1 . After astronaut Rusty Schweickart looked down at the Earth from space for the first time, he described a sense of awe that has become common to almost every space traveler since. “You realize that on that little blue and white thing there is everything that means anything to you, all history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, all of it on that little spot out there you can cover with your thumb.” No matter what country you’re from, you return from space with a feeling that our home is tiny, fragile, and something we need to protect.

Anyone who reads the new book Growth by one of my favorite thinkers will come with similar urgency. The author, Czech-Canadian profe Vaclav Smil, approaches things from a scientist’s point of view, but he reaches the same conclusion: The Earth is fragile and “before it is too late, we should launch the most fundamental task of making any future growth consistent with the long-term preservation of our planet.”

Before I get into how Smil came to this conclusion, I should warn you. Although Growth is a brilliant combination of everything we can learn from patterns of growth in the natural and human-made world, it’s not for everyone. Long sections read like a textbook or an engineering guidebook. And it has 99 pages of references!

The book covers everything from agriculture to steel production to smartphone use. Smil’s goal is to show that no matter what field you’re talking about, eventually you hit growth limits. As Smil writes, “My aim is to explain varieties of growth in evolutionary and historical perspectives and to appreciate both the accomplishments and the limits of growth in modern ivilization…”

I don’t agree with all of his analysis. In particular, I'm more optimistic than he is about the degree to which today’s renewable energy technologies carl be used, and the pace at which scientists and engineers will develop new clean sources. In my view, Smil underestimates our accelerating ability to model the physical world using digital technologies equipped with artificial intelligence.

But I've always felt that Smil’s great strength isn’t predicting the future, but documenting the past. There’s great value in that—you can’t see what’s coming next if you don’t understand what’s come before. Nobody sees the big picture with as wide an aperture(光圈孔径) as Vaclav Smil.

1. What does the underlined phrase “similar urgency” refer to in paragraph 2?

A．To protect our home is difficult.

B．It’s too late to protect the Earth.

C．The Earth means everything to us.

D．We need to protect the fragile Earth.

2. What’s the writing style of the book Growth?

A．Causal.	B．Academic.
C．Humorous.	D．Straightforward.

3. How does the writer of this article feel about the renewable energy technologies?

A．Anxious.	B．Objective.
C．Optimistic.	D．Pessimistic.

4. What information does the last paragraph intend to tell us?

A．Smil intends to document the history.

B．Smil sees the world from a great angle.

C．Smil shows great concern for the future.

D．Smil describes a promising future for us.

2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

There is no doubt that humankind dreams of making Mars our second home. However, sending people there will require all the skills, courage and     1     (intelligent) of the human race. While the Moon can be reached within days, it would take months to reach Mars,     2     (travel) through dangerous solar radiation. And even if the first settlers do reach Mars safely, staying alive will be     3    daily challenge, but as proved by the Biosphere experiment, not impossible.

As early as the 1980s, scientists were building Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert. It consisted of a closed space    4     people, animals and plants could live together. The “closed” concept meant that the space was designed     5     (function) with its own oxygen, food and water, needing nothing from the outside world.     6     the two-year experiment was not a success, it did provide us with a better understanding of how humans might be able to live on another planet. More recently, scientists     7     (succeed) in growing a variety of plants in an environment similar to that on Mars. That     8     (definite) is a big step forward.

For now, human settlement of Mars is still     9     (decade) away. In the meantime, scientific research shows that the planet Earth is getting     10     (warm). This change is having a terrible effect on the biosphere.