영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

As solar and wind power expand rapidly across national grids, engineers face a challenge that ①receive far less public attention than the construction of the generating facilities themselves. Unlike conventional power plants, which can adjust their output to match demand at almost any moment, solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity only when sunlight or wind is available, ②producing supply that fluctuates constantly. One proposed solution involves large-scale battery storage systems, ③which absorb surplus electricity generated during periods of high output and release it later when generation declines. Grid operators must therefore invest in infrastructure capable of ④accommodating this variability, rather than assuming renewable sources can simply replace fossil fuels without adjustment. Without such investment, integrating renewable energy could paradoxically undermine the very reliability that modern electricity grids are ⑤expected to provide.

The ecological footprint, a widely cited measure of how much biologically productive land and water a population ①require to sustain its consumption, has become one of the most familiar tools for communicating humanity's environmental impact. By ②converting 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, it can obscure important differences among problems ③that require distinct policy responses. A region might reduce its footprint by lowering carbon emissions while simultaneously ④depleting 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, ⑤treating a hectare of forest as equivalent to a hectare of farmland, even though the two provide markedly different ecological functions.

Every time a smartphone connects to a cell tower or a Wi-Fi network, it ①quietly records a data point that can later be pieced together into a detailed map of where its owner has been. Most users agree to this tracking without reading the fine print, assuming that a single company's database poses ②little threat. The real danger, however, emerges when location data from multiple sources is combined. A pattern that reveals a person's home, workplace, and daily route can ③expose far more than any single app ever intended to share. Companies often argue that anonymized data cannot be traced back to individuals, yet researchers have ④repeatedly shown that a handful of location points is enough to identify a specific person with striking accuracy. As a result, privacy experts increasingly insist that location data deserves ⑤minimal legal protection, similar to that of medical records.

Consider a village green shared freely by every herder in the community, where each individual may graze as many animals as they wish without paying any fee. From the perspective of any single herder, adding one more animal to the shared pasture brings a clear personal ①loss, since the extra income belongs entirely to that herder alone. The cost of the additional grazing, however, is spread thinly across every herder who uses the green, so no single individual bears more than a tiny fraction of the ②damage. Because this calculation favors adding more animals for every rational herder, the shared pasture is gradually ③overgrazed until it can no longer support any animals at all, harming the very community whose rational members caused the collapse. Philosophers use this scenario to illustrate a troubling gap between what benefits an individual in the short term and what preserves a shared resource in the ④long term, a gap that voluntary self-restraint alone rarely ⑤closes.

As more schools shift toward digital textbooks and online assignments, a student without reliable internet access at home faces a disadvantage that has little to do with talent or effort. During recent years, this gap became ①impossible to ignore, as families in rural areas or low-income neighborhoods struggled to complete schoolwork that assumed a stable connection and a personal device. Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a ②convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as more essential services move online by default. Closing this divide will require ③far less than simply distributing devices; it will demand ④sustained investment in the physical networks that carry information into every home, ⑤regardless of income or location.

Sensors buried in the soil now report moisture levels in real time, drones survey entire fields for signs of disease within minutes, and automated systems adjust irrigation without a farmer ever walking the rows. For large operations with the capital to invest, these tools have ①measurably increased yields while ②reducing water waste, addressing two problems that traditional farming has struggled with for generations. Smaller family farms, however, often ③cannot afford the upfront cost of this equipment, and some worry that the gap between high-tech and traditional operations will only widen as the technology advances further. There is also a quieter cultural cost that rarely appears in productivity reports: generations of farming knowledge risk being ④preserved by dashboards and automated alerts that few young farmers are taught to question, a loss productivity reports rarely ⑤capture.

Cities are frequently several degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, which intensifies in summer and threatens public health. This disparity arises largely because asphalt and concrete absorb solar radiation during the day and slowly release it as heat throughout the night, preventing urban areas from cooling down. Furthermore, the scarcity of vegetation in densely built areas removes a natural cooling mechanism, since plants lower temperatures by evaporating water from their leaves. To address this problem, urban planners _______________. One widely used solution involves reflective "cool" roofing engineered to reflect more sunlight than dark rooftops absorb. Another strategy, green infrastructure, incorporates rooftop gardens and tree-lined streets that provide shade while releasing moisture. In contrast, some cities have pursued permeable pavements that let water seep through and evaporate, cooling nearby surfaces. Collectively, these strategies show that reducing urban heat depends on combining approaches suited to a city's geography.

Before a large-scale construction project such as a highway or dam receives government approval, planners in many countries are required to conduct an environmental impact assessment, _______________. This process begins with a baseline survey, in which specialists document existing conditions, including wildlife, water quality, and air composition, so that future changes can be measured against a reference point. Analysts then model how the project might alter these conditions, drawing on data from comparable developments. For instance, a proposed highway that would bisect a forest might be evaluated for its potential to fragment habitats, disrupting migration routes on which certain species depend. If the assessment identifies unacceptable risks, planners may be required to redesign the project or adopt mitigation measures such as wildlife corridors. Critics contend, however, that assessments are sometimes treated as a bureaucratic formality rather than a genuine constraint, since developers who commission the studies retain strong influence over how the findings are interpreted.

Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. (A) 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. (B) Nevertheless, desalination remains an inherently costly and environmentally burdensome solution, a fact often overlooked amid enthusiasm for ending water shortages. 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. (C) 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.

Scientists have long searched for a way to describe, in a single coherent framework, the outer limits within which human activity can safely continue without destabilizing the planet's fundamental systems. (A) The concept of planetary boundaries, introduced by earth-system researchers, identifies nine interconnected processes, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen pollution, each possessing a threshold beyond which abrupt and irreversible change becomes likely. (B) Some philosophers have likened this framework to a ship's safe operating margin, within which passengers may move freely without risking the vessel's stability. Critics, however, contend that the boundaries are drawn with more confidence than the data can support. (C) Unlike conventional environmental limits, often defined locally, these boundaries are framed at a planetary scale, reflecting the idea that the Earth functions as a single interdependent system rather than a collection of isolated regions. Crossing one boundary, proponents argue, does not merely damage the system involved but can also destabilize others, since climate, oceans, and land are bound together by feedback loops that transmit disturbance across the system.