Cùng tham IELTS Academic Reading Sample 75 - The Truth about the Environment để các bạn ôn tập lại các kiến thức đã học, đánh giá năng lực làm bài của mình cũng như làm quen với cấu trúc đề thi để chuẩn bị kì thi được tốt hơn với số điểm cao như mong muốn. Chúc các bạn thi tốt! | THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT For many environmentalists the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears that natural resources are running out that the population is ever growing leaving less and less to eat that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers and that the planet s air and water are becoming ever more polluted. But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First energy and other natural resources have become more abundant not less so since the book The limits to Growth was published in 1972 by a group of scientists. Second more food is now produced per head of the world s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third although species are indeed becoming extinct only about of them are expelled to disappear in the next 50 years not 25-50 as has so often been predicted. And finally most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated or are transient - associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth but by accelerating it. One form of pollution - the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming - does appear to be a phenomenon that is going to extend well into our future but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an inappropriate response to it. Yet opinion polls suggest that many people nurture the belief that environmental standards are declining and four factors seem to cause this disjunction between perception and reality. One is the lopsidedness built into scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy but it will also create an impression that many more potential problems exist than is the case. Secondly environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably perhaps they sometimes .
