Ted: Hey and welcome back! We’ve got another episode of Babbel News – English Only for you.

I’m Ted, English expert here at Babbel. I’ll introduce you to the news story we’ve selected for you today, sourced directly from Reuters. I’ll also explain some of the more important words and phrases to help you understand as much of the story as possible.

Today we’re off to a Hungarian village, where the effects of climate change are putting the local Christmas tree business at risk. If you’d like to read along while you listen, follow the link in the episode description to find the transcript.

Let’s get started!

Are you ready to go over the key vocabulary from today’s news story? The first word is “to supply”, or to provide something that is needed or wanted. And then we have “to shrink”, or to become smaller in size or amount. The next word is “to threaten”, which in the context of this story means to put in danger. Following that, a “livelihood” is someone’s way of making money to pay for basic things needed to live, such as food or a home. Then we have the adverb “adversely”, which means negatively or in a harmful way. Next, “to proliferate” is to increase a lot and suddenly in number. After that, there’s “to fend off”, which means to protect or defend yourself against an attack. And an “infestation” happens if creatures such as insects or rats proliferate and appear in places they are not wanted. We’ll end with the phrase “in vain”. When you do something “in vain”, it means it is useless because it does not achieve anything.

And, with that, let’s listen to the clip!

Reuters: The small village of Surd has supplied Hungary with Christmas trees for decades. But the pine forests there are shrinking due to climate change, threatening the livelihood of local villagers.

"If this continues and we do not change the climate, then we will have big problems."

In 2022, Hungary's pine forests covered more than 430,000 acres of land. That’s down from over 450,000 acres in 2019, according to National Land Center data. Some of these trees are not indigenous to Hungary but were planted in the early 20th century.

Pines have been adversely impacted by global warming not just because of more frequent droughts. They're also being destroyed by wood-boring insects, which tend to proliferate in warmer weather.

In the hills of Surd, Hungarians grow up to 2 million pine trees near the Croatian border. Growers say they now have to spray their plantations three times a year with insecticides to fend off the bugs.

Janos Kanasz is the mayor of Surd and a pine tree grower:
 
"Unfortunately, things are going a bad way in the sense that the spruce trees have been hit by the infestation, and the other types of pine trees must also be sprayed three times now. The spruce trees are the worst affected, it is in vain to spray them, the wood-boring insects go in deeply and we cannot halt the disease. We now have to spray from early on when the trees are small. Since I started more than 10 years ago, there have been more and more diseases affecting the pine trees. And it is costing us more and more because we have to spray the pine trees to save them."

Kanasz says villagers ought to raise prices by about 20% this year due to the cost of insecticide, but this is not possible as Hungarians have been hit by double-digit inflation and will not be able to afford to pay more for their Christmas trees.

"Everyone would like to sell their pine trees as that is their living, they have to put a lot of work into it, and they [would] rather sell at last year's price than not being able to sell. We are all seeing that people have run out of their money."

Ted: And we’ve reached the end of another episode. If there are any words that you’re still curious about, you can always look them up in a dictionary. But remember, it’s also perfectly fine to just focus on getting the general idea of the story without worrying too much about the meaning of every single word. Sometimes the vocabulary can be quite specialized, especially in stories about science or nature topics. In any case, the main thing is to follow the method that works best for you!

We’re nearing the end of this season of Babbel News – English Only, with only two episodes left, so be sure you don’t miss out! We’ll be back with another episode next week. See you then! Bye!