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  3. It remains to be seen whether the reserves of raw materials in the year 2000 will be sufficient to supply a world economy which

It remains to be seen whether the reserves of raw materials in the year 2000 will be sufficient to supply a world economy which

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问题     It remains to be seen whether the reserves of raw materials in the year 2000 will be sufficient to supply a world economy which will have grown by five hundred percent. Southeast Asia alone will have an energy consumption five times greater than that of Western Europe in 1970. Incidentally, if the underdeveloped countries started using up petrol at the same rate as the industrialized areas, then world reserves would be exhausted by 1990.
    All this only goes to show just how important it is to set up a plan to conserve and divide up fairly natural resources on a worldwide scale.
    This is a matter of life and death because world population is expanding at an incredible rate. By the middle of the next century population will expand every year by as much as it did in the first 1 500 years after Christ. In the southern, poor parts of the globe, the figures are enough to make your hair stand on end. Even supposing that steps are taken to stabilize world population in the next fifty years, the number of inhabitants per square kilometer will increase by from 4 in the United States to 140 in South East Asia. What can we do about it?
    In the first hypothesis we do nothing. By the year 2000, the southern parts of the world would then have a population greater than the total world population today.
    Alternately we could start acting right now to bring birth rate under control within fifteen years so that population levels off. Even then the population in the southern areas would not stop growing for seventy-five years. And the population would level off at something like twice today’s figure.
    Finally, we could wait ten to twenty years before taking action. If we wait ten years the population of the southern area would stabilize at 3000 million. Even today the number of potential workers increases by 350 000 people per week. By the end of the century this figure will reach 750 000; in other words, it will be necessary to find work for 40 million people per year— not to speak of food.
    What this means in practical terms we can scarcely imagine. But clearly if we do nothing, nature will solve the problem for us. But at what cost!
The phrase "level off"(Paragraph 5)probably refers to______.
选项 A、make cut
B、make growth
C、make balance
D、make the same
答案C
解析 这是一道词义题。题干中的信号词出自于文章第五段第一句话中。文章第五段指出：另一个设想是，我们现在就可以采取行动，在15年内控制出生率，以便世界人口达到平衡：人口将以现在总人口的两倍数量保持平衡。这说明，该短语可能的意思应该是“使……保持平衡”。C“使保持平衡”，与文章的意思相符。A和B明显与文章的意思不符：D不准确。
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