The Population Bomb.docVIP

UNIT 8Text APRE-READING TASKExercise 1Before reading the passage, try to answer the questions.1. How many years do you think it takes to double the world population now?2. What might be the possible solutions to the population explosion in the world?Now compare your answers with your neighbours.The Population BombI. Too many people1 Figure and numerous facts prove that there are already, and certainly that there will be, too many people. Simply calculating the lengths of time necessary to double the worlds population is instructive. Impressively, the time required grows ever shorter: 6 000 years before Christ, 1 000 000 years were necessary to double the population, then about 1 650 years after Christ only 1 000 around the 1850s 200 years, in 1930 80 years. Currently, the worlds population doubles every 37 years.2 What would happen if the population were to continue doubling in volume every 37 years?3 According to recent calculations, maintaining such a rhythm of growth would result in 60 million billion people on the earth in 900 years, which represents 120 inhabitants per square meter.4 Optimists believe and often assert that science will indeed find solutions to the problem of overcrowding, namely by providing the means to immigrate to other planets. But this solution is totally impossible. In effect, even if it should become possible, 50 years would be sufficient for the 60 million billion persons to multiply to the point of populating Venus, Mercury, Mars, the Moon and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn with a density equal to that of the Earth.II. Food Shortage5 Today, a good part of humanity suffers from malnutrition or from undernourishment.6 Some think that the recent scientific discoveries applied to agriculture and known under the name of green revolution will resolve the problem. Nothing is less certain. Promoters of the revolution themselves believe that it can offer only a respite of ten or twenty years.7 In underdevel-oped cou