Read the passage and answer the questions that follow: Climate change will…
2023
Read the passage and answer the questions that follow:
Climate change will have broad impacts on human society. Changes projected to occur in the coming century or two won't have the apocalyptic, civilization-destroying character of, say an all-out nuclear war or a direct hit from a large asteroid. But climate change will be disruptive in many ways to a civilization whose planetary home is already under stress from the demands of billions of human beings.
The physical impacts of climate change won't be evenly distributed around the globe. Low-lying coastal regions, for example, will suffer more from sea-level rise; continental interiors will see more drought; and high latitudes will warm disproportionately. For that reason alone, impacts will vary from country to country. But social, political, and economic considerations also alter the impact of a changing climate. That's because wealthier countries are better able to adapt to and counter deleterious effects. Wealthy countries can build protective seawalls to ward off the rising oceans; they can engineer massive water projects to ensure continuing supplies of freshwater; they can outbid poorer countries if declines in domestic agriculture require increased food imports; their advanced health care systems can better cope with spreading tropical diseases; and their robust economies can speed recovery from extreme weather events. We're forced to the unfortunate conclusion that climate change will exacerbate the gap between rich and poor nations, as those with the fewest resources will be the most vulnerable. This conclusion should be especially troubling because anthropogenic climate change is almost entirely the result of fossil fuel consumption, deforestation, and other activities carried out by or for the benefit of the developed world.
How will climate change affect the gap between the rich and poor countries?
Answer: A. It will increase the gap. — ConceptLiteral-comprehension questions are answered by locating the passage’s explicit claim and matching its relationship to the choice with the same…
- A.
It will increase the gap.
- B.
It will reduce the gap.
- C.
There will be no change in gap.
- D.
It will bridge the gap.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Concept
Literal-comprehension questions are answered by locating the passage’s explicit claim and matching its relationship to the choice with the same meaning. A word such as ‘exacerbate’ means to make an existing problem more severe.
Application
The passage contrasts wealthy countries’ ability to fund seawalls, water projects, food imports, health care, and recovery with poorer countries’ limited resources and greater vulnerability. It explicitly concludes that climate change will ‘exacerbate the gap’ between rich and poor nations. Therefore, the gap will increase.
Contrast
‘It will reduce the gap’ would require poorer countries to gain relative resilience, which the passage does not describe.
‘There will be no change in gap’ conflicts with the passage’s explicit statement that the disparity will be exacerbated.
‘It will bridge the gap’ means closing the disparity, whereas the passage describes poorer countries as becoming more vulnerable.
Cross-check
Replacing ‘exacerbate’ with its plain meaning, ‘make worse,’ preserves the sentence: climate change will make the rich–poor gap worse. This independently confirms that the gap will increase.