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.
To correct the situation, Gilding advocates()
A. stabilizing the political and economic situation
B. learning useful lessons from wartime mobilization
C. keeping economic growth at a sustainable rate
D. making better use of current technologies
参考答案:C
解析:
第三段提到,Gilding是一位乐观主义者。他说,我们应该用战争动员的方式来对待目前的形势,我们要改变发展规模和速度,彻底改变我们的经济,我们必须意识到,由消费驱动的经济成长模式已经被打破,我们必须要转向一个由幸福驱动的成长模式,根据这种模式,人们可以少工作,少拥有。这里所谓happiness-driven growth model就是指上文提到的可持续发展模式,即减小经济规模,降低发展速度,以便地球能支撑经济的发展。