早稲田政経2015 III

Many of today's respected thinkers argue that our efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will all fail unless "we do something" about population growth. One recently declared that, "in the last 200 years, population growth has been exponential. The world population doubles every forty years,"

( A ) For a start, there is no exponential growth. In fact, population growth is slowing. For more than three decades now, the average number of babies being born to women in most of the world has been in decline. Globally, women today have half as many babies as their mothers did, mostly out of choice. They are doing it largely for their own good and the good of their families, not because it helps the planet.

Here are the numbers. Forty years ago, the average woman had between five and six kids. Now she has 2.6. This is getting close to the replacement level, which, allowing for girls who don't make it to adulthood, is around 2.3. Half the world already has a fertility rate below the long-term replacement level. That includes all of Europe, much of the Caribbean, a number of Asian countries, Australia, Canada, Algeria, and Tunisia.

So why is this happening? Demographers used to say that women only started having fewer children when they got educated and the economy got rich, as in Europe. But look at the women of Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest nations, where girls are among the least educated in the world and mostly marry in their mid-teens. They have just three children now, less ( B ) had. India is even lower at 2.8. Look also at the women of Brazil. In this hotbed of Catholicism, women have two children on average ―and this is falling. Nothing the priests say can stop it.

Women are doing this because, for the first time in history, they can. Better healthcare and sanitation mean that most babies live to grow up. It is no longer necessary to have five or six children to ensure the next generation ―so they don't.

There are holdouts, of course. ( C )

The main point is that rich or poor, socialist or capitalist, Muslim or Catholic, secular or religious, with or without tough government birth-control policies in place, most countries tell the same tale of a reproductive revolution.

This does not mean that population growth has ceased. The number of people in the world is still rising by 70 million a year. This is because there is a time lag: the huge numbers of young women born during the earlier baby boom may only have had two children each. This is still a lot of children. But within a generation, the world's population will almost certainly be stable. Is this good news for the environment and for the planet's resources? Clearly, having fewer people will do less damage to the planet. But it won't on its own do a lot to solve the world's environmental problems, because the second myth about population growth is that it is the driving force behind our wrecking of the planet.

In fact, rising consumption today far outstrips the rising headcount as a threat to the planet. And most of the extra consumption has been in rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their population, while most of the remaining population growth is in countries with a very small impact on the planet- By almost any measure you choose, a small proportion of the world's people take the majority of the world's resources and produce the majority of its pollution. Let's look at carbon-dioxide emissions: the biggest current concern relates to climate change. The world's richest half billion people―that's about 7 percent of the global population―are responsible for ( D ) of the world's carbon-dioxide emissions. Conversely, the poorest half of the population are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions. Virtually all of the extra 2 billion or so people expected on this planet in the coming 30 or 40 years will be in this poor half of the world. Their impact on carbon emissions will be minor.

In sum, it is overconsumption, not overpopulation, that matters. We must not blame the world's poor for the environmental damage caused overwhelmingly by us, the rich. The truth is that the population bomb is being defused round the world but the consumption bomb is still primed and waiting. It is becoming ever more dangerous.

1 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (A).
(a) Actually, it's worse than that.
(b) But this is nonsense.
(c) However, no one really knows.
(d) There is no reason to doubt that this is true.
(e) This has been the case for many generations.

2 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
Women seem to be having fewer babies these days
(a) as a direct consequence of lack of education.
(b) as a result of marrying too young.
(c) mainly as a personal decision.
(d) owing to advice from their mothers.
(e) partly through a desire to help the planet.

3 Use the six words below to fill in blank space (B) in the best way. Indicate your choices for the
second, fourth, and sixth positions.
(a) half (b) mothers (c) number (d) than (e) the (f) their

4 Choose the most suitable order of sentences from those below to fill in blank space (C).
(a) But even the Middle East is changing.
(b) In parts of rural Africa, women still have five or more children, and in remote villages in parts of the Middle East, women still have six babies on average.
(c) In the past 20 years, women in that country have gone from having eight children to less than two ―1.7 in fact―whatever the religious leaders say.
(d) Take Iran.


5 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
The writer suggests that the population of the world
(a) can best be predicted by economic trends.
(b) is largely determined by religious influences.
(c) must be reduced for environmental reasons.
(d) should be strictly controlled by government action.
(e) will probably stop growing within 20 or 30 years.

6 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
The countries where the population seems to be growing the fastest
(a) are not making enough effort to become richer and better educated.
(b) consume most of the planet's limited supplies of natural wealth.
(c) do not use up a significant proportion of the world's resources.
(d) have been responsible for too much pollution for too long a time.

(e) will be the biggest threat to the planet in the foreseeable future.

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