영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Philosopher Robert Nozick asked his readers to imagine a machine capable of producing any experience they desired, from writing a great novel to falling in love, all indistinguishable from reality once they were plugged in. Neuroscientists would simply stimulate the brain to generate a lifetime of perfectly satisfying experiences. If pleasure and the avoidance of pain were truly all that mattered, as classical hedonism claims, then everyone should rush to connect themselves permanently to such a machine. Yet when people actually consider the offer, most hesitate, and many refuse outright. Nozick took this reluctance as evidence that _______________.

When consumers compare two products and assume that the one labeled "eco-friendly" is automatically the more sustainable choice, they often overlook the complexity involved in verifying such a claim. Life cycle assessment, commonly abbreviated as LCA, _______________. This method examines raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal, compiling data on energy consumption and emissions generated at each stage. By tracing a product from its origin to its disposal, this approach reveals impacts that might otherwise remain hidden from consumers who see only the finished item on a shelf. For example, an electric vehicle may produce no emissions while being driven, yet the mining of metals for its battery can generate substantial environmental costs elsewhere. Without accounting for these earlier stages, a superficial comparison could mistakenly present the vehicle as entirely emission-free. Therefore, researchers increasingly rely on life cycle assessment to make informed decisions rather than trusting labels alone.

Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. Most modern facilities rely on reverse osmosis, a technique in which seawater is forced through membranes whose microscopic pores block salt while letting water molecules pass. Because this method consumes far less energy than the thermal distillation once dominant in the industry, it has become the preferred choice for large-scale plants. Nevertheless, _______________. For instance, the process generates a concentrated byproduct called brine, which, when discharged without adequate dilution, can raise local salinity to levels that harm marine life. Pumping seawater through membranes at high pressure also demands substantial electricity, so plants powered by fossil fuels can worsen the emissions that intensify drought. Therefore, engineers increasingly argue that desalination should be treated not as a stand-alone remedy but as one component of a broader conservation strategy.

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them changes shape as an economy matures. The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis borrowed from earlier theories of income inequality, proposes that _______________. In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, treating clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. Critics, by contrast, argue that the curve rests on a narrow selection of pollutants that happen to decline with wealth, while ignoring greenhouse gases and resource depletion, which show no comparable tendency to fall.

The ecological footprint, a widely cited measure of how much biologically productive land and water a population requires to sustain its consumption, has become one of the most familiar tools for communicating humanity's environmental impact. By converting diverse activities, from driving to eating meat, into a single unit of land area, the measure allows policymakers to grasp whether a lifestyle exceeds what the planet can regenerate. This simplicity, however, is also the source of its most persistent criticism. Because the footprint aggregates dissimilar impacts, such as carbon emissions and water scarcity, into one composite figure, _______________. A region might reduce its footprint by lowering carbon emissions while simultaneously depleting a local aquifer, yet the aggregate number could still appear to improve, concealing damage that demands urgent attention. Furthermore, the method assumes that all bio-productive land is roughly interchangeable, treating a hectare of forest as equivalent to a hectare of farmland, even though the two provide markedly different ecological functions.

Rewilding, a conservation strategy that seeks to restore natural processes with minimal human interference, has gained attention as traditional conservation struggles to halt biodiversity loss. (A) Compensation programs reimbursing farmers for livestock losses, alongside ecotourism initiatives creating local income, have proven essential to sustaining public support. Ultimately, rewilding succeeds not by removing human influence but by renegotiating the relationship between people and the wild species they must coexist with. (B) Rather than managing landscapes according to a fixed blueprint, rewilding projects often reintroduce key species, such as large predators, whose presence can trigger cascading effects. Advocates point to the reintroduction of wolves in certain parks, where predation altered grazing behavior, allowing riverside vegetation to recover and stabilizing soil that had long been eroding. (C) Skeptics, however, warn that rewilding can provoke serious conflict with nearby communities, particularly when predators prey on livestock or restored habitats limit land for agriculture. Moreover, critics argue that restoring landscapes to an imagined pristine state is scientifically dubious, since ecosystems have long been shaped by human activity.

When a resource is shared among many users, none of whom bears the full cost of its depletion, each individual is tempted to extract as much value as possible before others do the same. (A) This dynamic, famously labeled the tragedy of the commons, describes how shared pastures and fisheries can be degraded even when every participant privately understands the danger of overuse. (B) A single herder who adds one more animal to a communal pasture gains the entire benefit of that addition, whereas the resulting damage to the grass is shared among other herders who depend on the land. Because self-interest offers no incentive to restrain consumption unilaterally, the resource tends to be exhausted long before any user intends such an outcome. (C) For decades, economists assumed that only two remedies existed: strict regulation or the conversion of shared resources into private property. Elinor Ostrom challenged this assumption, however, by documenting communities that had sustainably managed fisheries and forests for generations through locally devised rules and mutual monitoring rather than external control.

Emissions trading, a market-based mechanism for curbing greenhouse gases, allows governments to set an overall limit on carbon output while letting firms trade permits within that limit. (A) Under this system, known as cap-and-trade, companies that cut emissions more cheaply than required can sell surplus allowances to firms facing higher reduction costs. Proponents argue that this flexibility lets society reach a given environmental target at the lowest overall cost, since abatement shifts toward whoever can achieve it most economically. (B) Consequently, many economists now advocate combining trading with a price floor, a minimum permit price that keeps the market from collapsing during weak demand, thereby preserving the cost-effectiveness for which trading is valued. (C) Critics, however, contend that trading schemes frequently allocate too many permits, a flaw that has historically depressed carbon prices and blunted incentives to invest in cleaner technology. For example, early phases of several regional markets granted allowances so generously that permit prices collapsed, leaving polluters with little pressure to change their practices.

주어진 문장: This hidden water is rarely visible to consumers, since it never appears on a receipt or a product label, yet its cumulative volume can rival or exceed the water used directly in a household. When people evaluate their personal contribution to water scarcity, they often consider only the water that flows directly from household taps, overlooking a far larger quantity consumed indirectly through the goods they purchase. ① The water footprint, a concept that extends this narrow view, measures the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services an individual or a nation consumes. ② Central to this concept is the notion of virtual water, the water embedded invisibly within a product, from irrigating cotton fields to livestock raised for meat. ③ For instance, producing a kilogram of beef can require several thousand liters of water, whereas a kilogram of vegetables typically demands a fraction of that amount. ④ Nations that import water-intensive goods rather than producing them domestically are importing virtual water from regions that may face severe shortages. ⑤ Critics caution, however, that focusing exclusively on aggregate volume can mislead policymakers, since a liter of water drawn from a region suffering drought carries far greater consequences than one drawn from a water-abundant area. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

주어진 문장: In simple terms, this process prevents carbon dioxide from ever reaching the atmosphere in the first place. As efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology known as carbon capture and storage. ① This technology involves separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. ② Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that prevent it from escaping into the air. Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage functions as a bridge technology, allowing heavy industries to keep operating while more sustainable alternatives are developed. ③ For instance, cement and steel production, both of which release carbon dioxide as an unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. ④ However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively expensive and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. ⑤ Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an indispensable role in reaching emission targets. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤