单选题
Until recently, the planet was a large world in which human activities and their effects were neatly compartmentalized within nations, within sectors (energy, agriculture, trade), and within broad areas of concern ( environmental, economic, social). These compartments have begun to dissolve. This applies in particular to the various "global" rises that have seized public concern, particularly over the past decade. These are not separate crises: an environmental crisis, a development crisis, and energy crisis. They are all one. The planet is passing through a period of dramatic growth and fundamental change. Our human world of 5 billion must make room in a finite environment for another human world. The population could stabilize at between 8 billion and 14 billion in this century, according to U.N. predictions. More than 90 percent of the increase will occur in the poorest countries, and 90 percent of that growth in already bursting cities. Economic activity has multiplied to create a 13 trillion world economy, and this could grow five or ten-fold in the coming half-century. Industrial production has grown more than fifty told over the past century, four-fifths of this growth since 1950. Such figures reflect and presage(预示) profound impacts upon the biosphere, as the world invests in houses, transport, farms and industries. Much of the economic growth pulls raw material from forests, soils, seas and waterways. A mainspripg of economic growth is new technology, and while this technology offers the potential for slowipg the dangerously rapid consumptiop of finite resources, it also entails high risks, including new forms of population and the introduction to the planet of new variations of life forms that could change evolutionary pathways. Meanwhile, the industries most heavily reliant on environmental resources and most heavily polluting are growing most rapidly in the developing world, where there is both more urgency for growth and less capacity to minimize damaging side effects. These related changes have locked the global economy and global ecology together in new ways. We have in the past been concerned about the impacts of economic growth upon the environment. We are now forced to concern ourselves with the impacts of ecological stress degradation of soils, water regimes, atmosphere, and forests upon our economic prospects. We have in the more recent past been forced to face up to a sharp increase in economic interdependence among nations. We are becoming ever more interwoven locally, nationally, and globally into a seamless net of causes and effects.