2016届高考英语二轮复习特色专项训练：第1部分题型重组第23组（全国卷Ⅱ）_高考复习指南

2016届高考英语二轮复习特色专项训练：第1部分题型重组第23组（全国卷Ⅱ）

　　C．Useless and priceless.

　　D．Numb and meaningless.

　　(2015·河北衡水中学二模)The earth provides us with almost everything that we need to eat, sleep, work and entertain.To do all this, we use the earth’s resources.Because some of us have more buying power, they end up using more resources than they usually need.At the same time, we also create a great deal of waste and pollution.So we also need to think about how much land we

　　use to deal with that waste.Then two things happen：first，large numbers of the world’s population get much less resources than they need to live；second, the earth is damaged.

　　The amounts of resources we consumed are like footprints.They show whose lifestyles are a burden on the earth and whose lifestyles are not.Because a few people eat up most of the earth’s resources, the majority have to bear the consequences—like pollution. This is the ecological footprints that the earth keeps in its memory.

　　Some years ago, a famous expert, called William Rees, developed this idea of the ecological footprints.Today, this idea has become like a magnifying glass(放大镜)．It allows us to see whether we are living lives in a way that keeps the earth in a reasonably good shape.Once the earth goes out of shape, there is no hope for human beings.

　　Countries like the United States and Canada have big ecological footprints.Rees calculated that the average amount of energy and materials consumed by a Canadian is what a land of 4.3 hectares can produce.India has a footprint of 0.4.This means that the energy and materials consumed by an Indian is what 0.4 hectares of land can produce.But if we look more carefully，we will find that even within India, the footprints of the city Indian are much larger than the rural Indian.