英語范文背誦精華 22.2 Population and Natural Resources

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Population and Natural Resources

Populations increase and decrease relatively not only to one another,

but also to natural resources. In most parts of the world, the relation

between population and resources is already unfavourable and will

probably become even more unfavourable in the future. This growing

poverty in the midst of growing poverty constitutes a permanent menace

to peace. And not only to peace, but also to democratic institutions and

personal liberty. For overpopulation is not compatible with freedom. An

unfavourable relationship between numbers and resources tends to make

the earning of a living almost intolerably difficult. Labour is more

abundant than goods, and the individual is compelled to work long hours

for little pay. No surplus of accumulated purchasing power stands

between him and the tyrannies of unfriendly nature or of the equally

unfriendly wielders of political and economic power. Democracy is,

among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot

say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's

favour has been withdrawn. And he cannot be certain of his next meal

unless he owns the means of producing enough wealth for his family to

live on, or has been able to accumulate a surplus out of past wages, or

has a chance of moving to virgin territories, where he can make a fresh

start. In an overcrowded country, very few people own enough to make

them financially independent; very few are in a position to accumulate

purchasing power; and there is no free land. Moreover, in any country

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where population presses hard upon natural resources, the general

economic situation is apt to be so precarious that government control of

capital and labour, production and consumption, becomes inevitable. It is

no accident that the twentieth century should be the century of highly

centralized governments and totalitarian dictatorships; it had to be so for

the simple reason that the twentieth century is the century of planetary

overcrowding.