题目内容
________ of forests by law keeps them looking beautiful.
- A.conservation
- B.conversation
- C.convenience
- D.consequence
AVERAGE RESOURCES | |
620 m3 water | If we put fresh water and sea water together, we can each have 620 m3 water. But remember, sea water is too salty for us to drink if the factories don’t process it first. So, 620 m3 is little. Saving water in daily use is important. |
0.5 hectares of forests | There are 3.869 billion hectares(公顷) of forests on Earth. But we are losing them mainly because we cut trees too much. If we calculate(计算)at the size of a football field, we are losing 343,000 football fields every day, or 1,431 per hour, or 24 per minute! |
1.5 centimeters long corals(珊瑚) | All the corals that we have now spread for about 100,000 km in 109 countries. But each of us can only have such a little piece, because seas are getting polluted and corals are dying. |
33 stars | According to the latest report, there are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. Each of us can have 33 of them. Unfortunately, we cannot see most of the 200 billion stars from Earth. We can only see about 6,000 stars. If we don’t use telescopes or we have bad weathers, we can only see about 2,000 stars. |
90kg rice | On average, we harvest 0.54 billion tons of rice each year round the world and each of us can have 90 kg. Asia produces and eats 90% of all the rice. How long will it take you to eat up this 90 kg rice? |
1 iceberg | Luckily, we still have icebergs to share when Earth gets warmer and warmer. Each of us can have an iceberg of 170m×170m×170m. Up to 10% of Earth surface is covered by ice. There is 31,000,000km3 of ice on Earth in all. |
A.over 620m3 | B.more than 620m3 | C.far less than 620m3 | D.only 620m3 |
A.the man-made damage | B.the climate change |
C.the construction of many football fields | D.the environmental pollution |
A.all the stars | B.about 2,000 | C.about 200 billion | D.about 6,000 |
A.less water | B.fewer icebergs | C.fewer corals | D.less rice |
Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong.
"Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape," thundered a magazine article last year. Species are being driven to die out at record rates, and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the surface, dead.
But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes for granted is wrong: things are actually getting better. A new book is about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world's environment. Rivers, seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, is an attack on the misleading claims of environmental groups, and the "bad news" culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse.
Now the attacks are increasingly coming from left-wing environmentalists such as Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that, although the environment is improving, green groups — with profits of hundreds of mil-lions of pounds a year — are using scare tactics(谋略)to gain donations. Lomborg's book doesn't deny global warming — probably the biggest environmental threat — but destroys almost every other environmental claim with many official statistics.
The Worldwatch Institute claims that "deforestation(沙漠化) has been accelerating over the last 30 years". But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover, but in recent decades the forest area's depleting has come to a stop. According to UN figures, the area of forests has remained almost steady, at about 30 per cent of total land area, since the 1940s. Forests in countries such as the US, the UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years. Despite all the warnings the Amazon rainforest has only shrunk by about 15 per cent.
Nor are all our species dying out. Some campaigners claim that 50 per cent of all species will have died out within 50 years. But other studies show only 0.08 per cent of species are dying out each year. Conservation efforts have been successful. Whales are no longer threatened and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.
Environmental groups claim that many of the improvements are the results of the success of their campaigns. Stephen Tindale, director of Greenpeace UK, said, "There are important examples, such as acid rain and ozone, where things aren't as bad as predicted, and that's because behavior has changed."
1.In his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, what is Lomborg's main argument?
A.Our planet is in bad shape. |
B.The world's environment is improving. |
C.The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. |
D.Conservation efforts have been successful. |
2.What is Lomborg's main accusation of environmentalists?
A.They scared people into making donations. |
B.They overturned our basic assumptions about the world's environment. |
C.They changed their behavior toward the environment. |
D.They only told people bad news about the environment. |
3.The underlined word "depleting" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to "____".
A.reducing |
B.limiting |
C.expanding |
D.accelerating |
4.According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
A.The total area of forests in the world has increased significantly. |
B.The effects of global warming are not as bad as first expected. |
C.It appears that the bald eagle will now survive. |
D.In the last 50 years the number of whales has increased. |