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  3. The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hung

The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hung

admin2022-12-06  95
问题     The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combing with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability, as evidenced by the protest riots that have erupted in places like Haiti, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Practical solutions to these growing woes do exist, but we’ll have to start thinking ahead and acting globally.
    The crisis has its roots in four interlinked trends. The first is the chronically low productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing the diversion of food crops to produce biofuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change; take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain in 2005 and 2006. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes. In short, rising demand has hit a limited supply, with the poor taking the hardest blow.
    So, what should be done? Here are three steps to ease the current crisis and avert the potential for a global disaster. The first is to scale-up the dramatic success of Malawi, a famine-prone country in southern Africa, which three years ago established a special fund to help its farmers get fertilizer and high-yield seeds. Malawi’s harvest doubled after just one year. An international fund based on the Malawi model would cost a mere $10 per person annually in the rich world, or $10 billion in all. Such a fund could fight hunger as effectively as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria is controlling those diseases.
    Second, the U.S. and Europe should abandon their policies of subsidizing the conversion of food into biofuels. The U.S. government gives farmers a taxpayer-financed subsidy of 51 cents per gal of ethanol to divert corn from the food and feed-grain supply. There may be a case for biofuels produced on lands that do not produce foods—tree crops (like palm oil), grasses and wood products—but there’s no case for doling out subsidies to put the world’s dinner into the gas tank. Third, we urgently need to weatherproof the world’s crops as soon and as effectively as possible. For a poor farmer, sometimes something as simple as a farm pond—which collects rainwater to be used for emergency irrigation in a dry spell—can make the difference between a bountiful crop and a famine. The world has already committed to establishing a Climate Adaptation Fund to help poor regions climate-proof vital economic activities such as food production and health care but has not yet upon the promise.
    [A] poor countries.
    [B] all the world.
    [C] the Climate Adaptation Fund.
    [D] the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.
    [E] Bangladesh.
    [F] Malawi.
    [G] the US and Europe.
The efforts were not so successful with
选项
答案C
解析 复现结构+无关词排除法。本题左栏中的信息是一个不完整句子，即The efforts were not so successful with(这些的努力并不十分成功)。考生首先把握左栏句子信息中的关键线索点，即The efforts和not so successful，然后去原文利用复现结构进行对比查找，看原文哪个地方含有“努力、不成功”的信息。本题也可以应用无关词排除法缩小答案的范围。考生关注一下右栏中给出的七个有关地点 (国家)和机构组织的名称，首先排除已经成为之前题目答案的选 F项Malawi、G项the US and Europe和E项Bangladesh。再从逻辑上排除B项all the world，因为如果努力在全世界都不成功的话，本文探讨解决问题的办法将是毫无意义的。在剩余的三个选项中可以继续排除D项the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria，因为通过复现去定位原文的信息会发现as effectively as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS，TB and malaria is controlling those diseases. 可知原文信息说明了 the Global Fund to Fight AIDS，TB and Malaria的成功和有效。至此，本题答案只能在A项poor countries和C项the Climate Adaptation Fund之间进行选择。同时，考虑到本文是一篇典型的“先提出问题，再给出问题解决方案”的文章，而本题左栏句子中的信息提及The efforts，The efforts的意思是“这些努力”，既然是努力，说明是在试图解决问题，因此考生可以判断此处的The efforts应该出现在原文的后半部分，即“给出问题解决方案”的部分。考生重点分析原文的第三段和第四段，而第三段和第四段给出了解决问题的三个步骤，只有在第三个步骤中出现了The world has already committed to establishing a Climate Adaptation Fund to help poor regions climate-proof vital economic activities such as food production and health care but has not yet upon the promise. 这里涉及The efforts(解决问题的努力)的概念，即设立Climate Adaptation Fund(气候调节基金)，并且出现了but has not yet upon the promise(尚未实现承诺)，即表达not so successful，因此本题答案为C项the Climate Adaptation Fund。
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