读趣百科

Today the quality of our natural environment has become an important issue. The world population is rising so quickly that the world has become too crowded. We are using up our natural resources and at the same time polluting our environment with dangerous chemicals. If we continue to do this, life on earth cannot survive.Concerned people have made some progress in environmental protection.Governments of many countries have established laws to protect the air,forests and sea resources and to stop environmental pollution.Still more measures should be taken to solve environmental problems.People should be further educated to recognize the importance of the problems, to use modern methods of birth control, to conserve(保存) our natural resources and recycle(再循环) our products. We are sure that we can have a better and cleaner place in the future.

China, as a developing country, is determined to catch up with and even surpass the developed ones. I think that one of the best possible ways to do so is to give first priority(优先)to the development of culture, science and especially education.In modern times, when science and technology are making great progress,the education of the work force is of primary importance. Moreover, many of the success in advanced countries have demonstrated that a nation 's prosperity mainly depends on the quality of its labour force,namely those who have been well educated.In a developing country such as China, our investment in culture,education and science, and especially elementary education, must enjoy top priority. This is crucial(决定性的) for China to catch up with the developed nations in today's surging(汹涌的 ) waves of technological revolution. Otherwise, the gap between China and advanced countries will be widened rather than bridged.

Human life can not continue without science and technology. For many years, human society has developed with the advance of science and technology while the development of science and technology has in turn brought the process to mankind. So the life we are living now is more civilized than that of our fore fathers. The development of science and technology have brought about many changes in people's life. For example, the invention of television and space rocket have opened a new era for mankind. Through the use of TV people can hear the sound and learn the events happening thousands of miles away. Owing to the invention of spaceship and rocket, the dream of man's landing on the moon has now come true. Science and technology also play an important role in our socialist construction. We may say, our socialist construction is just like a skyscraper, while science and technology are its base. Without the base, the skyscraper can't be built. Therefore, we should try our best to contribute to the development of science and technology so as to provide a more solid base to build our country.

The open policy means that our country is open to investment, trade and technical and economic cooperation with other countries on the basis ofequality and mutual benefit. The purpose of open policy is to acquireadvanced technology, management skills to serve our socialistconstruction so as to promote the realization of the four modernizations.We must adhere to the open policy. Because economic relations betweenstates today have become increasingly close, and no country can possiblyadvance behind close doors. Only in this way, can we gradually close thegap between our country and the developed countries.Through the implementation of policy, we can learn advanced technologyand managerial expertise from abroad; make full use of the foreigncapitals to set up great enterprises; absorb useful and healthy ideas andnew knowledge of the modern civilization; and broaden our views and raise our level of competence.

Ours is a throw-away society strongly influenced by consumerism as we value convenience over environmental protection. Even though we are environmentally conscious to some extent, we do not appear to be serious enough in taking measures to reduce consumption, let alone repairing and re-using old things instead of buying new ones. Much is known about what is happening whereas little is being done to effectively prevent the serious situation from becoming worse.

The causes of the development of the "throw-away society" are clear, so are its effects on the environment. We throw away out of convenience because societal conventions have us constantly move on to the next new fad or technology. For example, we are dumping large quantities of thrash, such as plastic bags and diapers that can pollute the environment. Likewise, we are discarding televisions, cell phones, computers and other plastics in exchange of new ones that unsurprisingly will become our future garbage. It is as if a product were designed or intended on purpose to fail or become less desirable over time, only to be thrown away after a certain amount of use. So much so, we are filling the environment with more rubbish than we can possibly dispose of, and as a result pollution is the price we are paying for the popular culture of consumerism in the age of mass production.

Nevertheless, there are no ready solutions to consumerism-related problems due mainly to the fact that the "throw-away" habits die hard, especially when often it could be more costly to repair old products than to buy new ones. Consequently, although many people have a critical view of over-consumption and excessive production of short-lived items, few people are actually able to resist the systematic attempts of business to make us wasteful as well as debt-ridden and permanently discontented individuals. To relieve the environmental impacts, we pretend to believe that one ideal solution should rest on educating consumers to voluntarily do "positive" buying--recycled and re-used. Without a doubt, this might be nothing but wishful thinking since such a measure is easier said than done in a well-to-do society, imagining that only extreme poverty could perhaps stop the "throw-away" trend. Fortunately, the good news is that there exist some kinds of technological know-how that may kindle the hope of finding a "green" solution, commonly called Waste-To-Energy (WTE) plants. Of course, it remains to be seen how efficiently those WTE plants can reduce waste volume and also contribute to resource recovery, thereby protecting the environment.

What with education and what with technology, it is expected that more could be done to combat the key problems in the "throw-away society". To be sure, environmental awareness alone is not enough to spare our planet from being further damaged if we do not change that consumer lifestyle which is not doing any favor to the environment. In a society gradually being used to obsessive consumerism, the cruel reality is that too many people now prefer convenience to environmental protection, while too few measures are likely to become effective anytime soon.