现代大学英语精读4第二版Unit 5A For Want of a Drink课文原文知识讲解

现

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大

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5

A

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文

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4

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For Want of a Drink

1.

When the word water appears in print nowadays, crisis is rarely far behind. Water, it

is

said,

is

the

new

oil:

a

resource

long

squandered,

now

growing

expensive

and

soon

to

be

overwhelmed by insatiable demand. Aquifers are falling, glaciers vanishing, reservoirs drying

up

and

rivers

no longer flowing

to

the sea.

Climate change

threatens to

make

the

problem

worse.

Everyone

must

use

less

water

if

famine,

pestilence

and

mass

migration

are

not

to

sweep the globe.

2.

language is often overblown, and the remedies sometimes ill-conceived, but the basic

message is not wrong. Water is indeed scarce in many places, and will grow scarcer. Bringing

supply

and

demand

into

equilibrium

will

be

painful,

and

political

disputes

may

increase

in

number

and

intensify

in

their

capacity

to

cause

trouble.

To

carry

on

with

present

practice

would indeed be to invite disaster.

? The difficulties start with the sheer number of people using the stuff. When, 60 years

ago,

the

world's

population

was

about

2.5

billion,

worries

about

water

supply

affected

relatively few people. Both drought and hunger existed, as they have throughout history, but

most people could be fed without irrigated farming. Then the green revolution,in an inspired

combination

of

new

crop

breeds,

fertilizers

and

water,

made

possible

a

huge

rise

in

the

population. The number of people on Earth rose to 6 billion in 2000, nearly 7 billion today,

and is heading for 9 billion in 2050. The area under irrigation has doubled and the amount of

water drawn for farming has tripled. The proportion of people living in countries chronically

short of water is set to rise from 8% at the turn of the 21st century to 45% by 2050.

s' increasing demand for water is caused not only by the growing number of mouths

to be fed but also by people's desire for better-tasting, more interesting food. Unfortunately, it

takes nearly twice as much water to grow a kilo of peanuts as a kilo of soybeans, nearly four

times

as

much

water

to

produce

a

kilo

of

beef

as

a

kilo

of

chicken.

With

2

billion

people

around the

world about to enter the middle class, the agricultural demands on water would

increase even if the population stood still.

ry,

too,

needs

water.

It

takes

about

22%

of

the

world's

withdrawals.

Domestic

activities take the other 8%. Together, the demands of these two categories quadrupled in the

second half of the 20th century, growing twice as fast as those of farming.

g that demand is a difficult task. One reason is that the supply of water is finite. The

world will have no more of it in 2025 or 2050 than it has today, or when it lapped at the sides

of Noah's Ark. This is because the law of conservation of mass says, broadly, that however

you use it, you cannot destroy the stuff. Neither can you readily make it. If some of it seems

to come from the skies, that is because it has evaporated from the Earth's surface, condensed

and returned.

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