（二）
“The world’s environment is surprisingly healthy. Discuss.” If that were an examination topic, most students would tear it apart, offering a long list of complaints: from local smog to global climate change, from the felling （砍伐） of forest to the extinction of species. The list would largely be accurate, the concern legitimate. Yet the students who should be given the highest marks would actually be those who agreed with the statement. The surprise is how good things are, not how bad.
After all, the world’s population has more than tripled during this century, and world output has risen hugely, so you would expect the earth itself to have been affected. Indeed, if people lived, consumed and produced things in the same way as they did in 1900 （or in 1950 or in 1980）, the world by now would be a pretty disgusting place: smelly, dirty, toxic, and dangerous.
But they don’t. The reasons why they don’t, and why the environment has not been ruined, have to do with prices, technological innovation, social change and government regulation in response to popular pressure. That is why today’s environmental problems in the poor countries ought, in principle, to be solvable.
Raw materials have not run out, and show no sign of doing so. Logically, one day they must: the planet is a finite place. Yet it is also very big, and man is very ingenious. What has happened is that every time a material seems to be running short, the price has risen and, in response, people have looked for new sources of supply, tried to find ways to use less of the material, or looked for a new substitute. For this reason prices for energy and for minerals have fallen in real terms during the century. The same is true for food. Prices fluctuate, in response to harvests, natural disasters and political instability; and when they rise, it takes some time before new sources of supply become available. But they always do, assisted by new farming and crop technology. The long-term trend has been downwards.
It is where prices and markets do not operate properly that this benign（良性的）trend begins to stumble, and the genuine problems arise. Markets cannot always keep the environment healthy. If no one owns the resource concerned, no one has an interest in conserving it or fostering it: fish is the best example of this.
A.believetheworld`senvironmentisnotasitisthoughttobe
B.thinktheworld`senvironmentisinanundesirablecondition
C.arenotworriedaboutthestateoftheworld`senvironment
D.havedeepknowledgeaboutenvironment
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答案：
B
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解析
根据文中第一段“Theworld’senvironmentissurprisinglyhealthy.Discuss.”Ifthatwereanexaminationtopic,moststudentswouldtearitapart,offeringalonglistofcomplaints:…Yetthestudentswhoshouldbegiventhehighestmarkswouldactuallybethosewhoagreedwiththestatement.可知作者认为与大多数学生的做法以及对环境的看法相比，那些认同“当前全球环境前所未有的健康”这句话的学生应当得高分。选项A：相信全球环境和人们所认为的并不一样；选项B：认为全球现在处在不利的生态环境中；选项C：对全球环境的状况一点都不担心；选项D：对环境有更深层次的思考。结合第一段表达可知作者认为大多数学生都认为当前全球环境是非常糟糕的，故正确答案是选项B。
