Worldly Wealth IELTS Reading Answers and Explanations

The ‘Worldly Wealth’ IELTS Reading passage explains a good amount of potential for sustainable growth through many alternative sources, etc. Practising these kinds of academic reading passages for your IELTS Exam will boost your band score in many ways!  

As the IELTS Reading is considered the second easiest module of the IELTS exam after Listening, get ready to practice and solve the ‘Worldly Wealth’ IELTS Academic Reading now!

The types of questions that are found in this ‘Worldly Wealth’ IELTS Reading Passage are: 

• IELTS Reading Yes/No/Not Given
• IELTS Reading Summary Completion
• IELTS Reading Multiple Choice Questions

IELTS Reading Passage - Worldly Wealth

Can the future population of the world enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, with possessions, space and mobility, without crippling the environment?

The world's population is expected to stabilize at around nine billion. Will it be possible for nine billion people to have the lifestyle enjoyed today only by the wealthy? One school of thought says no: not only should the majority of the world's people resign themselves to poverty forever, but rich nations must also revert to simpler lifestyles in order to save the planet.

Admittedly, there may be political or social barriers to achieving a rich world. But in fact there seems to be no insuperable physical or ecological reason why nine billion people should not achieve a comfortable lifestyle, using technology only slightly more advanced than that which we now possess. In thinking about the future of civilization, we ought to start by asking w hat people want. The evidence demonstrates that as people get richer they w ant a greater range of personal technology, they want lots of room (preferably near or in natural surroundings) and they w ant greater speed in travel. More possessions, more space, more mobility.

In the developed world, the personal technologies of the wealthy, including telephones, washing machines and ears, have become necessities within a generation or two. Increasing productivity that results in decreasing costs for such goods has been responsible for the greatest gains in the standard of living, and there is every reason to believe that this will continue.

As affluence grows, the amount of energy and raw- materials used for production of machinery will therefore escalate. But this need not mean an end to the machine age. Rather than being thrown away, materials from old machinery can be recycled by manufacturers. And long before all fossil fuels are exhausted, their rising prices may compel industrial society not only to become more energy efficient but also to find alternative energy sources sufficient for the demands of an advanced technological civilization nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, solar energy, chemical photosynthesis, geothermal, biomass or some yet unknown source of energy.

The growth of cities and suburbs is often seen as a threat to the environment. However, in fact the increasing amount of land consumed by agriculture is a far greater danger than urban sprawl. Stopping the growth of farms is the best way to preserve many of the world's remaining wild areas. But is a dramatic downsizing of farmland possible? Thanks to the grow th of agricultural productivity, reforestation and ‘re-wilding’ has been under way in industrial countries for generations. Since 1950 more land in the US has been set aside in parks than has been occupied by urban and suburban growth. And much of what was farmland in the nineteenth century is now forest again. Taking the best Iowa maize growers as the norm for world food productivity, it has been calculated that less than a tenth of present cropland could support a population of 10 billion.

In The Environment Game, a vision of a utopia that would be at once high-tech and environmentalist. Nigel Calder suggested that ‘nourishing but unpalatable primary food produced by industrial techniques - like yeast from petroleum may be fed to animals, so that we can continue to eat our customary meat, eggs. milk, butter, and cheese and so that people in underdeveloped countries can have adequate supplies of animal protein for the first time.'

In the long run. tissue-cloning techniques could be used to grow desired portions of meat by themselves. Once their DNA has been extracted to create cow less steaks and chicken less drumsticks, domesticated species of livestock, bred for millennia to be stupid or to have grotesquely enhanced traits, should be allowed to become extinct, except for a few specimens in zoos. However, game such as wild deer, rabbits and wild ducks will be ever more abundant as farms revert to wilderness, so this could supplement the laboratory-grown meat in the diets of tomorrow's affluent.

With rising personal incomes come rising expectations of mobility. This is another luxury of today’s rich that could become a necessity of tomorrow’s global population - particularly if its members choose to live widely dispersed in a post-agrarian wilderness. In his recent book Free Flight. James Fallows, a pilot as well as a writer, describes serious attempts by both state and private entrepreneurs in the USA to promote an ‘air taxi' system within the price range of today’s middle class and perhaps tomorrow’s global population.

Two of the chief obstacles to the science fiction fantasy of the personal plane or hover car are price and danger. While technological improvements are driving prices down, piloting an aircraft in three dimensions is still more difficult than driving a car in two. and pilot error causes more fatalities than driver error. But before long our aircraft and cars will be piloted by computers which are never tired or stressed.

So perhaps there are some grounds for optimism when viewing the future of civilization. With the help of technology, and without putting serious strains on the global environment, possessions, space and mobility can be achieved for all the projected population of the world.

Questions

Questions 1-6

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage? In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write

• YES if the statement agrees with the information given
• NO if the statement contradicts the information given
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this

1. Today's wealthy people ignore the fact that millions are living in poverty.

2. There are reasons why the future population of the world may not enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.

3. The first thing to consider when planning for the future is environmental protection.

4. As manufactured goods get cheaper, people will benefit more from them.

5. It may be possible to find new types of raw materials for use in the production of machinery

6. The rising prices of fossil fuels may bring some benefits.

Questions 7-12

• Complete the summary below.
• Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
• Write your answers in boxes 7-12 on your answer sheet

 Space for an increased population

According to the writer, the use of land for 7________  is the most serious threat to the environment. However, in the US. There has already been an increase in the amount of land used for 8_____________  forests. Far less land would be required to feed the world's population if the 9________  of the land could be improved worldwide. It has also been claimed that the industrial production of animal foods could allow greater access to animals 10 ___________ by the entire world’s population.
Scientists could use 11________  from domesticated animals to help produce meat by tissue cloning, and these species could then be allowed to die out. In addition to this type of meat. 12__________ will also be widely available.

Questions 13 - 14

• Choose the correct answer, A. B, C or D
• Write your answers in boxes 13-14 on your answer sheet. 

13. Greater mobility may be a feature of the future because of changes in

1. The location of housing.
2. patterns of employment.
3. centers of transport.
4. the distribution of wealth.

14. Air transport will be safe because of

1. new type of aircraft.
2. better training methods.
3. three-dimensional models.
4. improved technology.

Answers for the "Wordly Wealth" with Location and Explanations

Tricks to Tackle Question Types in ‘Worldly Wealth’ Reading Passage

Yes/No/Not Given Questions

• When dealing with Yes/No/Not Given questions, always try to remember that your task is to judge the writer’s opinion or claim and not the general facts. 
• The key tip here is to read each statement with patience and match it with the exact idea in the reading passage.
• Then, checking if the author clearly supports it, rejects it, or never mentions it. 
• A “Yes” means that the statement directly agrees with the writer’s viewpoint in the passage.
• While a “No” means the reading text clearly states the opposite. 
• If you find yourself inferring or assuming the missing information in the statement, the correct answer is almost and always “Not Given.” 
• A practical trick is to highlight strong words like - ‘always, only, completely, never,’ since these absolute words often make a statement too extreme. Therefore, it is more likely to be “No” or “Not Given.” 
• Read the passage line-by-line instead of scanning big chunks, since these question statements follow the order of the passage, allowing you to locate answers properly.

Summary Completion

• For the summary completion tasks, the main goal is to first read the entire summary in order to understand the overall idea of it before searching for the missing words. 
• You should look for paraphrased words and sentences because the words in the summary rarely appear similar to the passage.
• Once you can predict the word type, like a noun, verb, adjective, or a number, you can scan the text around the relevant part of the reading text to find the correct answer.
• Another powerful tip is to match the synonyms. If the given summary paragraph uses “increase,” the reading passage might say “rising” or “grow.” 
• Always check the instruction that mentions the word limit.
• Don’t forget, the answers come in order as per the reading text. Once you find the first blank’s answer, in the passage, the next blank’s answer will be there and so on.  
• Avoid choosing long and complicated phrases if the summary’s blank requires single words (as per the instruction) and make sure that the sentence is grammatically correct after you insert the answer.

Multiple Choice Questions

• When tackling the MCQs, begin by underlining keywords in the question and read the given options quickly to understand what kind of information you must be looking for. 
• Figure out if you should be finding out reasons, opinions, or results. Then, read the given reading passage section carefully and eliminate the list of options one by one. 
• This trick of elimination is extremely useful because the IELTS exam often includes distractor options and they use the same words as the text but carry a slightly different meaning. 
• You must avoid choosing an answer just because it contains familiar words. Instead, match the meaning and not the words.
• Remember, multiple choice questions follow the order of the reading passage.
• Do not spend too much time on one question. If you don’t find the answer you were looking for, write the answer you think might be correct and move on.

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