Environment and Resources
Introduced| English | Meaning |
|---|---|
| deforestation/diːˌfɒrɪˈsteɪʃn/ | The removal of forest cover, often to convert the land to another use. |
| desertification/dɪˌzɜːtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn/ | The degradation of dryland environments that reduces their productivity and vegetation cover. |
| greenhouse gases/ˈɡriːnhaʊs ˈɡæsɪz/ | Atmospheric gases that absorb and emit infrared radiation and contribute to the greenhouse effect. |
| climate change/ˈklaɪmət tʃeɪndʒ/ | A long-term change in the statistical patterns of temperature, rainfall or other aspects of climate. |
Four named environmental changes
- As human activity contributed to deforestation 森林砍伐, desertification 荒漠化, a decline in air quality, and increased consumption of the world's supply of fresh water, humans competed over these and other resources more intensely than ever before.
- The CED's structure is causal: human activity produced the changes, and the changes produced competition.
- So the environmental subtopic is also a political one — scarcity is a cause of conflict.
Select all four environmental changes the CED names.
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The sentence then names competition as their consequence.
Fresh water is the sharpest case
- The CED singles out increased consumption of the world's supply of fresh water.
- Water cannot be substituted, is often shared across borders, and is needed by agriculture, industry and households at once.
- So it is the resource where the competition the CED names is most direct.
Environmental causes and effects inform arguments about responses.
The CED's sentence ends by naming...
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So scarcity belongs in the effects paragraph.
Greenhouse gases 温室气体 and debate
- The release of greenhouse gases and pollutants into the atmosphere contributed to debates about the nature and causes of climate change 气候变化.
- The CED describes a debate, and a history course examines the debate as a historical development.
- So the historian's question here is who argued what, when, and with what consequences for policy.
Cause, environmental change, or a further effect?
Sort each item in the CED's causal chain.
Greenhouse gases and pollutants contributed to ____ about the nature and causes of climate change.
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A history course examines the debate as a historical development.
Competition is one of the CED's stated effects, not an aside. The sentence ends humans competed over these and other resources more intensely than ever before — so scarcity belongs in the effects paragraph, and it connects this subtopic to the conflicts of units 7 and 8.
The CED singles out fresh water partly because it...
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Agriculture, industry and households need it at once.
Where the pressure comes from
- The causes are in units 5, 6 and 9: industrial production, export economies organised around extraction, and a population sustained by the Green Revolution.
- So environmental change in this unit is the accumulated consequence of the previous four units' economics.
- Saying which earlier development produced a given pressure is what makes an answer historical rather than descriptive.
Match each pressure to the earlier unit that produced it.
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Naming the earlier development makes the answer historical.
Causes and effects
- The objective is the causes and effects of environmental changes in the period from 1900 to present.
- Causes: industrial and agricultural expansion, energy use, and population growth.
- Effects: deforestation, desertification, air quality, water consumption — and, the CED adds, more intense competition and debate.
A river crosses three states. Upstream irrigation expands to feed a growing population; downstream cities and farms receive less. Nothing illegal has happened and no one has attacked anyone, and the three states now have a dispute that did not exist before — which is exactly the competition the CED's sentence names.
Human activity contributed to deforestation, desertification, a decline in air quality and increased consumption of fresh water, and humans competed over these and other resources more intensely than ever before. The release of greenhouse gases and pollutants contributed to debates about the nature and causes of climate change. The causes lie in units 5, 6 and 9.
Write from an emptied aquifer
- A growing city pumped groundwater faster than rain replaced it.
- The aquifer fell.
Which environmental pressure is this?
Using water faster than it is renewed creates scarcity.
What does the falling aquifer show?
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The city took water faster than the system replaced it.