trend is beginning to change things in our country as well. International reaction to the accident with the Komi oil pipeline and the tanker accident near the Shetland islands makes us turn to Western experience.

2. To study the Western experience, a group of ecologists and industrialists from Western Siberia visited the U. S.

3. “It was especially interesting to visit Alaska; Alaska is quite similar to Russia's Tiumen region," said Victor Dolinger, president of the Ecology Committee of Khanty-Mansy district. During the last 30 years Alaska's oil industry used only 0.1 percent of the American territory to provide 25 percent of all U.S. oil output. The technology is simple: a hard icy bolster is built under a bore-hole; this prevents damaging the soil. After work is completed all machinery is dismantled and taken away, leaving the surface ground unharmed. Thus, the ecological balance is maintained.

4. The other good example of an environmentally sound approach could be the Alaska oil pipeline, which is lifted two meters off the ground so that caribou may walk under it.

5. Recently, during the first Russian-American seminar on ecology in Siberia, the director of the Institute of Earth Biosphere, Mr. Melnikov, proposed to the Americans to work out together the concept of a regional, "balanced" development. This involves a region that would be an ecological testing field while opening new industrial areas. The process is ongoing: in Herndon, Virginia, at the Mineral Resources Managing Office, American specialists presented the first drafts of this concept to the visiting Russians.

7. Прочтите 5 абзац текста и вопрос к нему. Из приведенных вариантов ответа укажите номер предложения, содержащего правильный ответ на поставленный вопрос:

What was Mr. Melnikov's proposal?

1. the environmental protection

2. to create a nature-protecting company

3. the concept of a regional, «balanced» development