Directions:

Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. （40 points）

Text 2

In 1575 - over 400 years ago - the French scholar Louis Le Roy published a learned book in which he voiced despair over the changes caused by the social and technological innovations of his time, what we now call the Renaissance. We, also, feel that our times are out of joint; we even have reason to believe that our descendants will be worse off than we are.

The earth will soon be overcrowded and its resources exhausted. Pollution will ruin the environment, upset the climate, damage human health. The gap in living standards between the rich and the poor will widen and lead the angry, hungry people of the world to act of desperation including the use of nuclear weapons as blackmail.  Such are the inevitable consequences of population and technological growth if present trends continue.

The future is never a projection of the past. Animals probably have no chance to escape from the merciless law of biological evolution, but human beings are blessed with the freedom of social evolution. For us, trend is not destiny. The escape from existing trends is now facilitated by the fact that societies anticipate future dangers and take preventive steps against expected changes.

Despite the widespread belief that the world has become too complex for comprehension by the human brain, modern societies have often responded effectively to critical situations.

The decrease in birth rates,  the partial prohibition of pesticides,  the rethinking of technologies for the production and use of energy are but a few examples illustrating a sudden reversal of trends caused not by political upsets or scientific breakthroughs, but by public awareness of consequences.