考试吧恩波：2008年12月六级预测试卷及解析(三)

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　　Part ⅠWriting(30 minutes)

　　Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Do We Have Our Privacy?You should write at least 150 words following the outline given below:

　　1.学生抱怨家长、老师不尊重他们的隐私权

　　2.家长、老师则认为他们有监护责任

　　3.你的看法

　　Part ⅡReading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)(15 minutes)

　　Directions:In this part,you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1.

　　For questions 1-4,mark

　　Y(for YES)if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;

　　N(for NO)if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;

　　NG(for NOT GIVEN)if the information is not given in the passage.

　　For questions 5-10,complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

　　Earth’s Ecological Debt Crisis

　　Today is a bleak day for the environment, the day of the year when mankind overexploits the world’s resources—the day when we start living beyond our ecological means.

　　Evidence is mounting that rapid population growth and rising living standards among the Earth’s six billion inhabitants are putting an intolerable strain on nature. For the first time an organization—a British think-tank—has sought to pinpoint how quickly man is using the global resources of farming land, forests, fish, air and energy.

　　The new economics foundation has calculated from research by a U.S. academic group, Global Footprint Network, that the day when we use more than our fair share of the Earth—when “humanity starts eating the planet”—is October 9.

　　In other words, assuming that the world has a certain quantity of natural resources that can sustainably be used up each year, today is the date at which this annual capacity is reached, and environmentalists warn that just as a company bound for bankruptcy plunging into the red or a borrower “maxing out” on credit cards must face the consequences, so must man.

　　The biggest problem relating to the overconsumption of resources is climate change, but its other effects include deforestation, falling agricultural yields and overfishing.

　　Overfishing is one of the most easily understood examples of the abuse of nature. Catching too many fish has left species that were once common, such as cod in the North Sea and bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, struggling to survive.

　　Although it is possible to make ever-increasing catches for a while, eventually only small, juvenile fish are left, and stocks become universal. Similarly, emissions of greenhouse gases, are rising, but the climate is poised to wreak its revenge, already polar ice caps are melting at a rate that is startling scientists and examples of extreme weather, such as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in August last year, are being attributed to global climate change. In February, when he was Defence Secretary, John Reid revealed that British military planners were already preparing for conflicts arising from the scramble for resources in 20 to 30 years’time.

　　Outlining the impact of global warming, he said: “Impacts such as flooding, melting permafrost (永久冻结带) and desertification(沙漠化)could lead to loss of agricultural land, poisoning of water supplies and destruction of economic infrastructure.”

　　Global Footprint estimates that the human race is overusing the Earth’s resources by 23 percent. While each individual should use up no more than the equivalent of 1.8 hectares of the Earth’s surface, the actual area we use is 2.2 hectares per person.

　　Mathis Wackernagel, executive director of Global Footprint Network, which analyses 6,000 pieces of data from such sources as the United Nations, warned that the limit of the Earth’s endurance had already been reached.

　　He said: “Humanity is living off its ecological credit card and can only do this by liquidating the planet’s natural resources.”

　　According to Nef’s analysis, the unsustainability of human behaviour has speeded up markedly. Humanity started living beyond its means on a global level in 1987, when the limit of sustainability was reached on 19 December. By 1995, the day was arriving by 21 November and began arriving in October shortly after millennium.

　　Consumption is particularly profligate (恣意挥霍的) in the West, where individuals consume airfreighted food, buy hardwood furniture, enjoy foreign holidays and own cars. Global Footprint estimates the world would need five planet Earths to sustain a global materialistic society such as that in the U.S. while almost three would be needed for the UK.