IELTS Writing Task 2/ Essay Topics with sample answer.
IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample 7 - To solve the ever-increasing environmental hazards throughout the world
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IELTS Writing Task 2/ IELTS Essay:
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Present a written argument to an educated reader with no specialist knowledge of the following topic:
To solve the ever-increasing environmental hazards throughout the world, the best way is to increase the price of fuel.
What is your opinion on the above assumption?
You should write at least 250 words.
Model Answer 1: (Disagreement)
It is true that skyrocketing the fuel price can make a nosedive on the use of vehicles in many cities but curtailing the volume of energy we utilise is not an elixir as it would soar the daily living expense as well. Hence, the human being ought to scout out renewable energy in an attempt to halt the tide of environment upheaval.
To begin with, protecting the environment only through the buoyant price of energy sounds somewhat over-optimistic. Developing other environment-friendly forms of momentum, such as hydrogen, which is the most potent weapon to deal with this murky water is a far better solution. Despite the exorbitant price of fossil fuel, there is still a kaleidoscope of transportation that will need it. And by extension, airplane would be a concrete example- although the usage of these kinds of gigantic transportations is bound to dwindle, it is undeniable that they still emit a sheer amount of carbon dioxide. Therefore, diving deeply into the domain of substitute energy can be served as a luminary that close Pandora’s Box.
Besides the renewable energy and the colossal fuel price, rearing a myriad of flora can usher in a great preponderance. What renders an easy access to oxygen is the vegetation which would absorb carbon dioxide – the most malignant element to our environment. In this dimension, revive the biodiversity seems as important as importance can be. Shielding the rainforest from deforestation and planting a broad spectrum of trees that spanning from alpines to bush on the major boulevards can truly breathe life into the urban sprawl. Most importantly, it could thoroughly eradicate the environment ailments.
With all that, it is reasonable to extrapolate that spurting the fuel prices can be described as a blunt instrument. Nevertheless, impeding a wide range of anthropogenic activities and cementing the cornerstone of ecosystem might be much more possible and practical to tackle with this elusive enigma.
[Written by - Willie]
Model Answer 2: (Agreement)
Environmental or natural hazards are the results of physical processes that affect humans and environment every day and harmful for both in the short and long run. As the use of fuel increases to keep up with modern demands and increased population, the world is becoming more vulnerable to environmental hazards and disasters. Floods, earthquakes, severe thunderstorms, toxic or oil spills immediately come to mind when comprehending this issue, implying that all these things are inherently hazardous.
One of the most effective solutions to these environmental hazards is to raise the price of fuel. The use of petroleum and gasoline can release toxic chemicals into our atmosphere. These chemicals escape into the air during refilling, from the gasoline tank and carburettor during normal operation, and from engine exhaust. Transportation sources account for about 30-50% of all harmful emissions into the atmosphere. The industrialisation is another reason for the omission of harmful chemicals too.
“Smog” is another environmental hazard. It causes human respiratory stress, and damages many plants, significantly reducing farm crop yields and the “health” of trees and other vegetation. Burning gasoline emits significant quantities of a wide range of harmful gases into the atmosphere. For example, carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas produced by incomplete combustion. Carbon dioxide, a normal product of burning fuel, is non-toxic but contributes to the greenhouse effect, which is also known as global warming and it is probably the most dangerous threat to the human existence.
Raising the price of fuel would mean that people would use less petroleum and gasoline. They would find other alternative means of transport to save money, which would mean using less high-priced fuel for everyday purposes. For example, cycling is a healthy activity and it saves the earth too. Also, for a long journey, people could try to find friends together for car-pooling. Carpooling saves a lot of fuel and would save a lot of money too. But other things should be considered to reduce the use of these dangerous fuels. A government should implement strict rules of using cars, for instance no less than 4 persons should be allowed to drive a single car. The price should be increased in a thoughtful way because if the price is so high it will hamper the average people's life leading. There are so many people yet use public transportation for movement and the increased price will make their life miserable. The prices of many necessary daily ingredients also increase with the price of the fuel.
Many environmental hazards like “smog” and global warming are increasing around the world due to the excessive use of petroleum and gasoline in our daily lives. Raising the price of fuel could make all the difference to the environment. It would force people to use petrol in a more responsible way and use it less, and therefore be the most effective solution to the problem of ever-increasing environmental hazards though it might have some side effects but those can be controlled by the proper initiatives by the Government.
First of all, the maximum numbers of cars are owned by the rich people and fuel price would not restrain them from using the cars. The price of fuel, in fact, increased significantly over the past 12 years and that has done nothing to reduce the car usages. On the contrary, the number of cars running on the roads has increased more than expected. Besides, the fuel price determines the market prices of other daily necessary products and increasing the price would only bring misery to the low and medium earning class population. Electronic wastages, industries, household electrical devices, deforestation, chemical wastages, unthoughtful activities of people are causing more damage to the mother earth than the gas omission by the cars. We should focus on those aspects as well before increasing the price of fuel just based on an assumption.
The main idea of increasing the fuel price is to reduce the number of cars running in the street and to restrain the car owners from using the cars less. But that would prove to be a ridiculous solution especially when car owners are mostly high earning class and they would not bother about the fuel price.
The best solution to address this utmost concerning issue is to introduce an environment friendly energy source like solar energy system, to improve the public transportation system & train system so that people mostly use these systems instead of always using their own cars, increasing the awareness of the people so that they do not directly contribute to harm the environment, and making strict rules so that deforestation, chemical wastages and other harmful ways of environmental pollutions get reduced.
The idea of raising prices of environmentally risky goods is not a recent hypothesis. It is named Pigovian tax, and it aims to reduce the use of such goods. It really affects consumption, balancing the advantage of using a certain product with the disadvantage of a growing cost to obtain it. Consequently, consumers tend to move toward less expensive goods. This tendency is advantageous because the State doesn't need to deal with enterprises: the loss of clients means a consequent interest in enterprises toward green energy. The market works as a stabiliser, more than an element damaging the environment. Therefore, this policy can be advantageous.
On the other hand, disadvantages are more influential than positive effects. Firstly, the effectiveness of the Pigovian tax lies on the ability of actors in finding a good to be used as a substitute. What if a country invested many resources in road transport? What if a State can rely on massive oil reserves? In short, such a choice must consider both the existence of alternative sources and the historical industrial evolution of the country. Moreover, the importance of such an asset as the one of energy makes the use of incentives and changing in prices an unreliable and dangerous tool. It could create too many damages for an excessively unpredictable policy.
All things considered, many doubts remain about the hypothesis of using prices as a lever to modify the way how people behave when dealing with energy and petrol. Some positive consequences are certainly undeniable, but risks are still higher than expected benefits. Consequently, betting on alternative solutions would be desirable.
It is an irrefutable fact that to diagnose the ways for saving the environment is one the serious matters among the countries. Many nations are finding the solutions to this ugly growth. As it has been heard that increasing the price of fuel can be proved as an effective solution. However, I do not endorse this observation.
While spotlighting to the above aspect, I can explicitly say that this prediction can have adverse impacts on a society. Being price of fuel at the peak, the fairs get heavily increased. With that, the people's life would probably get more miserable. This practice will contribute to deteriorate the situation of poor people. For verification, it is illustrated that there are millions of people in the world, who go to their work by public transportation. It has been proved both in developing and developed countries, whenever the price of oil increases; the fairs of public transportation do not take enough time for reaching the climax.
Furthermore, there is no full proof surety that after raising the price of fuel, the car owners would abandon driving their vehicles. The dramatic increase in the folks' income has witnessed that the societies are richer than the past. If they can afford to buy a car then expenditures of oils are not beyond their approach. For instance, in both developing and developed countries, the total number of car holder has increased markedly.
Fuel is not used to run cars only. It is also used to run industries and machines. So increasing prices of it would hurt the industrial productions as well. By increasing fuel price Government would be in a great dilemma and would not be able to control the price of the daily commodity. The increased price of the fuel would only make problem to the poor people while rich people who mostly own cars would find a way to buy it. The main concern is the pollution prevention, not the fuel price. There are other ways of doing so rather than increasing the fuel price. Increasing fuel price would create some international crisis and nations who produce fuel would get benefits from that while the poor nations would struggle.
All things are considered, the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that increment in costing of fuel is not an exceptional measure to reduce the environment hazards rather it is a reactionary work. There are many other solutions that can be applied. Like government should prompt eco-friendly vehicles and public transport by handovering them with extraordinary facilities. It should also make people aware of the menaces of pollutions.
While some people believe that increasing the cost of the fuel would save the environment from more damages, others opine that that would only create more misery for the poor people.
Besides the financial constraints for many governments, a general but very important issue that needs to be addressed on war footing basis is the environmental hazards associated with the massive use of this commodity that is not only harmful to the mother earth but also poses great dangers to the human health. These dangers include toxic effluent dumped into the sea which can destroy sea-life, pollutants released in the air causing air pollution which can affect agriculture, ozone layer etc. Human beings can suffer problems from breathing to some life-threatening diseases as cancer etc.
So what option do we have? Perhaps one of the options but not the best one is to increase the cost of fuel which will have its own negative effects in the countries where poverty level and inflation is already high and the public miseries will increase. A better option might be to conserve the consumption of fuel by promoting energy conservation and creating a national policy suggesting various measures.
I would like to end my subject on the note that each country has to prepare a line of action by keeping the interest of its people and economy in mind.
Increasing the fuel price will affect the transportation cost of the commodities which will ultimately increase the daily expenses of ordinary people. Also, this will negatively affect the growth of all sectors and lead to poverty. I believe a strict government law on the usage of private vehicles could proliferate the usage the public transport and reduce the environmental pollution caused by private vehicles. In London, for example, toll prices are high for private vehicles in comparison to the fuel cost. This enforces people to utilize tubes, trains and other public transport. It mutually benefits the government and people. Thus it is eminent that an increase in fuel price will affect the growth of the country and it is not the right solution to save the environment.
Moreover, the population growth rate across the globe is 1.1%, which is evaluated by the UN to be 11 billion by end of this century. To match the needs of this population, manufacturing and production industries has proliferated rapidly in the last three decades. By-products from these industries are affecting the environment as air and water pollution. Measures to control the population will slash down environmental hazards and provide tangible benefits to the human beings of this world.
In conclusion, increasing fuel price is not an effective measure to curb the increasing environmental and air pollution. Rather, improving public transportation and checking uncontrolled industrialisati on could be far better ways to fight the issue.
The burning of fossils fuel remains to be the largest contributor to the global warming phenomena. Hence, it is believed that if fuel prices are increased this can somehow minimize hazards to the environment. It is assumed that if fuel price is high, many consumers will not likely afford it and will be forced to look for alternatives such as switching from cars to bicycles. However, car users are only a small percentage of the fuel-consumer community as the large proportion of these consumers are still the giant commercial factories and industries, which can certainly afford fuel at any price for as long as supply is available.
Instead of just focusing on making fuel unaffordable, it is best to emphasize environmental preservation. Firstly, leaders must be willing to strictly implement environmental laws and penalize those who go against it even if it means suspending operations of large companies. Secondly, people must be informed. A good number of people are still unaware of the dangers to the environment as a result of their daily practices such as the burning of plastics, disposing of wastes on rivers and seas, and down to the very practice of not conserving water.
In conclusion, although increasing fuel price is a possible solution to end environmental destruction, other methods may also be useful such as full enforcement of environmental laws and a massive information-education campaign on environmental preservation.
Burning fossil fuels to produce energy had been a global trend since the industrial revolution. This unconscious burning of fossil fuels which is increasing globally year by year has some unfavourable consequences on the environment, we burn them continuously to run our cars, to heat our houses, or even to charge our mobile phones, where do we think that electricity comes from? Our old energy-producing system is fully dependent on fossil fuels, we burn coal or natural gas to run turbines turning generators to produce which satisfies our needs, this burning increases the CO2 atmospheric content, which is the main global warming gas, thus leading to an enormous change in climate, rising the water levels, and other hazardous phenomena.
The mentioned dangerous phenomenon related to burning too many fossil fuels raises the argument of the need of the world to reduce its fossil fuels dependent energy system by increasing the price of the fuels. In my opinion, rising fuels prices would not be efficient since wealthy nations which have huge quantities of natural resources (fossil fuels or others) would not change their attitudes. What could be more effective in spreading the consciousness about how important our environment is, and how new renewable clean energy sources could be suitable sources to replace the old fossil fuel-dependent systems.
In conclusion, our environment is suffering from excessive fossil fuel burning and will continue to suffer if we do not make genuine steps toward more environmentally friendly energy-producing systems.
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