TEXT E The word conservation has
a thrifty meaning. To conserve is to save and protect, to leave what we
ourselves enjoy in such good condition that others may also share the enjoyment.
Our forefathers had no idea that human population would increase faster than the
supplies of raw materials; most of them, even until very recently, had the
foolish idea that the treasures were "limitless" and" inexhaustible". Most of
the citizens of earlier generations knew little or nothing about the complicated
and delicate sys tem that inns all through nature, and which means that, as in a
living body, an unhealthy condition of one part will sooner or later be harmful
to all the others. Fifty years ago nature study was not part of
the school work; scientific forestry was a new idea; timber was still cheap
because it could be brought in any quantity from distant woodlands; soil
destruction and river floods were not national problems; nobody had yet studied
long-term climatic cycles in relation to proper land use; even the word
"conservation" had nothing of the meaning that it has for us today.
For the sake of ourselves and those who will come after us, we must now
set about repairing the mistakes of our forefathers. Conservation should,
therefore, be made a part of everyone’s daily life. To know about the water
table in the ground is just as important to us as a knowledge of the basic
arithmetic formulas. We need to know why all watersheds need the protection of
plant life and why the running current of streams and rivers must be made to
yield their full benefit to the soil before they finally escape to the sea. We
need to be taught the duty of planting trees as well as of cutting them. We need
to know the importance of big, mature trees, because living space for most of
man’s fellow creatures on this planet is figured not only in square measure of
surface but also in cubic volume above the earth. In brief, it should be our
goal to restore as much of the original beauty of nature as we can. To avoid the mistakes of our forefathers, the author suggests that______.
A．we plant more trees B．natural sciences be taught to everybody C．environmental education be directed toward everyone D．we return to nature