北外英语专业考研真题
I.Reading Comprehension (60 points). AMultiple Choice (36 points).
Please read the following passages and choose A, B, C or D to best complete the statements about them. The Greening of America
How America is likely to take over leadership of the fight against climate change; and how it can get it right.
A country with a presidential system tends to get identified with its leader. So, for the rest of the world, America is George Bushs America right now. It is the country that has mismanaged the Iraq war; holds prisoners without trial at Guantnamo Bay; restricts funding for stem-cell research because of fundamentalist religious beliefs; and destroyed the chance of a global climate-change deal based on the Kyoto Protocol.
But to simplify thus is to misunderstandespecially in the case of the huge, federal America. e of its great strengths is the diversity of its political, economic and cultural life. While the White House dug its heels in on global warming, much of the rest of the country was moving. Thats what forced the presidents concession to greens in the state-of-the-union address. His poll ratings sinking under the weight of Iraq, President Bush is grasping for popular issues to keep him afloat; and global warming has evidently become such an issue. Albeit in the context of energy security, a now familiar concern of his, President Bush spoke for the first time to Congress of the serious challenge of global climate change and proposed measures designed, in part, to combat it.
Its the weather, appropriately, that has turned public opinionstarting with Hurricane Katrina. Scientists had been warning Americans for years that the risk of extreme weather events would probably increase as a result of climate change. But scientific papers do not drive messages home as convincingly as the destruction of a city. And the heat wave that torched Americas west coast last year, accompanied by a constant drip of new research on melting glaciers and dying polar bears, has only strengthened the belief that something must be done.
Business is changing its mind too. Five years ago corporate America was solidly against carbon controls. But the threat of a patchwork of state regulations, combined with the opportunity to profit from new technologies, began to shift business attitudes. And that movement has gained momentum, because companies that saw their competitors espouse carbon controls began to fear that, once the government got down to designing regulations, they would be left out of the discussion if they did not jump on the bandwagon. So now the loudest voices are not resisting change but arguing for it. Support for carbon controls has also grown among some unlikely groups: security hawks (who want to reduce Americas dependence on Middle Eastern oil); farmers (who like subsidies for growing the raw material for ethanol); and evangelicals (who worry that man should looking after the Earth God gave him a little better). This alliance has helped persuade politicians to move. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Californias Republican governor, has led the advance, with muscular measures legislating Kyoto-style curbs in his state. His popularity has rebounded as a result. And now there is movement too at the federal level, which is where it really matters. Bills to tackle climate change have proliferated. And three of the serious candidates for the
presidency in 2008John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obamaare all pushing for federal measures.
Unfortunately, President Bushs newfound interest in climate change is coupled with, and distorted by, his focus on energy security. Reducing Americas petrol consumption by 20% 2017, a target he announced in the state-of-the-union address, would certainly diminish the countrys dependence on Middle Eastern oil, but the way he plans to go about it may not be either efficient or clean. Increasing fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks will go part of the way, but for most of the switch America will have to rely on a greater use of alternative fuels. That means ethanol (inefficient because of heavy subsidies and high tariffs on imports of foreign ethanol) or liquefied coal (filthy because of high carbon emissions)
The measure of President Bushs failure to tackle this issue seriously is his continued rejection of the only two clean and efficient solutions to climate change. e is a carbon tax, which this paper has long advocated. The second is a cap-and-trade system of sort Europe introduced to meet Kyoto targets. It would limit companies emissions while allowing them to buy and sell permits to pollute. Either system should, by setting a price on carbon, discourage emission; and, in doing so, encourage the development and use of cleaner-energy technologies. Just as Americas adoption of catalytic converters led eventually to the worlds conversion to lead-free petrol, so its drive to clean-energy technologies will ensure that these too spread. A tax is unlikely because of Americas aversion to that three-letter word. Given that, it should go for a tough cap-and-trade system. In doing so, it can usefully learn from Europes experience. First, get good data. Europe failed to do so: companies were given too many permits, and emissions have therefore not fallen. Second, auction permits
北外英语专业考研真题
