Using Land Wisely
A very important world problem—in fact, I am inclined to say it is the most important of all the great world problems which face US al the present time—is the rapidly increasing pressure of population on land and on land resources.
It is not so much the actual population of the world but its rate of increase which is important, It works out to be about 1.6 per cent per annual net increase. In terms of numbers this means something like forty to forty-five million additional people every year. Canada has a population of twenty million-rather less than six months' climb in world population. Take Australia. There are ten million people in Australia. So, it takes the world less than three months to add to itself a population. Let the US take our own crowded country—England and Wales: forty-five to fifty million people—just about a year's supply.
By this time tomorrow, and every day, there will be added to the earth about 120,000 extra people just about the population of the city of York.
I am not talking about birth rate. This is net increase. To give you some idea of birth rate, look at the second hand of your watch. Every second three babies are born somewhere in the world. Another baby! Another baby! Another baby! You cannot speak quickly enough to keep pace with the birth rate.
This enormous increase of population will create immense problems. By A.D. 2000, unless something desperate happens, there will be as many as 7,000,000,000 people on the surface of this earth! So this is a problem which you are going to see in your lifetime.
Why is this enormous increase in population taking place? It is really due to the spread of the knowledge and the practice of what is coming to be called Death Control. You have heard of Birth Control? Death Control is something rather different. Death Control recognizes the work of the doctors and the nurses and the hospitals and the health services in keeping alive people who, a few years ago, would have died of some of the incredibly serious killing diseases, as they used to be. Squalid conditions, which we can remedy by an improved standard of living, caused a lot of disease and dirt. Medical examinations at school catch diseases early and ensure healthier school children. Scientists are at work stamping out malaria and other more deadly diseases. If you are seriously ill there is an ambulance to take you to a modem hospital. Medical care helps to keep people alive longer. We used to think seventy was a good age; now eighty, ninety, it may be, are coming to be recognized as a normal age for human beings. People are living longer because of this Death Control, and fewer children are dying, so the population of the world is shooting up.
Imagine the position if you and I and everyone else living on earth shared the surface between us. How much should we have each? It would be just over twelve acres—the sort of size of a small holding. But not all that is useful land which is going to produce food. We can cut out one-fifth of it, for example, as being too cold. That is land which is covered with ice and snow—Antarctica and Greenland and the great frozen areas of northern Canada. Then we can cut out another fifth as being too dry—the great deserts of the world like the Sahara and the heart of Australia and other areas where there is no known water supply to feed crops and so to produce food. Then we can cut out another fifth as being too mountainous or with too great an elevation above sea level. Then we can cut out another tenth as land which has insufficient soil, probably just rock at the surface. Now, out of the twelve acres only about four are left as suitable for producing food. But not all that is used. It includes land with enough soil and enough rainfall or water, and enough heat which, at present, we are not using, such as, for example, the great Amazon forests and the C
A. Y
B. N
C. NG
甲厂于10月4日到乙公司购买一批原料,当场提货并付款20000元。次日,甲厂因货物质量不合格,将这批原料退回乙公司,乙公司签收,但未退款。10月7日,甲厂到乙公司购买电器一批,价款25000元,提货时与乙公司约定2日内付款。2日期满,甲厂未付款,乙公司上门催收。甲厂认为前后债务相抵,只需支付5000元。双方发生争议,依据债的消灭原理,下列对此案的处理意见正确的是()。
A. 甲厂应先付给乙公司25000元,再请求乙公司退款20000元
B. 乙公司应先退给甲厂20000元,再请求甲厂付款25000元
C. 甲厂付给乙公司5000元,双方了结债务
D. 甲厂应付给乙公司15000元,待乙公司退款之后,再付给10000元