考研阅读精选：100亿人口会耗尽地球资源吗？

考研网

『世界人口的迅速增长，让地球资源的可持续利用一度成为各大媒介讨论的热点问题。到本世纪末，人类人口将达到100亿，到那时，地球还能承受起养育人类的重任吗？』
Will 10 Billion People Use Up the Planet’s Resources?
100亿人口会耗尽地球资源吗？
May 25th, 2011 | From Scientific American

  The human enterprise now consumes nearly 60 billion metric tons of  minerals, ores, fossil fuels and plant materials, such as crop plants  and trees for timber or paper. Meanwhile, the seven billionth person on  the planet is expected to be born this year—and the human population may  reach 10 billion by this century’s end, according to the latest United  Nations analysis. Hundreds of millions of people in Europe, North  America and Asia live a modern life, which largely means consuming more  than 16 metric tons of such natural resources—or more—per person per  year. If the billions of poor people living today or born tomorrow  consume anything approaching this figure, the world will have to find  more than 140 billion metric tons of such materials each year by  mid-century, according to a new report from the U.N. Enviromental  Programme.
Figuring out how to do more with less is becoming a global necessity.
  The good news is that economic prosperity has been rising faster than  direct resource consumption. Between 1980 and 2002, the resources  required to produce $1,000 worth of consumer goods fell from 2.1 metric  tons to just 1.6 metric tons and global per capita income has increased  seven-fold. The bad news is that trend will not necessarily continue  and—in absolute terms—resource consumption has increased 10-fold since  1900.
Of course, a wide array of national governments and  even the international community have committed to "sustainable  development," variously defined but essentially attempts to reduce  things like energy use or resource extraction that go along with  economic growth. Those lofty goals, however, do not match up to facts on  the ground.
The U.N., for its part, plans to launch an  effort similar to the Millennium Development Goals to curb resource  waste, greenhouse gas emissions and the like, and Swiss scientists have  come up with a plan for a "2,000 watt" per person society, which aims  for reducing each European’s energy use by roughly one third.
  But that type of approach, in order to be effective, would need to  paired with a mindset no longer driven by gadget lust. After all,  technological leapfrogging, such as from burning wood for light and heat  to lighting a bulb with electricity from photovoltaic panels requires a  shift from consumption of biomass to consumption of minerals, which  differ only in the type of impact on the planet. Nor is it clear that  "decoupling"—rising economic growth paired with reductions in resource  consumption—actually is now taking place; most gains to date, such as  those in Germany or Japan, may simply have been achieved by outsourcing  resource-intensive manufacturing.
High prices for  commodities, in and of themselves, will drive more efficient use of such  resources, but that may not be enough to prevent the total depletion of  world’s resources and attendant environmental apocalypse, according to  the new UNEP report. Ultimately, the quantity of resources consumed by  the nearly 7 billion of us on the planet will need to average out to six  metric tons per year per person—a steep cut in the resources currently  enjoyed by people in Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan and the U.S. As it  stands now, an average American uses 88 kilograms of stuff per day and,  all told, our modern gadgets require at least 60 different elements,  ranging from the toxic to the treasured, such as gold. These devices  fuel the same kind of exploitative and annihilating resource-extraction  that has been a hallmark of consumption since at least the ivory craze  of Victorian England or the relentless pursuit of whale oil in the 19th  century and earlier.
"People believe environmental ‘bads’  are the price we must pay for economic ‘goods,’" said UNEP Executive  Director Achim Steiner in releasing the report on May 12 and calling for  an increased effort to decouple economic growth and resource  consumption. "However, we cannot, and need not, continue to act as if  this trade-off is inevitable." (652 words)
文章地址：http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/05/25/will-10-billion-people-use-up-the-planets-resources/