120. Reading Skills Comprehension: Environmental Crisis

ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

Read the following Passage and the answer the following questions:-

Perhaps the environmental crisis at hand has not yet touched your life, but the time is shortly to come. Recent NASA reports of a 60% loss of ozone over the Arctic provide an explanation for increased severity in the world’s weather patterns which has only begun to affect us whether directly or indirectly. The social, political and economic implications are difficult to imagine as our ozone layer continues to thin, forests disappear and desertification is occurring at an alarming rate.

Today, almost 1 million acres of forest disappear each week. This alarming rate of deforestation is forcing many world economies to rethink their business and manufacturing practices. A seventy-feet tree cut for its lumber takes 65 years to replace. A seventy- feet bamboo cut for the market can be replaced in less than 3 months, and bamboo is officially recognized as the world’s fastest growing plant. Some species can grow 3 feet per day!
Driven by the constantly-growing consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, bamboo is gaining momentum as a reliable source of high quality and durable green building material over traditional non-sustainable products. Bamboo is known to produce 30% more oxygen than a hardwood forest of comparable size while preventing erosion, restoring soil, providing sweet edible shoots and removing toxins from contaminated soil. Ecologists tout bamboo as a logical, renewable source of building material. Many promote bamboo planting for erosion prevention, and to reverse the effects of global warming. Being a grass, bamboo regenerates without replanting after harvesting.
Traditional hardwood lumber trees, such as oak, maple, and birch, take 40-50 years to regenerate. In the meantime, there is less oxygen produced, less carbon dioxide consumed, and more soil runoff in the spot where those trees were harvested—all producing negative environmental effects. Our planet is suffering from resource depletion, habitat loss, species extinction, and ecosystem pollution. The choice of bamboo as the building material will greatly help reverse those negative trends.

(a) Use of bamboo is gaining momentum because———-

(b) The greatest advantage of bamboo is that it ———–

(d) ‘More soil runoff in the spot’ means ————-

(e) The antonym for the word ‘reliable’ is ————–

(f)———– take 40-50 years to regrow.

(g) Four problems troubling the earth are————

(h) The author is promoting the use of———— as a building material.

Answers:

(a) it is a reliable source of high quality and durable green building material

(b) grows much faster than compared to other trees as a seventy-feet bamboo cut for the market can be replaced in less than 3 months while others take 65 years for the same

(d) soil erosion

(e) unreliable

(f) Oak, maple and birch

(g) resource depletion, habitat loss, species extinction and ecosystem pollution

(h) bamboo