The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction
between alive things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the 1. ______
physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and animal
life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole
span of earthly time, the opposite effect, on which life actually 2. ______
modifies its surroundings, has been relative slight. Only in the 3. ______
present century have one species—man acquired significant power 4. ______
to alter the nature of his world.
During the past quarter century this power has not only
become increasingly great but it has changed in character. The
most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the
pollution of air, earth, rivers, and sea with er and even lethal 5. ______
materials. This pollution is for the most part recoverable. In this 6. ______
now universal pollution of the environment, chemicals are the
sinister partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the
world and the very nature of its life. Chemicals sprayed on
croplands (农田) or forests or gardens lie long in soil, enter into 7. ______
living organisms, passing from one to other in a chain of poisoning 8. ______
and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until
they emerge and combine into new forms that kill vegetation,
sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those that drink from 9. ______
once pure wells. "Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his
own creation," as a scientist has said.
It took hundreds of millions of years to product the life that 10. ______
now inhabits the earth. Given time—time not in years but in
millennia—life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. But in the
modem world there is no time.