世界人口突破80亿啦！别慌，该吃吃该喝喝！
otherwise 否则；在其他方面 sensible 明智的；而sensitive是敏感的 send sb over the edge 使某人抓狂 be due to 应该，预期，预计。再比如：When's the baby due? 宝宝什么时候出世？Rose is due to start school in January. 罗斯一月份就要开始上学了。 alarm bell 警钟 clang 响起 pessimist 悲观主义者；而optimist是乐观主义者。 mass famine 大饥荒 prophecy 预言 self-proclaimed 自封的 mutually contradictory 相互矛盾的 divination 预言 doom 厄运
【参考译文】
It took a dozen years (from 1998 to 2010) for the global population to grow from 6bn to 7bn. It has taken the same length of time to notch up the next billion. Against the backdrop of catastrophising, it is worth recalling what is behind this growth: longer lives, improvements in nutrition and public health; falls in infant mortality, disease and maternal deaths in childbirth. The world’s population carried on growing even in the teeth of the covid-19 pandemic, despite the virus killing—according to The Economist’s best estimates—between 16m and 28m people. That would represent as much as a fifth of all deaths over the period.
【语言积累】
1 length of time 时长 2 notch up 达到；赢得 3 backdrop 背景 4 catastrophise 小题大做，杞人忧天 5 mortality 死亡率 6 maternal 母亲的；maternity leave 产假 7 carry on 继续=continue 8 in the teeth of…… 尽管遇到（困难、反对等）比如：The new policy was adopted in the teeth of fierce criticism.新政策尽管受到强烈的批评，但还是被采用了。
【参考译文】
全球人口从60亿增长到70亿花了十几年时间（从1998年到2010年）。下一个10亿人口也用了同样长的时间。在灾难化的背景下，值得回顾的是这种增长背后的原因：寿命延长、营养和公共卫生的改善；婴儿死亡率、疾病和产妇分娩死亡的下降。根据《经济学人》的最佳估计，尽管病毒杀死了1600万至2800万人，但世界人口仍在继续增长，即使在19号病毒大流行的情况下。这将占到这一时期所有死亡人数的五分之一。
Not much evidence, then, of a global demographic collapse. Nor is one coming soon. On current trends, the global population will reach 9bn in 2037 and peak at 10.4bn sometime between 2080 and 2100.
The spectre of overpopulation looks equally unthreatening. Even though the extra-billion milestones are passing with the same regularity, the global population growth rate is falling fast. In 1963 total population rose by 2.3%. In 2022 it grew by just 0.8%, the lowest rate since the 1950s.
【语言积累】
demographic 人口方面的；名词是demography
on current trends 依照当下趋势
peak at... 达到峰值……
spectre 鬼怪；恐惧；忧虑
equally unthreatening 没有任何威胁的
milestone 里程碑
regularity 常规；定期
因此，没有多少证据表明全球人口崩溃。也不会很快出现这种情况。按照目前的趋势，全球人口将在2037年达到90亿，并在2080年至2100年的某个时候达到104亿的峰值。
人口过剩的幽灵看起来同样不具威胁性。尽管超十亿的里程碑正在以同样的规律过去，但全球人口增长率正在快速下降。1963年，总人口增长了2.3%。2022年，它只增长了0.8%，是20世纪50年代以来的最低增长率。
How can growth be falling while the population rises steadily? The answer is that inertia and momentum matter hugely. The 1990s and 2000s were both decades of relatively fast population growth. The children born then are now reaching their child-bearing years. The number of adults aged between 18 and 49 was 2.2bn in 1987. It is 3.6bn now. But this bumper crop of potential parents seems to be choosing to have smaller families. The total fertility rate, which measures how many children a woman can expect to have in her lifetime, has plunged from 3.3 in 1990 to 2.3 now, only slightly above the “replacement rate”—at which the population stays constant—of about 2.1. Though the population continues to rise, the increase hardly seems uncontrolled.
【语言积累】
1 inertia 惰性；迟钝
2 momentum 推进力；动力；势头
3 child-bearing 抚养孩子的
4 bumper 异常大的；丰盛的；保险杠
5 fertility 可生育性；可繁殖性；肥沃。形容词是fertile；名词fertilizer是指肥料。
6 plunge 暴跌；骤降
7 stay constant 保持不变
【参考译文】
在人口稳步上升的同时，增长怎么可能下降？答案是，惯性和动力是非常重要的。1990年代和2000年代都是人口增长较快的几十年。那时候出生的孩子现在已经到了育龄期。1987年，18至49岁的成年人数量为22亿。现在是36亿人。但是这批潜在父母的大丰收似乎是选择了小家庭。总生育率（衡量一个妇女在她的一生中能有多少个孩子）已经从1990年的3.3骤降到现在的2.3，仅略高于 "更替率"--即人口保持恒定的2.1左右。尽管人口继续增长，但增长似乎没有得到控制。
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