Chapter 5 The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role | class 11th | Important Question for English Hornbill

The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role Important Extra Questions and Answers Class 11 English Hornbill

The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role Extra Questions and Answers Short Answer Type’

Question 1.
What awareness according to Nani Palkhivala is growing worldwide? Why?
Answer:
The movement, which has gripped the imagination of the entire human race, is the worldwide consciousness that the earth itself is a living organism of which we are parts. It has its own metabolic needs and vital processes that need attention because the earth’s vital signs reveal its declining health.

Question 2.
What is propagated by the concept of sustainable expansion?
Answer:
The World Commission on Environment and Development popularized the concept of sustainable development in 1987. It stressed the idea of development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, i.e., without stripping the natural world of resources future generations would need.

Question 3.
What is the global concern raised by Mr Lester R. Brown that threatens the very existence of man?
Answer:
Mr Lester R. Brown has noted the earth’s principal biological systems as fisheries, forests, grasslands, and croplands the foundation of the global economic system. They provide us with our food and virtually all the raw materials for industries. However, human claims are exhausting these resources leading to the collapse and disappearance of fisheries and grasslands.

Question 4.
What are the reasons that are leading to depletion of our natural resources?
Answer:
In a protein-conscious and protein-hungry world, over-fishing is common. In poor countries, local forests are being destroyed in order to procure firewood for cooking. As a consequence, in some places, firewood has become so expensive that fuel costs more than the food.

Question 5.
What steps has the Indian government taken to ensure the protection of the environment? What is the impact?
Answer:
The Indian government through Article 48A of the Constitution of India provides that the State shall try to protect and improve the environment and safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country. But the law has not had the due impact as laws are neither valued nor enforced in India.

Question 6.
The population in the world is growing at an alarming rate. Comment.
Answer:
The growing world population is deforming the future of human society. Human population reached its first billion around the year 1800. By the year 1900, a second billion was added, and another 3.7 billion in the twentieth century. Presently, the world population is estimated at 5.7 billion. Every day the world population increases by one million.

Question 7.
Why is the growing population detrimental to the world’s progress?
Answer:
Development will not be possible if the present increase in numbers continues. The rich get richer and the poor produce more children, hampering their economic growth. More children do not mean more workers, merely more people without work. Excessive population perpetuates poverty. People would die of hunger unless population growth is controlled.

Question 8.
Why is our age the ‘Era of Responsibility’?
Answer:
A growing anxiety about the survival of our planet has surfaced for the first time in human history. The emerging new world vision a holistic view of the source of our survival has steered in the Era of Responsibility; an ecological view of the world as a complete whole and not a disconnected collection of parts.

The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role Extra Questions and Answers Long Answer Type

Question 1.
“The earth’s vital signs reveal a patient in declining health.” What are these ‘vital signs’?
Answer:
A three-year study using satellites and aerial photography conducted by the United Nations, warns that the environment has worsened so badly that it is ‘critical’ in many of the eighty-eight countries investigated.

A recent report of our Parliament’s Estimates Committee has highlighted the near disastrous exhaustion of India’s forests over the last four decades. India, according to reliable data, is losing its forests at the rate of 3.7 million acres a year. Large areas, officially designated as forestland, “are already virtually treeless”.

The actual loss of forests is estimated to be about eight times the rate indicated by government statistics.
The world’s ancient patrimony of tropical forests is now eroding at the rate of forty to fifty million acres a year, and the growing use of dung for burning deprives the soil of an important natural fertilizer. The World Bank estimates that a five-fold increase in the rate of forest planting is needed to cope with the expected fuel wood demand.

Question 2.
Various visionaries and academicians have warned against hazardous consequences if we do not wake up to our responsibilities towards the environment. Elaborate.
Answer:
Mr L.K. Jha, a member of an international commission which dealt with the question of ecology and environment, raised the question of whether we would leave our successors a parched planet with increasing deserts, impoverished landscapes and ailing environment. Mr Lester R. Brown in his thought-provoking book, The Global Economic Prospect, points out that the earth’s principal biological systems, i.e., fisheries, forests, grasslands, and croplands form the foundation of the global economic system.

In large areas of the world, human claims on these systems are reaching an unsustainable level, a point where their productivity is being impaired. Dr Myers warns against the depletion of forests as a result of which several species face extinction. James Speth, the President of the World Resources Institute, said that we are losing the forests at an acre-and-a-half to a second.

Question 3.
What are the four systems that sustain life on earth? What threats are they facing?
Answer:
Mr Lester R. Brown in his thought-provoking book, The Global Economic Prospect, points out that the earth’s principal biological systems, i.e., fisheries, forests, grasslands, and croplands form the foundation of the global economic system. In addition to supplying our food, these four systems provide almost all the raw materials for industry except minerals and petroleum-derived synthetics. It is because of this that fisheries collapse, forests disappear, grasslands are converted into barren wastelands and croplands deteriorate. In a protein-conscious and protein-hungry world, over-fishing is common. In poor countries, local forests are being demolished in order to procure firewood for cooking. Since tropical forests house various species of life, they face extinction as a result of its destruction.

Question 4.
“Fertility falls as incomes rise, education spreads, and health improves.” Justify.
Answer:
Undoubtedly, the growth of world population is one of the strongest factors disfiguring the future of human society. The present world population is estimated at 5.7 billion. Every four days the world population increases by one million. Development is not possible if the present increase in numbers continue. The rich get richer and the poor beget more children, which in turn makes them poorer. More children do not mean more workers, merely more people without work.

The choice is really between control of population and perpetuation of poverty. The population of India has crossed 1.3 billion today. This leaves little doubt that hordes of people would die in their hungry hutments unless population control is given topmost priority.Compulsory sterilization is not the solution. Masses should be educated so that they volunteer for family planning without introducing an element of compulsion. It ought to be understood that the choice is between control of population and continuation of poverty.