Head, interpret and analyse texts: 8. Skim read the following passago and then answer the questions that follow. You
have 2 minutes:
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Every second, 1 hectare of the world's rainforest is destroyed. That's
Pulp Friction
equivalent to two football fields. An area the size of New York City is lost
every day. In a year, that adds up to 31 million hectares - more than the
land area of Poland. This alarming rate of destruction has serious
consequences for the environment; scientists estimate, for example, that
137 species of plant, insect or animal become extinct every day due to
logging. In British Columbia, where, since 1990, thirteen rainforest
valleys have been clear cut, 142 species of salmon have already become
extinct, and the habitats of grizzly bears, wolves and many other
creatures are threatened. Logging, however, provides jobs, profits, taxes
for the government and cheap products of all kinds for consumers, so
the government is reluctant to restrict or control it.
by demonstrated application of the
Much of Canada's forestry production goes towards making pulp and
paper. According to the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, Canada
supplies 34% of the world's wood pulp and 49% of its newsprint paper.
If these paper products could be produced in some other way, Canadian
forests could be preserved. Recently, a possible alternative way of
producing paper has been suggested by agriculturalists and
environmentalists: a plant called hemp.
Hemp has been cultivated by many cultures for thousands of years. It
produces fibre, which can be made into paper, fuel, oils, textiles, food,
and rope. For centuries, it was essential to the economies of many
countries, because it was used to make the ropes and cables used on
sailing ships; colonial expansion and the establishment of a world-wide
trading network would not have been feasible without hemp. Nowadays,
ships' cables are usually made from wire or synthetic fibres, but
scientists are now suggesting that the cultivation of hemp should be
revived for the production of paper and pulp. According to its
proponents, four times as much paper can be produced from land using
hemp rather than trees, and many environmentalists believe that the
large-scale cultivation of hemp could reduce the pressure on Canada's
forests.
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However, there is a problem: hemp is illegal in many countries of the
world. This plant, so useful for fibre, rope, oil, fuel and textiles, is a
species of cannabis, related to the plant from which marijuana is
produced. In the late 1930s, a movement to ban the drug marijuana
began to gather force, resulting in the eventual banning of the cultivation
not only of the plant used to produce the drug, but also of the
commercial fibre-producing hemp plant. Although both George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp in large quantities on their
American growing the plant today would soon find himself​