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  3. A very important world problem is the increasing number of people who actually inhabit this planet. The limited amount of land a

A very important world problem is the increasing number of people who actually inhabit this planet. The limited amount of land a

admin2012-05-17  45
问题     A very important world problem is the increasing number of people who actually inhabit this planet. The limited amount of land and land resources will soon be unable to support the huge population if it continues to grow at its present rate.
    So why is this huge increase in population taking place? It is really due to the spread of the knowledge and practice of what is becoming known as "Death Control". You have no doubt heard of the term "Birth Control". "Death Control" is something rather different. It recognizes the work of the doctors and scientists who now keep alive people who, not very long ago, would have died of a variety of then incurable diseases. Through a wide variety of technological innovations that include farming methods and the control of deadly diseases, we have found ways to reduce the rate at which we die. However, this success is the very cause of the greatest threat to mankind.
    If we examine the amount of land available for this ever-increasing population, we begin to see the problem. If everyone on the planet had an equal share of land, we would each have about 50,000 square metres. This figure seems to be quite encouraging until we examine the amount of usable land we actually have. More than three-fifths of the world’s land cannot produce food.
    Obviously, with so little land to support us, we should be taking great care not to reduce it further. But we are not! Instead, we are consuming its "capital" — its nonrenewable fossil fuels and other mineral deposits that took millions of years to form but which are now being destroyed in decades. We are also doing the same with other vital resources not usually thought of as being nonrenewable such as fertile soils, groundwater and the millions of other species that share the earth with us.
    It is a very common belief that the problems of the population explosion are caused mainly by poor people living in poor countries who do not know enough to limit their reproduction. This is not true. The actual number of people in an area is not as important as the effect they have on nature. Developing countries do have an effect on their environment, but it is the populations of richer countries that have a far greater impact on the earth as a whole.
What is the author really concerned about in the passage?
选项 A、Unnecessarily prolonged life spans.
B、Population explosion.
C、Overuse of resources.
D、The gap between the rich and the poor.
答案C
解析 本文首先指出如果人口持续增加，有限资源将无法满足人们的需求，并说明人口增长原因，接下来说明可用土地资源的有限性，指出我们理应保护资源但我们却在过度使用和破坏它们。由此可知，作者关注的是对资源的过度使用，因为这可能会导致日益增长的人口的需求无法满足，故答案为[C]。作者的主要关注点并非是人口爆炸，只是从人口爆炸对有限资源产生巨大的需求入手，说明可用资源的有限性以及人们对资源的过度使用，故排除[B]；[A]只是文中的一个点；文中提到发达国家和发展中国家对环境的影响，并未提及贫富差距，故排除[D]。
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