hce_nthu
114年
英文
第 35 題
📖 題組：
Reading 3 In the environmental vision of the planet as it emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, few issues galvanized political debates as well as the cultural imagination as much as what was then referred to as “overpopulation.” Demographers and environmentalists pointed not only to the growth of Earth’s human population---from approximately five hundred million in 1650 to one billion around 1850, two billion in 1930, and three billion in 1960---but also the rapidly accelerating pace of this increase, warning that it might lead to unprecedented environmental devastation and human misery. Annual percentage increases in populations, they pointed out, might appear deceptively low, but a yearly increase of 2 percent means a doubling in thirty-five years, while a 3 percent increase implies a doubling in twenty-four years. Few countries, they argued, are prepared to double their food and energy supplies, housing, and educational and medical facilities in so short a time, and as a consequence they forecast dire panoramas of mass starvation and immiseration. Governments and international institutions were encouraged to take resolute measures to limit further increase in the growth rates, though the reproductive momentum of the already existing population implied that growth itself would continue for decades to come. “POPULATION EXPLOSION: Unique in human experience, an event which happened yesterday but which everyone swears won’t happen until tomorrow,” novelist John Brunner summed up the problem sarcastically in his novel Stand on Zanzibar. The political controversies that ensued from this concern are well known. Millions of people did starve in the developing world in the 1970s and 1980s, though not at the rate environmentalists had predicted. Leftist critics, especially, argued that these deaths were due to problems in food distribution and more generally to staggering social inequalities rather than any overall scarcity. Population control measures, including the one-child policy in China and widespread sterilization campaigns in India, came under criticism for their disregard of individual rights and their neocolonial imposition of reproductive constraints on some of the world’s poorest populations. More broadly, critics asked whether looming scarcity crises and environmental devastation were caused principally by rampant population growth in the developing world or by rampant increases in consumption in the developed world. By the 1990s, however, most of these controversies had abated. Even though the world population reached six billion in October 1999---double the number of 1960--- this event was no longer accompanied by the images of mass starvation and nightmarishly overcrowded spaces it conjured up in the 1960s and 1970s. In part, this is no doubt due to changed growth projections for the future. Although the world population will, according to the most recent UN projections, continue to grow until the middle of the twenty-first century and will add approximately another 40 percent to the 2005 figure of 6.5 billion (the UN forecasts a population of 9.1 billion for 2050), it is now clear that this increase will affect particular regions in very different ways. Whereas a number of industrialized nations, for example Japan, Italy, Germany, the Baltic states, and most of the countries that succeeded the Soviet Union, will face shrinking populations, other countries such as India, Pakistan, China, and several states, of sub-Saharan Africa will continue to grow, with the attendant challenges of providing education, jobs, and medical care to an ever-increasing number of people. As far as population figures are concerned, then, the future will be a divided one, with industrialized countries significantly less affected by continued population growth than in the past.
Reading 3 In the environmental vision of the planet as it emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, few issues galvanized political debates as well as the cultural imagination as much as what was then referred to as “overpopulation.” Demographers and environmentalists pointed not only to the growth of Earth’s human population---from approximately five hundred million in 1650 to one billion around 1850, two billion in 1930, and three billion in 1960---but also the rapidly accelerating pace of this increase, warning that it might lead to unprecedented environmental devastation and human misery. Annual percentage increases in populations, they pointed out, might appear deceptively low, but a yearly increase of 2 percent means a doubling in thirty-five years, while a 3 percent increase implies a doubling in twenty-four years. Few countries, they argued, are prepared to double their food and energy supplies, housing, and educational and medical facilities in so short a time, and as a consequence they forecast dire panoramas of mass starvation and immiseration. Governments and international institutions were encouraged to take resolute measures to limit further increase in the growth rates, though the reproductive momentum of the already existing population implied that growth itself would continue for decades to come. “POPULATION EXPLOSION: Unique in human experience, an event which happened yesterday but which everyone swears won’t happen until tomorrow,” novelist John Brunner summed up the problem sarcastically in his novel Stand on Zanzibar. The political controversies that ensued from this concern are well known. Millions of people did starve in the developing world in the 1970s and 1980s, though not at the rate environmentalists had predicted. Leftist critics, especially, argued that these deaths were due to problems in food distribution and more generally to staggering social inequalities rather than any overall scarcity. Population control measures, including the one-child policy in China and widespread sterilization campaigns in India, came under criticism for their disregard of individual rights and their neocolonial imposition of reproductive constraints on some of the world’s poorest populations. More broadly, critics asked whether looming scarcity crises and environmental devastation were caused principally by rampant population growth in the developing world or by rampant increases in consumption in the developed world. By the 1990s, however, most of these controversies had abated. Even though the world population reached six billion in October 1999---double the number of 1960--- this event was no longer accompanied by the images of mass starvation and nightmarishly overcrowded spaces it conjured up in the 1960s and 1970s. In part, this is no doubt due to changed growth projections for the future. Although the world population will, according to the most recent UN projections, continue to grow until the middle of the twenty-first century and will add approximately another 40 percent to the 2005 figure of 6.5 billion (the UN forecasts a population of 9.1 billion for 2050), it is now clear that this increase will affect particular regions in very different ways. Whereas a number of industrialized nations, for example Japan, Italy, Germany, the Baltic states, and most of the countries that succeeded the Soviet Union, will face shrinking populations, other countries such as India, Pakistan, China, and several states, of sub-Saharan Africa will continue to grow, with the attendant challenges of providing education, jobs, and medical care to an ever-increasing number of people. As far as population figures are concerned, then, the future will be a divided one, with industrialized countries significantly less affected by continued population growth than in the past.
Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word “galvanized” in the first sentence of the passage?
- A frightened
- B participated
- C gathered
- D prompted
- E grounded
思路引導 VIP
請回想一下：當一個重大的社會議題出現，並導致原本平靜的政壇突然爆發出大量的討論與政策制定時，我們會說這個議題對這些討論起到了什麼樣的『推動』作用？這個詞應該要能體現出『原本沒有或較少，卻因為這個因素而突然湧現』的動態感。試著思考看看，什麼樣的動詞能描述這種『促成某事發生』的關鍵力量？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
同學太棒了！你能精準選出 (D) prompted，代表你對文章首句的因果邏輯掌握得非常透徹。在複雜的學術文本中，正確解讀關鍵動詞是理解作者論點的橋樑，你的判斷非常敏銳。
語境分析與字義推敲
這題的核心考點在於 galvanized 的脈絡意涵。在文中，作者描述「人口過剩」這個議題在 20 世紀 60 年代如何影響了政治辯論與文化想像。Galvanized 雖然在科學上與電解、鍍鋅有關，但在社會科學語境中，它被引申為「激起、促使、激勵」某人採取行動或引發某種反應。因為「人口過剩」議題像是一道強力的電流，刺激並「促發」了廣泛的辯論，所以選擇 prompted（促使、引起）最能對應這種啟動與催化的力量。
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