雅思（阅读）模拟试卷136
综合题
Australia\’s Growing Disaster
Farming is threatening to destroy the soil and native flora and fauna over vast areas of Australia. What price should be put on conservation?
Australia\’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Committee estimates that burning wood from cleared forest accounts for about 30 per cent of Australia\’s emissions of carbon dioxide, or 156 million tonnes a year. And water tables are rising beneath cleared land. In the Western Australian wheat belt, estimates suggest that water is rising by up to 1 metre a year. The land is becoming waterlogged and unproductive or is being poisoned by salt, which is brought to the surface. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) reckons that 33 million hectares have been degraded by salination. The federal government estimates the loss in production from salinity at A$200 million a year. According to Jason Alexandra of the ACF, this list of woes is evidence that Australia is depleting its resources by trading agricultural commodities for manu-factured goods. In effect, it sells topsoil for technologies that will be worn out or redundant in a few years. The country needs to get away from the \’colonial mentality\’ of exploiting resources and adopt agri-cultural practices suited to Australian conditions, he says.
Robert Hadler of the National Farmers\’ Federation does not deny that there is a problem, but says that it is \’illogical\’ to blame farmers. Until the early 1980s, farmers were given tax incentives to clear land be-cause that was what people wanted. If farmers are given tax breaks to manage land sustainably, they will do so. Hadler argues that the two reports on land clearance do not say anything which was not known before. Australia is still better off than many other developed countries, says Den Graetz, an ecologist at the CSIRIO, the national research organisation. \’A lot of the country is still notionally pristine,\’ he says \’It is not transformed like Europe where almost nothing that is left is natural.\’ Graetz, who analysed the satellite photographs for the second land clearance report, argues that there is now better co-operation be-tween Australian scientists, government officials and farmers than in the past.
But the vulnerable state of the land is now widely understood, and across Australia, schemes have started for promoting environment friendly farming. In 1989 Prime Minister Bob Hawke set up Landcare, a network of more than 2000 regional conservation groups. About 30 per cent of landholders are members. \’It has become a very significant social movement,\’ says Helen Alexander from the National Landcare Council. \’We started out worrying about not much more than erosion and the replanting of trees but it has grown much more diverse and sophisticated.\’
But the bugbear of all these conservation efforts is money. Landcare\’s budget is A$110 million a year, of which only A $6 million goes to farmers. Neil Clark, an agricultural consultant from Bendigo in Victoria, says that farmers are not getting enough. \’Farmers may want to make more efficient use of water and nu-trients and embrace more sustainable practices, but it all costs money and they just don\’t have the spare funds,\’ he says.
Clark also says scientists
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