1 . Population：Is 8 billion people too many?

The world’s population has reached 8 billion people.     1     because of longer life expectancy, fewer child deaths, and increasingly effective health-care systems. The UN secretary general, Antonio Gutters, declared it “an occasion to celebrate”.     2    . When the global population hit 4, 5, 6 and 7 billion, in 1975, 1987, 1999 and 2011 respectively, there was widespread dismay. The doubling of our numbers in 47 years did not bring about the famines and other disasters widely predicted in the 1960s. Our ability to feed ourselves has grown faster than our population has. Therefore, every projection of a limit to Earth’s human population, or assumed “ideal number”, has been wrong.

    3    , with fertility rates dropping below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Most of the ongoing growth is occurring in developing nations in Africa and Asia. In the developing world, though, things are about to change. The average woman in Tanzania in 2020 was a mother to four children, 9% down on a decade earlier. UN projections predict that it will fall to an average of 2.3 children in 2080.    4    . And over the next 70 years, “societal aging” will become a major problem. When there are far more old people than young, there aren’t enough workers to pay into pension systems, threatening their collapse. This phenomenon is already underway in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China.

For now, we can both acknowledge the downsides of the 8 billionth human and believe this is an occasion worth celebrating.    5    . In that sense, it’s a good thing that millions of new people — with their new ideas and fresh energy — are on the way.

A．We’ve reached this milestone

B．Actually, some population alarmism is appropriate

C．The end of population expansion is now foreseeable

D．The truth is that the population in developed nations has remained stable

E．With any luck, the massive challenge of global aging will spur innovation

F．The increasing global population will put more pressure on resources and produce far more emissions

G．In contrast, various experts have been put forward “nightmare consequences” about overpopulation since 1960s

2 . For almost all of human history, the Earth's population has tended to be younger. But since the last World Population Day on July 11, a major shift occurred: There are now more people aged 65 and older than there are under age five.

World Population Day was established by the United Nations Development Program in 1989 to bring attention to population issues. Having more people on the planet is not the only concern, though, since a population's age structure matters too.

Increased lifetime is a remarkable human success story, but having more elderly people also creates a number of socioeconomic concerns. The global population will continue to age as these two groups grow in opposite directions. By 2100, the percentage of the population aged 65 and older will rise to nearly 25 percent — about five times that of children under five.

“Most developed countries have been aging for a century, giving them time to prepare for the changes. But developing countries will become old before they become rich,” says researcher Toshiko Kaneda. Many countries in Latin America and Asia are aging much faster and have less time and resources to prepare health-care systems.

What are the consequences of an older global population? Supporting elderly people is more expensive than caring for young ones. Pressing issues arise like how to provide long-term care, and maintain a labor force. In developed regions like Europe, where 10 percent of the population over age 50 is childless, elderly care is a major worry.

“Not a single country has been able to change declining trends in fertility (生育) despite government requests for people to reproduce as has been done across Europe and in Japan,” Kaneda says. “The aging trend is continuous. ”

But declining fertility rates can have positive effects too, says Kaneda. When fertility rates decline but the population hasn't aged yet, governments can spend more on secondary and higher education, and benefit the economy. Both Thailand and South Korea have seized the opportunity during this ideal period.

1. What do we know about the global population?

A．It tended to be younger until now.

B．People are living longer and having fewer kids.

C．Age structure matters more than population size.

D．Developed countries are facing tougher challenges.

2. Which chart shows the global trend in the percentage of children under five?

A．	B．
C．	D．

3. What's Kaneda's attitude towards the global population issue?

A．Critical.

B．Objective.

C．Optimistic.

D．Doubtful.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．The declining trend in the fertility rates.

B．The consequences of the aging population.

C．The establishment of World Population Day.

D．The present situation of the global population.

3 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. double          B. intense          C. pressures       D. stock          E. agriculture       F. trapped G. withdrawal     H. availability   I. drive             J. expanding     K. rising

Throughout history, people have fought bitter wars over political ideology, national sovereignty and religious expression. How much more     1     will these conflicts be when people fight over the Earth’s most indispensable resource water? We may find out in the not-too-distant future if projections about the     2     of water in the Middle East and other regions prove correct.

Less than three percent of the planet’s     3     is fresh water, and almost two-thirds of this amount is     4     in ice caps, glaciers, and underground aquifers too deep or too remote to access. In her book, Pillars of Sand-Can the Irrigation Miracle Last, Sandra Postel outlines three forces that     5     tension and conflict over freshwater. Using up the water “resource pie”. In India, the world’s second-most populous nation, with over 1 billion inhabitants, the rate of groundwater     6     is twice that of recharge, a deficit higher than in any other country. Although water is a renewable resource, it is not a(n)     7     one. The freshwater available today for more than 6 billion people is no greater than it was 2,000 years ago, when global population was approximately 200 million. (The current U.S. population is 287 million.)

Global     8     accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use. In five of the world’s most water-stressed, controversial areas the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nileland and Tigris-Euphrates population increases of up to 75% are projected by 2025. With the fastest rate of growth in the world, the population of Palestinian territory will more than     9     over the next generation. Most experts agree that, because of geography, population     10     and politics, water wars are most likely to break out in the Middle East, a region where the amount of available freshwater per capita will decrease by about 50% over the next generation.