单选题
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we'll look back at the first decade of the 21st century—when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all—and ask ourselves. What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we'd crossed some growth, climate, natural resource and population redlines all at once? "The only answer can be denial," argues Paul Gilding, an Australian environmentalist, in a new book called The Great Disruption. "When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required." Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many "planet Earths" we need to sustain our current growth rates. G. F. N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G. F. N. , we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact. We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don't worry, we're getting there. We're currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices, causing political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, thus to higher food prices and more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet. But Gilding is actually an eco-optimist. As the impact o the imminent Great Disruption hits us, he says, "our response will be proportionally dramatic, mobilizing as we do in war. We will change at a scale and speed we can barely imagine today, completely transforming our economy, including our energy and transport industries, in just a few short decades. " We will realize, he predicts, that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less.
单选题
According to Paul Gilding, faced with disastrous evidence, people would
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】第一段提到，从现在起几年之后，当我们回首21世纪的头十年，我们是否会问自己：我们当时都在想什么?那时，食品价格、能源价格和人口激增，龙卷风席卷城市，洪涝干旱创下历史纪录，这些事情的接踵而至使人口不得不迁徙，政府也受到严重威胁。证据清楚地表明，我们在增长、气候、自然资源和人口等方面都越过了警戒线，而我们为什么没有感到恐惧呢?Paul Gilding说，如果我们问自己这样的问题，我们的唯一反应是不承认。Paul Gilding指出，面对如此大的问题时，人们通常的反应是不认账，但是我们等待越久，我们需要做出的回应就越大。这里，the bigger the response required指问题越难以解决。
【答案解析】第一段提到Paul Gilding的观点，他说，在成长、气候、自然资源和人口方面，我们都超过了警戒线。在第三段作者说，我们的成长体系和自然体系都达到了极限，它们运转不动了(hit the wall指由于过累而突然失去了体力)，按照我们目前的技术条件，我们已经达到了极限，应该缩小经济的规模。可见，作者的观点与Paul Gilding的观点是一致的，都认为地球的可持续性出现了问题，成长和自然资源的开发利用都达到了极限。