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  3. As everyone knows, there are far too many people in the word. Or at least, there soon will be too many people, because the rate

As everyone knows, there are far too many people in the word. Or at least, there soon will be too many people, because the rate

admin2019-05-26  83
问题     As everyone knows, there are far too many people in the word. Or at least, there soon will be too many people, because the rate of population increase is running out of control. We are, as they say, breeding like rabbits, and rabbits are widely recognized as destructive animals. People are possibly the most serious of all pollutants. We hear this so often, from such distinguished persons, that it must be true. So we accept it.
    The arithmetic tells its own story and never better than in the words of Paul Ehrlich, whose Population Bomb drew the matter to our attention many years ago. " Let’ s examine what might happen on the absurd assumption that the population continued to double every 37 years into the indefinite future. If growth continued at that rate for about 900 years, there would be some 60,000,000, 000,000,000 people on the face of the earth. Sixty million billion people. This is about 100 persons for each square yard of the Earth’ s surface, land and sea. " Images were generated in which the entire visible universe consisted of a solid mass of human bodies.
    It is not really the fault of us western Europeans, Australians and North Americans. It is not in our countries that the increase is taking place. Growth is concentrated in the less industrialized countries, among the poor. The people of Whom we have, or will have, too many are poor, many of them are very poor indeed, and there seems to be little that can be done about it, beyond urging them to behave more responsibly and criticizing those who oppose the widespread provision of contraceptive devices. The choice we face in our arithmetic of poor people is between reducing one or other of the two apparent variables: the people or their poverty. In fact it is not that simple, for reducing poverty would surely encourage people to breed faster, so eliminating what we had helped them to gain at no small cost to ourselves. No matter how you look at it, the future seems pretty grim.
    Obviously, such a rate of growth cannot be sustained. The question centers not on whether it will end, but how, and most commentators, following the line of reasoning popularized by Paul Ehrlich, suppose the end will be disastrous. Our numbers will be reduced; sword, fire, famine and pestilence will sweep the world on an unprecedented scale.
The author of the passage seems very depressed and pessimistic about the future because
选项 A、many people are against providing contraceptive devices
B、growth takes place among the very poor in the less industrialized countries
C、many people refuse to take advice and behave responsibly
D、reducing numbers and lessening poverty are heavily dependent on each other
答案B
解析 第三段指出主要是贫穷的非工业化国家人口增长快，减缓人口增长就要“reduce twovariables：the people or their poverty”，但“reducing poverty would surely encourage peopleto breed faster”，人口因此很难得到控制，未来很是gloomy。
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