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Lines 4-5,

‘The world’s entire population could fit into Jacksonville, Florida in the USA, with everyone having standing room.”

Florida is a city in America.

Reading for specific information

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Skills Tested

Lines 7-10,

 “For overpopulation to be real, there must be conditions that are undesirable and unmistakably caused by the presence of a certain number of people. If such indications cannot be found, we are entitled to dismiss the claim of overpopulation.”

If there is overpopulation, the indication of undesirable conditions caused by a certain number of people should be found.　

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Lines 14,

‘a vague standard known as “carrying capacity” ’

“vague” means unclear and unspecified.

Reading for specific information

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(Lines 20-22) “there has been no famine that has not been caused by wars, irrational economic policies or natural disasters.”

There has been no famine that has not been caused by that reasons means all famine are caused by the above reasons.

Inference

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(Lines 30-31) ‘the only obstacles to agricultural progress are those created by government’

  Since government intervention is the only obstacles, if government put up fewer obstacles, there might be more agricultural advancements.

Inference 

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(Lines 38)   ‘catastrophists argue that the bright past does not imply a bright future’

  Although there is a bright past, they don’t think the bright past imply a bright future, this means they think we do not have a good future.

Inference

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Lines 39 “they assert that mankind has crossed some fateful threshold.”

“threshold” means limit.

This means mankind has gone beyond the limit of good fortune

Inference

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Lines 44-47

“they never consider the more plausible possibilities, such as the shift in diet from meat to fish, the decline of the Russian fishing industry during the political break-up of the Soviet Union, or the lack of property rights in the world’s oceans and lakes.”

They never consider those possibilities means these possibilities are also accountable for the increase in the cost of fish.

Inference

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Skills Tested

Lines 57-58, “it should be the occasion for celebration.”

The writer think the drop in the death rate is an occasion for celebration, this implies his positive attitude toward the fall in death rate.

Reading for tone

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(Lines 59-60) “the world’s population has been heading toward stabilization for at least 30 years”.

Lines 62-64 “ there is a simpler explanation: as economies develop and people become better off materially, they have fewer children.”

The development of economies implies  people have more money.

Inference

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(Lines65-68) “today the fertility rate per couple is 2.0 children or lower—below ‘replacement rate’, that is, where the number of babies born is simply replacing the number of people who have died.”

2.0 children or lower—below ‘replacement rate’ means the replacement rate is higher than 2.0

Reading  for specific information

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(Lines 70-72) population- control programmes in the developing world, which shift childbearing decisions from couples to state, is ill-conceived.

‘ill- conceived’ implies that the writer think the policy is inappropriate.

inference

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Lines 83, “more people exponentially increase the potential for combining ideas into newer, better ideas.”

More people will increase the potential for having more productive ideas.

Reading for a specific information

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Paragraph 8, lines 85-88, “those who wish to severely limit population growth would condemn hundreds of millions of people in the developing world to the extreme poverty that characterized the West before the Industrial Revolution.”

The extreme poverty means the suffering around the world.

Inference

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Skills Tested

Lines 91-92, “ There is one condition without which all that is written here may be ignored.” The condition is liberty.

Without liberty, human advancement can be ignored. This means liberty leads to human advancement.

Reading for specific information.

Explanation

Skills Tested

From the opening paragraph, the writer uses a hypothesis to show that “the conditions that are undesirable and unmistaken caused by the presence of a certain number of people, we are entitled to dismiss the claim of overpopulation. Then the writer further counter-argues the existence of overpopulation.

Reading for theme