Increasing Pressure of Population
Read the Passage Carefully and answer the following Questions:-
1.A very important world problem — in fact, I am inclined to say it is the most important of all great world problems which face us at the present time — is the rapidly increasing pressure of population on land and on land resources.
2. It is not so much the actual population of the world but its rate of increase which is important. It works out to be about 1.6 per cent per annum net increase. In terms of numbers, this means something like forty to fifty-five million additional people every year. Canada has a population of twenty million — rather less than six months’ climb in world population. Take Australia. There are ten million people in Australia. So, it takes the world less than three months to add to itself a population which peoples that vast country.
3. By this time tomorrow, and every day, there will be added to the earth about 120,000 extra people — just about the population of a small city.
4 I am not talking about birth rate. This is a net increase. To give you some idea of birth rate, look at the second’s hand of your watch. Every second three babies are born somewhere in the world. Another baby! Another baby! Another baby! You can not speak quickly enough to keep pace with the birth rate.
5. This enormous increase in population will create immense problems. By the year 2000, unless something desperate happens, there will be as many as 8,000.000,000 people on the surface of this earth! So this is a problem which you are going to see in your lifetime.
6. Why is this enormous increase in population taking place? It is really due to the spread of knowledge and the practice of what is coming to be called Death Control. You have heard of Birth Control. Death Control is something rather different. Death Control recognizes the work of doctors, nurses, hospitals and health services in keeping alive people who, a few years ago, would have died of some of the serious diseases, as they used to be. Squalid conditions, which we can now remedy by an improved standard of living, caused a lot of disease and dirt. Now medical examinations at school and home catch diseases early and ensure healthier children. Scientists are at work stamping out malaria and other more deadly diseases. If you are seriously ill there is an ambulance to take you to a modern hospital. Medical care helps to keep people alive longer. Some years ago, we used to think seventy was a good age; now eighty or even ninety is coming to be recognized as the normal age for human beings. People are living longer because of this Death Control, and fewer children are dying, so the population of the world is shooting up.
7. Imagine the position if you and I and everyone else living on earth shared the surface between us. How much should we have each? It would be just over twelve acres — the sort of size of a small bolding. But not all that is useful land which is able to produce food. We can cut out one-fifth of it, for example, as being too cold. This island which is covered with ice and snow — Antarctica and Greenland and the great frozen areas of northern Canada. Then we can cut out another fifth as being too dry — the great deserts of the world like the Sahara and heart of Australia and other areas where there is hardly any water supply to water crops and produce food. Then we can cut out another fifth as being too mountainous or with too great an elevation above sea level. Then we can cut out another tenth as land which has insufficient soil, probably just rock at the surface. Now out of the twelve acres, only about four are left as suitable for producing food. But not all that is used. It includes land with enough soil and enough rainfall or water, and enough heat but which, at present, we are not using, such as, for example, the great Amazon forests and the Congo forests and grasslands of Africa. How much are we actually using? One Acre! And it is just the size of land required to support one human being at the present time. And so you can imagine what is going to happen if the present rate of increase in population is allowed to go on unchecked.
Word-Meaning
1.DDT-trichloroethane; a colourless chemical that kills insects and is also harmful to animals. 2. net increase–the actual increase after taking out the number of deaths. 3.desperate–extremely serious 4. recognises—appreciates 5. squalid—dirty pool. 6. holding —a piece of land
1. Answer the following questions as briefly as possible :
a) What shows that the population of the world is increasing at an alarming rate?
b) What is the main cause of the enormous increase in the population of the world today?
c) What is meant by Birth control and Death control? Do you think both of these are positive things?
d) What conclusion can you draw after reading para 7 of the passage 7
e) How much land is needed to support one human being at the present time? Do we have enough land for that?
2. Find phrases from the passage which mean the same as the following :
a) go at the same speed (para4)
b) eliminate (para 6)
c) continue (para 7)
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