考点规范练30(必修5 Module 6) 考点规范练第60页 .阅读理解 A It was an interesting conversation with Paul,my local greengrocer the other day when I noticed the bird feed in his store that has recently appeared.What made everyone feel the need to feed our wild birds?Bird feed has become a regular item on a shopping list as normal as a bag of potatoes.I didn’t just wonder this privately but I asked my reliable groceryman what was going on.Exactly how did the birds make do for so long before we started feeding them?Judging by the popularity of this current consumer pattern I wonder just how much the wild bird food industry is worth.It must be profitable to the local groceryman who replaced a whole row of food for human consumption to make room for it.He smiled at me as if he’d been waiting for these questions for a while and he seemed surprisingly ready for the conversation. The fact is animals’ habitats are disappearing.We’re cutting and clearing trees to make way for fields for cattle and sheep,creating fields of nothing but bare land.We’re changing the entire ecosystem in the name of big mechanised agriculture and meat production that clogs(堵塞) your heart and eventually kills you along with the wildlife it killed first.Not to mention roads and industry which wipe out everything.“We’re living in a different world,”he said.“Don’t take me wrong.I mean it in the best possible way,but wildlife is a thing of the past.”I’d thought of this concept before but to hear it said out loud by a small shop owner in the west of Ireland jolted me slightly.An earth of the future where species became fewer?Skies,land,oceans empty of wildlife?People living in a sterile(荒瘠的) world?Is that really where we’re headed? |