The best estimate of humanity’s ecological footprint suggests that it now exceeds the Earth’s regenerative capacity by around 20 percent. This fact is mentioned early on in the latest book from Lester R. Brown. The subtitle of Plan B 2. 0 makes the bold claim of rescuing a planet under stress and a civilization in trouble. So will Brown’s Plan B work? The green movement divides broadly into two camps technological optimists and social revolutionaries. For every person like Brown proposing new ways to produce protein, there is an indigenous movement in a developing country struggling for land redistribution. Another divide is between those who see the biggest environmental problem as population pressure in the developing South, and those who say it is consumption patterns in the rich North. When push comes to shove, Brown qualifies as a technological optimist who is worried about population. The giveaway is his eulogy to green techno-fixes, coupled with the fear of fast-growing developing countries copying Western consumer lifestyles. His optimism, though, appears forced as he rolls out a depressing litany of statistics describing species extinction, water shortage, economic upheaval resulting from the eventual decline of oil production and, of course, climate change. And his rescue plans? Shoehorned into Brown’s book is a section headed “Eradicating poverty, stabilizing population“. This relies heavily on the orthodox approach to human development that seeks to use aid to plug the income gap for poor countries. Enumerating the costs of attaining the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals on health, education and poverty reduction, Brown conveys a sense that a few new fiscal measures, combined with the goodwill of rich countries, will deliver. This is an approach that has been followed for the last three decades, and it has not worked. During the 1990s, the share of benefits from global economic growth reaching those living on less than a dollar a day fell by 73 percent, in spite of countless promises to end poverty. This is the problem with Plan B 2. 0. Brown’s picture of climate-change-induced chaos is terrifying and convincing. It includes the awful image of the world’s poorest people competing for food with an ever-hungrier bio-fuels industry, whose job will be to keep the developed world’s SUVs on the road as oil becomes ever more expensive and then runs out. The combination of industrial inertia and the influence of industry on lobbyists is making this vision increasingly plausible. The poor get a bad deal because the world is run by the economic equivalent of gunboat diplomacy, as the recent World Tracie Organization talks showed. Technologically optimistic visions often have too much faith that change will flow from a rational discussion about sensible policies, while tiptoeing around the real problems of power and politics. Even with Brown’s Plan B to tell us which renewable energy technologies to use and which resilient food crops to grow, we are going to need a way to deal with economic vested interests and the democratic deficit in global financial institutions that excludes the poor. For that, we need Plan C.

What is the minimum number of projects run by the SES annually?W: When was the Scientific Exploration Society(SES)founded? And how? M: In 1969, a group of like-minded scientists and explorers came together to found the society following the world’s first inflatable rough expedition down the Blue Nile. W: What does the SES do? M: The SES is one of the most established bodies in the field of exploration and endeavor and a leading organization for excellence in conservation. Through a world-wide programme of challenging expeditions, the SES initiates and supports scientific, conservation and education projects. Six or more projects are run each year, from studying endangered elephants in West Africa to mapping pre-Columbia archaeology in Panama. SES teams consist of scientists and specialists, free-paying participants and professional staff. Expeditions range in length from two weeks to three months, with teams of 12-45 people aging 18-70. While relevant skills are useful, participants aren’t required to have any specific qualifications. W: Would you give an example of a current project? M: 40 individuals from the UK, USA and Ethiopia are currently undertaking an expedition in Ethiopia that’ll combine the first descent of the Bashilo River, a tributary of the Blue Nile, was an extensive biodiversity survey. This survey will allow comparisons to be made with data collected during the earlier Blue Nile expedition. A land-based support team will also install new wells at two villages, refurbish small clinic, conducted dentistry and medical clinics and work with several war schools. W: What are some of the SES’s major achievements? M: The SES has organized more than fifty large expeditions, including a crossing of Darien gap in Panama, running Zaire in Congo River, conducting a research of giant elephant of Nepal and traveling down the rivers of Southern American in Rider Craft. 45. 18. 12 6

For decades, posters depicting rabbits with inflamed, reddened eyes symbolized campaigns against the testing of cosmetics on animals. Now the most severe of those【C1】______are to be banned across the European Union. The so-called Draize tests are a series of notorious procedures【C2】______involve applying cosmetics ingredients【C3】______the eyes and skin of live laboratory rabbits. The animals’ reactions are【C4】______to assess whether the【C5】______is an irritant or not. However, on April 27 the independent scientific advisory committee of the European Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods(ECVAM)approved a series of humane【C6】______. Two of these alternative tests use waste animal tissue reclaimed from slaughterhouses to replace live animals and test【C7】______ chemicals might severely irritate the eyes. Two more will 【C8】______live animals with in vitro cell cultures for determining whether【C9】______irritate the skin. A fifth alterative test, 【C10】______identify whether chemicals will cause skin allergies , will spare hundreds of thousands of mice a year. These humane alternatives have been available【C11】______commercial use for years, but to enforce their use, ECVAM has had to show they are as【C12】______as or better than the procedures on live animals they are to replace. Now【C13】______the committee has validated the alternatives, 【C14】______ will become illegal under the European Cosmetics Directive【C15】______cosmetic companies to continue to use live animals, and regulatory authorities in 【C16】______member state will be forced to outlaw their use. 【C17】______these changes, cosmetics companies will still be allowed to【C18】______relatively mild chemicals on the eyes of live animals until further alternative tests are approved, or until 2009, 【C19】______most cosmetic tests on live animals will be banned in Europe, regardless of【C20】______alternatives have been approved or not.

The average person sees tens of thousands of images a day—images on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on the sides of buses. Images also grace soda cans and T-shirts, and Internet search engines can instantly procure images for any word you type. On Flickr. com, a photo-sharing Web site, you can type in a word such as “love“ and find photos of couples in embrace or parents hugging their children. Type in “terror“ , and among the results is a photograph of the World Trade Center towers burning. “Remember when this was a shocking image?“ asks the person who posted the picture. The question is not merely rhetorical. It points to something important about images in our culture: they have become less magical and less shocking. Until the development of mass reproduction , images carried more power and evoked more fear. Today, anyone with a digital camera and a PC can produce and alter an image. As a result, the power of the image has been diluted in one sense, but strengthened in another. It has been diluted by the ubiquity of images and the many populist technologies(like inexpensive cameras and picture-editing software)that give almost everyone the power to create, distort, and transmit images. But it has been strengthened by the gradual surrender of the printed word to pictures. Text ceded to image might be likened to an articulate person being rendered mute, forced to communicate via gesture and expression rather than language. We love images and the democratizing power of technologies that give us the capability to make and manipulate images. What we are less eager to consider are the broader cultural effects of a society devoted to the image. Historians and anthropologists have explored the story of mankind’s movement from an oral-based culture to a written culture, and later to a printed one. But in the past several decades we have begun to move from a culture based on the printed word to one based largely on images. In making images rather than texts our guide, are we opening up new vistas for understanding and expression, creating a new form of communication that is “ better than print, “ as some scholars have argued? Or are we merely making a peculiar and unwelcome return to forms of communication once ascendant in preliterate societies? Two things in particular are at stake in our contemporary confrontation with an image-based culture. First, technology has considerably undermined our ability to trust what we see, yet we have not adequately grappled with the effects of this on our notions of truth. Second, if we are indeed moving from the era of the printed word to an era dominated by the image, what impact will this have on culture? Will we become too easily accustomed to verisimilar rather than true things, preferring appearance to reality and in the process rejecting the demands of discipline and patience that true things often require of us if we are to understand their meaning and describe it with precision?

For Richard Leakey, head of the Kenya Wildlife Service(KWS), conservation often seems to be a continuation of war by other means. His first period as director of the agency saw the introduction of a “shoot to kill“ policy to deal with illegal hunters. He also ceremonially burnt the country’s stockpile of confiscated ivory—even though, as critics pointed out, the haul could have paid for a dozen new schools. 【R1】______ His second session in the director’s chair began eight months ago(the interregnum was caused by his resignation to enter politics in 1994, after clashes with Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s president). The years, however, have not softened him. His approach this time is almost as aggressive as shooting illegal hunters—it is a system of heavily defended frontiers for the areas under the KWS’ protection, which he refers to as “hard edges“. 【R2】______ The extent to which wildlife and people can co-exist has long been a worry to conservationists. Some of them argue that peaceful co-existence is possible, especially if the animals are made to pay their way through tourism and the “cropping“ of surplus beasts to provide food. But others, though in general willing these days to fall in with the line that nature must earn its keep if it is to survive, suspect that the benefits will frequently accrue to people other than those whose activities actually threaten the animals—and thus that the invisible hand of self-interest will not give animals any protection. 【R3】______ The first place to be the target of this attitude is Lake Nakuru. It is surrounded by settlements, and its boundaries have become “blurred“ as a result. Now, thanks to a two-metre-high fence, those boundaries will be clear—and people who have been squatting on government land will have to leave. 【R4】______ This valley is home to two rare species of monkey, the red colobus and the Tana River manga-bey. People have lived there since before it was declared a protected area, but their numbers have expanded considerably in recent years. One or other group of primates must, in Dr. Leakey’s view, therefore go. He plans that it will be the people. The Tana River resettlement scheme is supposed to be voluntary, and comes with incentives such as money for new schools, water supplies and clinics. 【R5】______ Whether “hard edges“ will work as well as “shoot to kill“ remains to be seen. But it could prove a risky strategy. People moved off their land have long memories, and when political circumstances change they may translate those memories into action. Even in Europe, many of those whose homes have been flooded by reservoirs still mourn their lost villages, and would go back given the chance. And dams—with all the attitudes that back them up—are going out of fashion. A. But there are still some locals who would rather stay. In theory, they can. But they will have to put up with a series of restrictive measures designed to make life more comfortable for monkeys and less comfortable for people. Nobody, for instance, will be allowed to cut down trees: and human movements will be strictly controlled. The message is thus pretty clear: “please leave“. B. Richard Leakey’s second stint in charge of Kenya’s wild animals looks likely to be as controversial as his first. C. Dr. Leakey seems to take the second approach—at least as far as the beasts in his custody are concerned. He is aware of the fact that his actions will be supported by the government only because of the income they bring to the tourist industry(one of Kenya’s biggest export earners). And if it is to be an industrial project, then industrial public-policy methods should be applied. A western government, he points out, would not hesitate to use compulsory land purchase for a scheme deemed to be in the public interest(a hydroelectric dam, for example). So why should similar methods not apply to tourist-attraction wildlife reserves? D. That, though it will no doubt produce some complaints, is probably reasonable—the squatters should not have been there in the first place. More controversial, however, is a scheme to “encourage“ people to leave the valley of the Tana River. E. Such harsh measures(backed, admittedly, by an international ban on all trade in ivory)appear to have worked. After decades of decline, the elephant population in Kenya has stabilised, and even begun to creep up again. F. This scheme means that Kenya’s national parks are, in effect, declaring independence from the rest of the country. They will be surrounded by fences and defended by border guards. Those fences, which will often be electrified, will, of course, serve to keep the animals in and thus stop them damaging the crops on surrounding farms. But their main purpose is to keep unwanted humans out.

How does Reeve feel in a crisis?W: In your second book, you wrote about feeling angry after the accident. Have you accepted things now? M: I don’t get angry because it wouldn’t do any good. I experience frustrations sometimes such as when I have a crisis like I just did. W: What happened? M: I’ve had three bad life-threatening infections this year. This most recent was a blood infection caused by the scraping of skin on my left hip that I probably picked up one day when I was on the exercise bike. It seemed benign but developed more and more seriously. Then a lot of major organs shut down. We’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Before that one, I got a severe infection in New Orleans just a few days before shooting the movie. I was frustrated. “ This is not fair: come on. Let’s not fall apart. I’ve come too far. “ So sometimes I get jealous of people who take their ability to move for granted. W: Do you get afraid? M: No, I don’t. W: How could you not? M: It’s a proven fact that you can control panic by applying rational processes. In all my days of flying and sailing and riding, every now and again I got myself into a jam. On Christmas Day in 1985 I was flying over the Green Mountains in Vermont. Thick clouds, snowing. And the warning light went on. I looked out and saw oil all over the wing. I knew I had to shut down that engine and fly to Boston on the other. You’re hoping it doesn’t develop a problem too. But the chance of a muti-engine failure is very, very remote. Literally, you use your brain to stop panic. I’ve had a lot of training in that area from my life before the injury. Angry. Scared. Lost. Frustrated.

England’s binge-drinking habit is one of the most entrenched in Europe —even Roman invaders wrote about it with horror. Many feared that the habit would worsen after the relaxation of licensing hours last November. Doctors, academics and newspapers were joined in opposition by the police and judges, who warned that the reforms were “close to lunacy“. The government disagreed and abolished a restrictive regime first imposed during the First World War by David Lloyd George, the prime minister, who wanted to prevent munitions workers from getting too drunk. While ministers never denied that Britons had an unhealthy attitude to liquor, they argued that much of the crime and disorder that blighted city streets at night was caused by hordes of drunkards rolling out of pubs and clubs at the same time and fighting for the same taxi home. They cited the wartime experience in Australia, where an early closing time had led to a phenomenon dubbed the “six o’clock’s swill“ , in which people drank themselves silly against the clock. The hope was that, once hours were relaxed, Britons would adopt more civilised, continental habits, sipping delicately at glasses of Chablis rather than downing ten pints. Were the optimists or the pessimists right? Since the law was changed, around two-thirds of licensed premises have extended their opening times, most by an hour or so.(Fewer than 1 percent were granted a 24-hour licence.)That smoothed the lip. m. and 2 a. m. chuck-out peaks and filled in some of the troughs. Local authorities in several large, lively cities, including Birmingham, Nottingham and Manchester, report that the streets are no more disorderly than before. One popular drinkers’ street in Birmingham has seen a dramatic drop in crime(although that may also be because businesses, fearing the worst, paid for street wardens). In London, most strikingly, there has not been a single month since the drinking laws were relaxed when more violent crimes were recorded than in the same month a year earlier. That is also true in Westminster, where many of the capital’s pubs and clubs are clustered. Overall levels of violence in the borough have fallen by 12 percent in the ten months since November 2005, compared with the same period a year before. The police remain cautious about such positive signs, saying it is still too early to tell what effect liberalisation will have on crime. They point out that local forces have diverted time and money to police late-night drinking, and have been given extra cash by the government. That will run out on Christmas Eve, at which point things may become trickier. In the meantime, pessimists are marshalling new, more ambitious arguments. Martin Plant of the University of the West of England maintains that freer drinking can lead to long-term problems that are not immediately apparent. Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, softened drinking laws seven years ago. While policing became easier, more drunkards pitched up at hospital and drink-driving rates soared.

Answer Questions 71 to 80 by referring to the following four articles concerning mental illness. Answer each question by choosing A, B, C, or D and mark it on ANSWER SHEET 1. Note: When more than one answer is required, these may be given in any order. Some choices may be required more than once. Remember: A = Article A B = Article B C = Article C D = Article D Which article(s)... [*] A One of the biggest challenges facing the mental health care system is the gnawing chasm between the ever-growing demand for services and the system’s ability to respond. Many are suffering. Far too few are being helped. For decades, governments have treated mental illness like the orphan of the health care system, leaving the sector chronically under-funded and under-staffed. Such neglect would seem to suggest that mental illness afflicts only an unfortunate few. Nothing could be further from the truth. One in three individuals will experience mental health problems at some point in their lives. In Canada, that translates to more than 10 million people. In Canada, mental illness is estimated to cost the economy $ 33 billion each year in disability and lost productivity. We currently spend another $ 6 billion to $ 8 billion annually to treat these conditions. More hospital stays are consumed by people with a mental illness than by cancer and heart disease patients combined. Yet for all of that, mental health practitioners know they are only reaching a fraction of those in need. Research shows that two-thirds of adults who experience mental illness never seek help: for adolescents, the figure is 75 percent. Of those who do seek treatment, the majority will first report symptoms to family physicians who are often ill-equipped to recognize or deal with mental illness. B Sadly, children and adolescents are even less likely than adults to seek or receive treatment for mental illness. And in far too many cases, young people pay the ultimate price for their conditions. In what was perhaps the most sobering statistic of all provided by some researchers, it was found that approximately one-in-ten Canadian adolescents attempt suicide each year. At the same time, 80 percent and 90 percent of the young people who kill themselves likely suffered from a mental disorder at the time of their death. Some young people are at greater risk than others. Aboriginal youths are five to six times more likely to die by suicide than non-Aboriginal youths. Adolescent males die by suicide three to four times more often than adolescent females. The key to suicide prevention is to intervene on multiple fronts as early as possible, particularly with youth who exhibit risk factors such as depression and substance abuse. This means supporting families with children at risk, promoting suicide awareness at the community level and, perhaps most importantly, taking prevention programs into the schools. C In a typical workplace, one in four employees struggles with mental health issues, most commonly in the form of depression or anxiety. It is estimated that mental illness results in 35 million work days lost each year in Canada. Mental illness also accounts for up to 40 per cent of short-term disability insurance claims and is a secondary diagnosis in more than 50 per cent of long-term claims. The toll of mental illness—in terms of individual suffering and the corporate bottom line— prompted CEOs from across Canada to support the Toronto-based Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health. Founded 10 years ago, the Roundtable advises organizations on how to detect, treat and ultimately prevent mental illness. Organizations are advised to adopt a three-part strategy. First, focus on early detection and treatment opportunities(depression and anxiety are effectively treated in 85 percent of cases where help is sought). Second, determine, at the organizational level, the root cause of the mental distress(especially important if it is emanating from a single department or business unit). Third, make prevention and stress management a corporate-wide priority. D No research on mental health could fail to deal with the issue of stigma—the fact that negative attitudes and behavior toward people with mental illness adds immeasurably to their suffering and represents a serious barrier to reform. The sting of stigma provided much of the emotional wallop behind Starry, Starry Night, a theatrical production by the Calgary Chapter of the Schizophrenia Society of Alberta. The play, performed entirely by actors with Schizophrenia, includes several wrenching scenes about the harsh way the mentally ill are sometimes treated by the very system that is intended to help them. Dr. Thornicroft, a British psychiatrist, recalled how, after 20 years in practice, he felt disquieted by the fact that so few people with mental illness sought treatment—and, if they did, it was as a last resort. He concluded this was because of the shame and embarrassment so many experienced. Dr. Thornicroft decided to take a sabbatical and write a book about stigma. As he delved into the subject, and looked at it from the patient’s point of view, Dr. Thornicroft was struck by the depth of prejudice directed at the mentally ill. He concluded that the most essential aspect of stigma is not so much people’s attitudes, but how they act. In other words, the real issue was discrimination. And what is needed is a kind of civil rights campaign on behalf of the mentally ill.

You will hear a talk about French elementary schools. As you listen, answer Questions 1 to 10 by circling TRUE or FALSE. You will hear the talk only once. You now have 1 minute to read Questions 1 to 10. [*]The French educational system is quite different from the system used in America. It’s directed by the central government and the basic curriculum is the same throughout the country. In French towns and cities, most small children attend school in their immediate neighborhood. They enter school on their fourth birthday and are a group with others of their age. They wear a uniform coat of a special color to indicate their grade. The American ideal of paying special attention to the individual needs of each child is not the primary value in the French school system. For example, they’ve few special classes either for bright children or for those who need extra help in their subjects. If students do not complete their school work satisfactorily, they must repeat the grade. Children are given more difficult tasks in French primary schools than in American schools. At four years of age, for instance, the French people begin to learn writing in script. Printing is not taught as an easy first step. French people are taught to draw by copying an object set before them. If they do not copy the object accurately enough, the teacher may mark an X through their paper and have them try again. Artwork is not given to the children to take home and to show their parents each day. It is collected in a folder that is given back to them at the end of the term. The routines and discipline of the French primary school are also more rigid than those in American school. School begins at 8:30 a. m. when the bell rings for the children to line up and enter in classes. If it is raining, each child must wipe his or her shoes on the doormat on the eye of the teacher standing at the door. Each child must say “Good morning“ to the teacher and promptly and quietly take his or her seat. The teacher is called teacher. Personal names are not used. Each subject taught is a knotted certain period of time and follows the same sequence nationally. At 11:30, there is a two-hour break for lunch when most children go home. Those children who cannot go home for lunch are served the meal in school. When they have completely finished their main course, their plates are turned over and the shallow dish-like part of the base is used for serving the desert on. School ends at 4:30. There are very few after-school programs for young children who have no one to pick them up at 4 :30. The enforcement of the school rules lies with the principal and the teachers. If children are noisy or .inattentive in class, the teacher may punish them by making them stand facing the wall in different corners of the room. Students may have their ears tucked or hands pulled to correct their behavior. Parents may come to the school to speak with the teacher or the principal about their child, but there is no open school period when they can sit in and observe the child’s class. There are no parents and teachers associations in French elementary schools. The pupils are expected to meet their expectations of the schools, not the reverse, and it is the child not the school who must bend if this can not achieved.

How long was Ms. Bair’s marriage?M: How do you define late-life divorce? W: Someone who has been married at least 20 years. The people interviewed were mostly in their fifties: they ranged through 85. People were ending 55-year, 60-year marriage. M: Ms. Bair, your own 43-year marriage ended in divorce, yet you don’t write about it. Why? W: I’ve never talked about myself. I have one or two friends with whom I talk about my personal life, but I really did write this book as an objective observer. M: We see late-life divorce as something happening only to the wealthy. But your study crosses class lines. Did it surprise you that people were willing to lose financial security, particularly the women? W: Ultimately no. A lawyer-mediator I spoke to described herself as the reality checker. “I’m the one who has to tell women they are not going to be able to make it on their own and they’re going to have to find a way to survive within the marriage. “ I tell the story of one woman who remained in her marriage for another 15 years and would come in periodically to see her, and each time the mediator would have to say, “ Nothing has changed. This will be your life if you leave this marriage. “ Finally at the end of 15 years this woman said “ I don’t care if I can’t survive. I just can’t stay in that house with him another day“ and she did get a divorce. M: Wasn’t there a sense of shame or failure in most of the people you spoke with? W: No. Even people who came from the very religious backgrounds really didn’t feel the shame. They regretted that their church would no longer take them in or that they weren’t as welcome in various social settings as before. But if there was any sense of shame, it was very slight. M: So they didn’t agonize about breaking their marital vows? W: No, not really. What came across was a great sense of relief. 20 years. 43 years. 55 years. 60 years.

You will hear an interview with Prof. Jesse Ausubel about his optimistic attitudes towards environmental issues today. As you listen, answer the questions or complete the notes in your test booklet for Questions 21 to 30 by writing no more than three words in the space provided on the right. You will hear the interview twice. You now have 1 minute to read Questions 21 to 30. [*]W: What makes you such an optimist? M: Working in The Rockerfeller University here in New York, I am overwhelmed every week by what people are learning. Genetics offers the most dramatic example, but in materials science and so many fields it’s almost as astonishing. Modern science is very young. Even if you go back to Galileo, it’s only 400 years old. Large-scale organized research is less than 100 years old. The chance to do things much better is enormous. Take energy. It’s a big cause for environmental concern. If you look at the whole system from mining fuel to powering my desk lamp, right now it is about 5 percent efficient. The other 95 percent of the energy in the fuel gets wasted along the way. We can’t jump quickly to 50 percent. But we have centuries of opportunity ahead of us. Whether you look at transport or energy or food systems, they all look juvenile to me. I mean that in a positive sense:they have great potential. W: You began your career as an environmental scientist. Do you think environmentalists are part of the problem or part of the solution now? M: The Greens themselves are part of a dynamic ecology, raising the alarms. Functionally, they are earth-sensing instruments. They are absolutely necessary. I started my career in the mid-1970s in marine pollution, and then in 1977 I became one of the first people to work full-time on global warming. I felt my main job was raising the alarm. That’s important. But after seven or eight years, I thought if I’m going to have a long career in the environment, I’d like to provide solutions too. So I spent five years as director of programmes at National Academy of Engineering. Engineers have a different way of thinking from Greens. They like machines that work, and they do enormously important environmental work. A problem is that the two groups don’t talk to each other much. Greens are not very good at taking a long view. They see that forests are disappearing or emissions are rising, and they see disaster looming. But I have an enthusiasm for history, especially the history of technology. My father was a historian of the 19th century industrial revolution in Britain. History is very powerful at showing that things fall as well as rise, including technologies. In fact, the history of technology is largely the history of substitution. W: For example? M: Here in New York, the density of horses a century ago was environmentally disastrous. Their replacement by automobiles had a huge environmental benefit. But of course every system has fallout. Cars were dangerous. If they had stayed as dangerous as they were in the 1930s, the automotive system could not have grown. They needed headlights and windshield wipers and seat belts. Then other problems grew, like urban air pollution. So we developed catalytic converters. And as pollution gets worse, there are hybrid vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells. They might allow the world with, say, two billion cars, compared with the 600 million we have right now. It’s not so much that there are limits to growth, in the famous phrase, but rather that any technology, like any empire, contains the seeds of its end. Instead of the technology growing exponentially and destroying everything around it, some other technology will generally take over that is superior. At one billion people in the world there might have been an alternative way of living. But at 6.4 billion and with 4 or 5 billion who don’t have much but want more, then you have no choice but to get better at providing the services people want. I don’t think my green colleagues have enough faith in their own scientific and technical peers. W: So what do you say to people who think that climate change will overwhelm us? Even if a solution is technically achievable, can we make the changes? M: The climate change problem is very simple. It requires favoring natural gas, nuclear and energy efficiency, as well as some adaptations. Intellectually the problem was solved in the early to mid-1980s. But making the necessary social change is different. And we shouldn’t be surprised at the problems. Quite a few of my friends who were involved in the international Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, whose report came out last spring, were furious because they felt it received inadequate media attention. But the newspapers were covering the death of the pope and the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Social status and sexuality are what interest us. That’s not going to change. The trick is to come up with technologies that are digestible, that slip into the way we live, the way iPods and laptops do.

The best estimate of humanity’s ecological footprint suggests that it now exceeds the Earth’s regenerative capacity by around 20 percent. This fact is mentioned early on in the latest book from Lester R. Brown. The subtitle of Plan B 2. 0 makes the bold claim of rescuing a planet under stress and a civilization in trouble. So will Brown’s Plan B work? The green movement divides broadly into two camps technological optimists and social revolutionaries. For every person like Brown proposing new ways to produce protein, there is an indigenous movement in a developing country struggling for land redistribution. Another divide is between those who see the biggest environmental problem as population pressure in the developing South, and those who say it is consumption patterns in the rich North. When push comes to shove, Brown qualifies as a technological optimist who is worried about population. The giveaway is his eulogy to green techno-fixes, coupled with the fear of fast-growing developing countries copying Western consumer lifestyles. His optimism, though, appears forced as he rolls out a depressing litany of statistics describing species extinction, water shortage, economic upheaval resulting from the eventual decline of oil production and, of course, climate change. And his rescue plans? Shoehorned into Brown’s book is a section headed “Eradicating poverty, stabilizing population“. This relies heavily on the orthodox approach to human development that seeks to use aid to plug the income gap for poor countries. Enumerating the costs of attaining the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals on health, education and poverty reduction, Brown conveys a sense that a few new fiscal measures, combined with the goodwill of rich countries, will deliver. This is an approach that has been followed for the last three decades, and it has not worked. During the 1990s, the share of benefits from global economic growth reaching those living on less than a dollar a day fell by 73 percent, in spite of countless promises to end poverty. This is the problem with Plan B 2. 0. Brown’s picture of climate-change-induced chaos is terrifying and convincing. It includes the awful image of the world’s poorest people competing for food with an ever-hungrier bio-fuels industry, whose job will be to keep the developed world’s SUVs on the road as oil becomes ever more expensive and then runs out. The combination of industrial inertia and the influence of industry on lobbyists is making this vision increasingly plausible. The poor get a bad deal because the world is run by the economic equivalent of gunboat diplomacy, as the recent World Tracie Organization talks showed. Technologically optimistic visions often have too much faith that change will flow from a rational discussion about sensible policies, while tiptoeing around the real problems of power and politics. Even with Brown’s Plan B to tell us which renewable energy technologies to use and which resilient food crops to grow, we are going to need a way to deal with economic vested interests and the democratic deficit in global financial institutions that excludes the poor. For that, we need Plan C.

You have read an article in a magazine which states, “Currently it is hard for university graduates to find jobs. Therefore, they should be encouraged to start their own businesses. “ Write an article for the same magazine to clarify your own points of view towards this issue. You should use your own ideas, knowledge or experience to generate support for your argument and include an example. You should write no less than 250 words. Write your article on ANSWER SHEET 2.

Why does the author say that “we need a Plan C“?

The phrase “gunboat diplomacy“(line 6, para. 4)means

Talking about Brown’s dismal picture of environmental degradation, the author thinks that

Brown believes that the spread of consumerism to less developed countries has

What is the issue that Brown tries to address in his newly published book?