In recent years, researchers from diverse fields have agreed that short-termism is now a significant problem in industrialised societies. The inability to engage with longer-term causes and consequences leads to some of the world's most serious problems: climate change, biodiversity collapse, and more. The historian Francis Cole argues that the West has entered a period where "only the present exists, a present characterised at once by the cruelty of the instant and by the boredom of an unending now".

It has been proved that people have a bias towards the present, focusing on loud attractions in the moment at the expense of the health, well-being and financial stability of their future selves or community. In business, this bias surfaces as short-sighted decisions. And on slow-burning problems like climate change, it translates into the unwillingness to make small sacrifices today that could make a major difference tomorrow. Instead, all that matters is next quarter's profit, or satisfying some other near-term desires.

These biased perspectives cannot be blamed on one single cause. It is fair to say, though, that our psychological biases play a major role. People's hesitancy to delay satisfaction is the most obvious example, but there are others.One of them is about how the most accessible information in the present affects decisions about the future. For instance, you might hear someone say: "It's cold this winter, so I needn't worry about global warming."Another is that loud and urgent matters are given too much importance, making people ignore longer-term trends that arguably matter more. This is when a pop star draws far more attention than, say, gradual biodiversity decline.

As a psychologist once joked, if aliens wanted to weaken humanity, they wouldn't send ships; they would invent climate change. Indeed, when it comes to environmental transformations, we can develop a form of collective "poor memory", and each new generation can believe the state of affairs they encounter is nothing out of the ordinary. Older people today, for example, can remember a time with insect-covered car windscreens after long drives. Children, on the other hand, have no idea that insect population has dropped dramatically.

Questions:
question_stem: The author quotes Francis Cole mainly to ________
choices: tag: A
text: draw a comparison

tag: B
text: introduce a topic

tag: C
text: evaluate a statement

tag: D
text: highlight a problem
answer_key: D

question_stem: What can be inferred from the last paragraph?
choices: tag: A
text: Climate change has been forgotten.

tag: B
text: Lessons of history are highly valued.

tag: C
text: The human mind is bad at noting slow change.

tag: D
text: Humans are unwilling to admit their shortcomings.
answer_key: C

question_stem: What does the author intend to tell us?
choices: tag: A
text: Far-sighted thinking matters to humans.

tag: B
text: Humans tend to make long-term sacrifices.

tag: C
text: Current policies facilitate future decision-making.

tag: D
text: Bias towards the present helps reduce near-term desires.
answer_key: A