首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Saving Nature, But Only Man Environmental Necessities and Environmental Luxuries A)Environmental sensitivity is now as required
Saving Nature, But Only Man Environmental Necessities and Environmental Luxuries A)Environmental sensitivity is now as required
admin
2017-01-20
30
问题
Saving Nature, But Only Man
Environmental Necessities and Environmental Luxuries
A)Environmental sensitivity is now as required an attitude in polite society as is, say, belief in democracy or aversion to nylon. But now that everyone has claims to love Mother Earth, how are we to choose among the dozens of conflicting proposals, restrictions, projects, regulations and laws advanced in the name of the environment? Clearly not everything with an environmental claim is worth doing. How to choose?
B)There is a simple way. First, distinguish between environmental luxuries and environmental necessities. Luxuries are those things that would be nice to have if costless. Necessities are those things we must have regardless. Then apply a rule. Call it the fundamental principle of sensible environmentalism: Combating ecological change that directly threatens the health and safety of people is an environmental necessity. All else is luxury. For example: preserving the atmosphere, by both protecting the ozone layer and halting the greenhouse effect, is an environmental necessity. In April scientists reported that ozone damage is far worse than previously thought. Ozone reduction not only causes skin cancer and eye cataracts(白内障), it also destroys plankton(浮游生物), the beginning of the food chain on top which we humans sit.
C)The reality of the greenhouse effect is more speculative, though its possible consequences are far deadlier: melting ice caps, flooded coastlines, disturbed climate, dried up plains and, ultimately, empty breadbaskets. The American Midwest feeds the world. Are we prepared to see Iowa acquire Albuquerque’s climate? And Siberia acquire Iowa’s? Ozone reduction and the greenhouse effect are human disasters. They happen to occur in the environment. But they are urgent because they directly threaten man. A sensible environmentalism, the only kind of environmentalism that will win universal public support, begins by unashamedly declaring that nature is here to serve man. A sensible environmentalism is entirely man-centered: it calls for man to preserve nature, but on the grounds of self-preservation.
A Sensible Environmentalism Does Not Sentimentalize the Earth
D)A sensible environmentalism does not sentimentalize the earth. It does not ask people to sacrifice in the name of other creatures. After all, it is hard enough to ask people to sacrifice in the name of other humans.(Think of the public resistance to foreign aid and welfare.)Ask hardworking voters to sacrifice in the name of snail darter(蜗牛鱼), and, if they are feeling polite, they will give you a shrug.
E)Of course, this man-centeredness runs against the grain of a contemporary environmentalism that worships the earth to the point of excess. One scientific theory—Gaia theory—actually claims that Earth is a living organism. This kind of environmentalism likes to consider itself spiritual. It is nothing more than sentimental. It takes, for example, a highly selective view of the kindliness of nature. My nature worship stops with the May storms that killed more than 125,000 Bengalis and left 10 million homeless.
F)A non-sentimental environmentalism is one founded on Protagoras principle that " Man is the measure of all things". Such a principle helps us to fight our way through the jungle of environmental argument. Take the current debate raging over oil drilling in a corner of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Environmentalists, fighting against a bill working its way through Congress to permit such exploration, argue that we should be conserving energy instead of drilling for it. This is a false either/or proposition. The country does need a substantial energy tax to reduce consumption. But it needs more production, too. Government estimates indicate a nearly fifty-fifty chance that under the ANWR lies one of the five largest oil fields ever discovered in America.
G)We have just come through a war fought in part over oil: Energy dependence costs Americans not just dollars but lives. It is a ridiculous sentimentalism that would deny ourselves oil that is peacefully attainable because it risks disrupting the breeding grounds of Arctic reindeer(驯鹿). I like the reindeer as much as the next man. And I would be rather sorry if their mating patterns are disturbed. But you cannot have everything. And if the choice is between the welfare of reindeer and reducing oil dependence that gets people killed in wars, I choose man over reindeer every time.
H)Similarly the spotted owl. I am no enemy of the owl. If it could be preserved at no or little cost, I would agree: the variety of nature is a good, a high aesthetic(美学的)good. But it is no more than that. And sometimes aesthetic goods have to be sacrificed to the more fundamental ones. If the cost of preserving the spotted owl is the loss of livelihood for 30,000 logging families, I choose family over owl. Man Is the Master of Nature
I)The important distinction is between those environmental goods that are fundamental and those that are merely aesthetic. Nature is our charge. It is not our master. It is to be respected and even cultivated. But it is man’s world. And when man has to choose between his well-being and that of nature, nature will have to accommodate.
J)Man should accommodate only when his fate and that of nature are bound up together. The most urgent accommodation must be made when the very integrity of man’s environment—e. g. : atmospheric ozone— is threatened. When the threat to man is of a lesser order(say, the pollutants form coal- and oil-fired generators that cause death from disease but not fatal damage to the ecosystem), a more moderate accommodation that balances economic against health concerns is in order. But in either case the principle is the same: protect the environment—because it is man’s environment. The sentimental environmentalists will call this saving nature with a totally wrong frame of mind. Exactly. A sensible—a humanistic—environmentalism does it not for nature’s sake but for our own.
The key point of the sensible environmentalism is that man is the master of nature.
选项
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/21i7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Globalwarmingmayornotbethegreatenvironmentalcrisisofthe21stcentury,but—regardlessofweatheritisorisn’t—wewo
Globalwarmingmayornotbethegreatenvironmentalcrisisofthe21stcentury,but—regardlessofweatheritisorisn’t—wewo
Globalwarmingmayornotbethegreatenvironmentalcrisisofthe21stcentury,but—regardlessofweatheritisorisn’t—wewo
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteaspeechonsavingwaterresources.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutn
A、Setagoodexampleforotherpeople.B、Helptoincreasepeople’senvironmentalprotectionawareness.C、Devotehimselftoprote
A、Quittheirjobsatthesametime.B、Takeanadventuroustripwiththeirsavings.C、Enrichtheirpoorknowledgeinbusiness.D、
Duringthenineteenthcentury,whenlittlewasknownaboutenvironmental-ismandconservation,itwascommontohearpeopleinE
Duringthenineteenthcentury,whenlittlewasknownaboutenvironmental-ismandconservation,itwascommontohearpeopleinE
Duringthenineteenthcentury,whenlittlewasknownaboutenvironmental-ismandconservation,itwascommontohearpeopleinE
随机试题
男性,47岁。因健康查体发现心房颤动而来院,平日无心悸感,既往体健,无高血压、糖尿病、甲亢病史。超声心动图检查心脏结构正常,化验血脂正常。对该患者的最佳处理方案是
对某在用钢筋混凝土桥梁进行特殊检查,需完成与结构耐久性评定相关的材质状况检测。请回答以下相关问题。在进行混凝土内部钢筋位置及保护层测定时,下列叙述中错误的是()。
设计单位派出的现场设计代表机构应()。
材料:齐白石先生幼年家境贫寒,没有上学的机会,长大后做了木工,四十岁以后才开始自学绘画。他虚心求教,勤学苦练,终于在画坛独树一帜,成为著名的国画大师。试述影响能力形成与发展的因素。
公安行政强制措施,是公安机关及其人民警察在公安行政管理活动中,依法定职权和程序,强制特定的相对人履行某种义务的公安行政执法行为。()
胡斯战争
设则f{f[f(x)],等于().
Wherecanthetwospeakersprobablybe?
Isthat____________newcar?
Apollof2,000studentswastakenbeforeCentervilleCollegechangedthenameofitsmascot.All2,000studentsindicatedwhich
最新回复
(
0
)