单项选择题
It remains to be seen whether the reserves of raw materials in the year 2000 will be sufficient to supply a world economy which will have grown by five hundred percent. Southeast Asia alone will have an energy consumption five times greater than that of Western Europe in 1970. Incidentally, if the underdeveloped countries started using up petrol at the same rate as the industrialized areas, then world reserves would be exhausted by 1990.
All this only goes to show just how important it is to set up a plan to conserve and divide up fairly natural resources on a worldwide scale.
This is a matter of life and death because world population is expanding at an incredible rate. By the middle of the next century population will expand every year by as much as it did in the first 1,500 years after Christ. In the southern, poor parts of the globe, the figures are enough to make your hair stand on end. Even supposing that steps are taken to stabilize world population in the next fifty years, the number of inhabitants per square kilometer will increase by from 4 in the United States to 140 in South East Asia. What can we do about it
In the first hypothesis we do nothing. By the year 2000, the southern parts of the world would then have a population greater than the total world population today.Alternately we could start acting right now to bring birth rate under control within fifteen years so that population levels off. Even then the population in the southern areas would not stop growing for seventy-five years. And the population would level off at something like twice today’s figure.
Finally, we could wait ten to twenty years before taking action. If we wait ten years the population of the southern area would stabilize at 3,000 million. Even today the number of potential workers increases by 350,000 people per week. By the end of the century this figure will reach 750,000; in other words, it will be necessary to find work for 40 million people per year--not to speak of food.
What this means in practical terms we can scarcely imagine. But clearly if we do nothing, nature will solve the problem for us. But at what cost!
A. A worldwide plan to conserve natural resources should be worked out.
B. The energy consumption of the underdeveloped countries will increase greatly.
C. The world economy will have greatly grown by the year 2000.
D. There will definitely be not enough raw materials in the year 2000.