Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)

　　Section A

　　Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are requested to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

　　Questions 47 to 56 are based on the following passage.

　　For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hitlist of our main fears: natural resources are 47 out; the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; species are becoming 48 in vast numbers, and 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 49 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 50 of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are 51 . Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25~50%, as has so often been 52 . And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been 53 , or are transient – associated with the early stages of industrialization and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by 54 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 55 a devastating (令人心神不安的) 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 some factors seem to cause this disjunction between 56 and reality.

　　A) pose I) starving

　　B) exaggerated J) head

　　C) accelerating K) running

　　D) extinct L) predicted

　　E) exist M) abundant

　　F) perception N) conception

　　G) wealthy O) reducing

　　H) magnified