中央大學で2013年に出題された9題中8題めの問題です。月曜日と金曜日に、パラグラフ毎に解説して參ります。
次の英文を読み、(37)～(45)の設問に答えなさい。
[Ｉ] In 1924, a young mining engineer named Ira Joralemon made an earnest address to the Commonwealth Club of California. “The age of electricity and of copper will be short,” he said. “At the intense rate of production that must come, the copper supply of the world will last hardly a score of years... Our civilization based on electrical power will decline and die.”
[Ⅱ] Copper ―― and civilization ―― are still here. Yet almost a century on from Joralemon’s warning, similar wake-up calls can still be heard. The price of copper has surged to a series of all-time highs on the back of increased demand from China. The supply of copper will soon start to fall, say some; reserves will run out within a couple of decades, say others.
[Ⅲ] Such prophecies of doom overlook something important. For most of our history, (A)the way technology has developed has been determined by the materials available: think Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. But while we might label our era the Silicon Age ―― or perhaps more accurately, the *Hydrocarbon Age ―― we are not dependent on one technology any more. These days the rapid pace of technological development is more likely to change the materials we rely on.
[Ⅳ] The Engineering and Mining Journal-Press emphasized the point in a far-sighted editorial response to Joralemon’s warning. “We can hardly believe that all our electricity will go back to the clouds where Benjamin Franklin found it, just because copper is scarce,” it said. “Maybe copper won’t be required at all for transmission purposes; we may just use something else.” And indeed we do, for long-distance communications that once required large quantities of wire. We take full advantage of *optical fibers, a technology whose widespread use was hardly imagined back in the 1920s.
[Ⅴ] That makes trying to predict tomorrow’s materials landscape too risky over timescales of mere decades, let alone millennia. “Within 50 or 60 years we will have made so much progress that it’s almost impossible to make any predictions beyond that,” says Ian Pearson of Futurizon, a consultancy specializing in future technologies.
[Ⅵ] The *rare-earth metals are a case in point. Shortages of these elements, whose applications range from touchscreens to batteries and energy-efficient light bulbs, are widely predicted within the next decade or so. Much beyond that, though, and it seems implausible to argue that we won’t have innovated our way around supply bottlenecks.
[Ⅶ] “It’s fashionable to talk about a shortage of *neodymium for magnets in wind turbines, for example,” says Pearson, “but the fundamental problem is not neodymium. It is how we extract energy efficiently from wind.” No doubt there are as yet undreamed-of ways to do that without building turbines. In the longer term, other innovations may render the whole idea of wind energy old-fashioned.
[Ⅷ] Whatever problems we do face in the far future, Pearson reckons a shortage of materials is unlikely to be one of them. “Regardless of what humanity is like in 500 or 1,000 years’ time, we will probably still be filling only 10, maybe 15 meters of air above ground with stuff,” he says. “But there’s 6,000 kilometers of ground with stuff in it beneath us.” It’s also plausible that it will become technologically and economically possible to mine nearby *asteroids for elements we may be running short of.
[Ⅸ] To ensure the continued survival of our species, it makes sense that we should save the resources of the Earth and its surroundings, rather than exploit them. Technology could make that easier. Whenever we use stuff, we hardly ever export the constituent atoms and molecules beyond the Earth system; we merely rearrange them chemically, for example converting carbon locked in fossil fuels into carbon dioxide. At present, we are not particularly good at converting our waste products into something useful. But given a few more decades, things could look very different thanks to innovations.
[Ⅹ] By then things will probably be out of our hands anyway, says Ray Hammond, another consultant. At some point, we will create computers far more capable than ourselves. “What these machines may be able to suggest to us in the way of resource management or in the construction of synthetic resources is wholly unknowable,” he says.
[XI] That suggests we should be worrying about other existential threats in the far future. “The idea that ‘things will run out’ is to think about the future using today’s concepts,” Hammond says. [728 words]
*Hydrocarbon: 炭化水素（石油、天然ガスなど） *optical fibers: 光ファイバー
*rare-earth metals: 希土類金属 *neodymium: ネオジム（元素の名前）
*asteroids: 主に火星と木星の軌道間に多数存在する小惑星
設問A
(37) 第Ⅰ段落から第Ⅴ段落までの内容と一致するものを1～5の中から一つ選びなさい。
1 Ira Joralemon believed in the permanency of our civilization.
2 Today nobody gives a warning similar to that of Ira Joralemon.
3 Benjamin Franklin devoted his time and energy to the development of new materials.
4 Today copper is the only material that can be used for long-distance communication.
5 The progress of technology makes it almost impossible to forecast tomorrow’s metal landscapes.
設問B
(38) 第VI段落から第XI段落までの内容と一致するものを1～5の中から一つ選びなさい。
1 Today rare-earth metals are not widely used, because we still have no ideas about how to apply them.
2 Pearson thinks that the shortage of rare-earth metals is the most important problem we have to solve immediately.
3 Innovations of technology could make it easier to save the resources of the Earth.
4 When we make use of fossil fuels, we convert carbon dioxide into carbon.
5 The day will never come when we can create computers much more capable than human beings.
設問C
以下の(39)～(44)について、第Ⅰ段落から第XI段落までの内容と一致する場合は1を、一致しない場合は2を書きなさい。
(39) 中国で需要が減っているにもかかわらず、銅価格は高騰し続けている。
(40) 光ファイバーの普及は1920年代から予測されていた。
(41) 長期的には現在の風力発電のやり方自体、時代遅れになるかもしれない。
(42) いずれ地球で不足する元素を小惑星で採掘することも夢ではない。
(43) 将来、物質を構成する原子や分子を地球外へ輸出する産業が繁栄するだろう。
(44) 現在、廃棄物を有益なものに変えることはあまりうまくいっていない。
設問D
(45) 下線部(A)を和訳しなさい。
