2016年6月英语六级答案下载卷一

　　[H] And the World Resource Institute (WRI) in its World Resource 2005 report, issued at the end of August, produced several such examples from Africa and Asia; it also demonstrated that environmental degradation affects the poor more than the rich, as poorer people derive a much higher proportion of their income directly from the natural resource around them.

　　[I] But there are also many examples of growing wealth by trashing the environment, in rich and poor parts of the world alike, whether through unregulated mineral extraction, drastic water use for agriculture, slash-and-burn farming, or fossil-fuel-guzzling (大量消耗) transport. Of course, such growth may not persist in the long term—which is what Mr. Brown and the Stockholm declaration were both attempting to point out. Perhaps the best example of boom growth and bust decline is the Grand Banks fishery. For almost five centuries a very large supply of cod (鳕鱼) provided abundant raw material for an industry which at its peak employed about 40,000 people, sustaining entire communities in Newfoundland. Then, abruptly, the cod population collapsed. There were no longer enough fish in the sea for the stock to maintain itself, let alone an industry. More than a decade later, there was no sign of the ecosystem re-building itself. It had, apparently, been fished out of existence; and the once might Newfoundland fleet now gropes about frantically for crab on the sea floor.

　　[J] There is a view that modern humans are inevitably sowing the seeds of a global Grand Banks-style disaster. The idea is that we are taking more out of what you might call the planet’s environmental bank balance than it can sustain; we are living beyond our ecological means. One recent study attempted to calculate the extent of this “ecological overshoot of the human economy”, and found that we are using 1.2 Earth’s worth of environmental goods and services—the implication being that at some point the debt will be called in, and all those service—the tings which the planet does for us for free—will grind to a halt.

　　[K] Whether this is right, and if so where and when the ecological axe will fall, is hard to determine with any precision—which is why governments and financial institutions are only beginning to bring such risks into their economic calculations. It is also the reason why development agencies are not united in their view of environmental issues; while some, like the WRI, maintain that environmental progress needs to go hand-in-hand with economic development, others argue that the priority is to build a thriving economy and then use the wealth created to tackle environmental degradation.

　　[L] This view assumes that rich societies will invest in environmental care. But is this right? Do things get better or worse as we get richer? Here the Stockholm declaration is ambiguous. “In the developing countries,” it says, “most of the environmental problems are caused by under-development.” So it is saying that economic development should make for a cleaner world? Not necessarily; “In the industrialized countries, environmental problems are generally related to industrialization and technological development,” it continues. In other words, poor and rich both over-exploit the natural world, but for different reasons. It’s simply not true that economic growth will surely make our world cleaner.