雅思阅读

📖 Reading Passage

The concept of 'environmental carrying capacity' refers to the maximum population size of a species that an ecosystem can sustain indefinitely, given the available resources. In human terms, this notion is complicated by technological innovation, which can temporarily raise the ceiling by increasing resource efficiency. However, critics argue that such advancements often merely postpone inevitable limits, as they tend to generate new forms of consumption and waste. A key study by Meadows et al. simulated various scenarios of resource use and population growth, concluding that without deliberate policy intervention, overshoot and eventual collapse are likely. Yet, proponents of 'ecological modernization' contend that market mechanisms and green technologies can decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, thereby expanding the carrying capacity in practice. This debate underscores the tension between optimistic technological fixes and precautionary limits, a central theme in sustainability science.