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
Carbon Capture Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation? A)Last September, as someone wh
Carbon Capture Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation? A)Last September, as someone wh
admin
2015-07-13
82
问题
Carbon Capture
Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?
A)Last September, as someone who cares more about birds than the next man, I was following the story of the new stadium that the Twin Cities are building for their football Vikings. The stadium’s glass walls were expected to kill thousands of birds every year, and local bird-lovers had asked its sponsors to use a specially patterned glass to reduce collisions: the glass would have raised the stadium’s cost by one tenth of one per cent, and the sponsors had hesitated. Around the same time, the National Audubon Society issued a press release declaring climate change "the greatest threat" to American birds and warning that " nearly half" of North America’s bird species were at risk of losing their home by 2080. Audubon’s announcement was retransmitted by national and local media, including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, whose blogger on bird-related subjects, Jim Williams, drew the inevitable inference: Why argue about stadium glass when the real threat to birds was climate change? In comparison, Williams said, a few thousand bird deaths would be "nothing. "
B)I was in Santa Cruz, California, and already not in a good mood. The day I saw the Williams quote was the two hundred and fifty-fourth of a year in which, so far, sixteen had qualified as rainy. To the injury of a very dry weather came the daily insult of radio forecasters describing the weather as beautiful. It wasn’t that I didn’t share Williams’s anxiety about the future. What upset me was how a terrible prediction like Audubon’s could lead to indifference toward birds in the present.
C)Whether it’s prehistoric North Americans hunting the mastodon(乳齿象)to extinction, Maori wiping out the large animals of New Zealand, or modern civilization deforesting the planet and emptying the oceans, human beings are universal killers of the natural world. And now climate change has given us an eschatology(末世论)for reckoning with our guilt: coming soon, some terribly overheated tomorrow, is Judgment Day. Unless we confess and mend our ways, we’ll all be sinners in the hands of an angry Earth.
D)Rarely do I board an airplane or drive to the grocery store without considering my carbon footprint and feeling guilty about it. But when I started watching birds, and worrying about their welfare, I became attracted to a strain of Christianity, inspired by St. Francis of Assisi’s example of loving what’s concrete and sensitive and right in front of us. I gave my support to the focused work of the American Bird Conservancy and local Audubon societies. Even the most obviously worsened landscape could make me happy if it had birds in it.
E)And so I came to feel miserably conflicted about climate change. I accepted its supremacy as the environmental issue of our time, but I felt threatened by its dominance. Not only did it make every grocery-store run a guilt trip: it made me feel selfish for caring more about birds in the present than about people in the future. What were the eagles killed by wind turbines(涡轮机)compared with the impact of rising sea levels on poor nations? What were the local cloud-forest birds of the Andes compared with the atmospheric benefits of Andean water-power projects?
F)A hundred years ago, the National Audubon Society was an active organization, campaigning against random bird killing and the harvesting of large birds for their feathers, but its spirit has since become gentler. In recent decades, it’s been better known for its holiday cards and its toy birds, which sing when you squeeze them. When the organization shifted into Jonathan Edwards mode, last September, I wondered what was going on.
G)In rolling out its climate-change initiative, Audubon mentioned the "citizen science data" it had mobilized(调动), and a " report" prepared by its own scientists, that justified its terrible predictions. Visitors to its updated Web site were treated to images of climate-endangered species and asked to "take the pledge" to help save them. The actions that Audubon suggested to pledge-takers were gentle stuff—tell your stories, create a bird-friendly yard—but the Web site also offered a "Climate Action Pledge" , which was long and detailed.
H)The climate-change report was not immediately available, but from the Web site’s graphics, which included range maps of various bird species, it was possible to deduce that the report’s method involved a comparison of a species’ present range with its predicted range in a climate-altered future. When there was broad overlap between the two ranges, it was assumed that the species would survive. When there was little or no overlap, it was assumed that the species would be caught between an old range that had grown inhospitable(荒凉的,不适合居住的)to it and a new range in which the place where the species live was wrong, and would be at risk of disappearing.
I)This kind of modelling can be useful, but it’s full of uncertainties. A species may currently breed in a place with a particular average temperature, but this doesn’t mean that it couldn’t tolerate a higher temperature, or that it couldn’t adapt to a slightly different place farther north, or that the more northerly place won’t change as temperatures rise. North American species in general, having contended with hot July days and frosty September nights as they evolved, are much more tolerant of temperature fluctuations than tropical species are. Although, in any given place, some familiar back-yard birds may have disappeared by 2080, species from farther south are likely to have moved in to take their place. North America’s birds may well become more diverse.
J)The eagle was an especially odd choice of poster bird for Audubon’s initiative. The species nearly became extinct fifty years ago, before DDT was banned. The only reason we can worry about its future today is that the public—led by the then energetic Audubon—rallied around an immediate threat to it. The eagle’s dilemma was a primary impetus for the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the eagle is one of the act’s great success stories. Once its eggs were no longer weakened by DDT, its population and range expanded so dramatically that it was removed from the endangered-species list in 2007. It’s hard to think of a species less liable to be trapped by geography. Even if global warming squeezes it entirely out of its current summer and winter ranges, the melting of ice in Alaska and Canada may actually result in a larger new range.
The author feels upset because people may become indifferent to the present birds as a result of an awful prediction.
选项
答案
B
解析
定位句表明,让“我”心烦的是像奥杜邦提出的那种可怕的预言是如何导致当前对鸟类的冷漠的。题干是该定位句的同义转述,故B)为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/MAl7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
A、TakeaclasstogetherwithMary.B、AskMarytohelphimchooseatopic.C、Changethetopicofhisresearchproject.D、Signup
A、Totellustheresourcesoftheseaareunlimited.B、Totellustherearethreatstoanimalsandbirds.C、Totelluspeoplesh
A、Materialassignedbytheteacherforreading.B、Materialdirectlyrelatedtodiscussioninclass.C、Materiallinkedtothejob
A、Henolongerworkshere.B、HewillhaveabusinesstripnextWednesday.C、He’llbebacknextWednesday.D、Heisonavacation.
A、Prepareaspeech.B、Giveaclass.C、Gradethepaper.D、Finishtheproposal.B选项均以原形动词开头表明,问题可能考查某人将来的行为活动。对话开始的时候女士说她10分钟后要去上课
WaystoLiveLongerA)WehavetheNHS(theNationalHealthService)andmuchoftherestoftheworldenviesusforit,buthowlo
WaystoLiveLongerA)WehavetheNHS(theNationalHealthService)andmuchoftherestoftheworldenviesusforit,buthowlo
A、Jameshadafunnyface.B、Jameslikedtoshowoffinclass.C、Jameswaslateforschoolonthefirstday.D、Jameswasthefirs
随机试题
下列各项正确说明内容和形式统一关系的是()。
胸膜腔位于
试述路面弯沉值的测试步骤。
()是解决生产、建设管理中经常出现的问题,由于问题反复出现,企业为提高决策效率,制定了相应的程序、模型、参数或标准等,可以有章遵循。
一般而言,大型企业建立电算化会计信息系统采取的方式是()。
下列决议中,不须经出席会议的股东所持表决权的2/3以上通过的是()。
C注册会计师负责对丙公司20×8年度财务报表进行审计。在了解内部控制时,C注册会计师遇到下列事项,请代为做出正确的专业判断。内部控制无论如何设计和执行只能对财务报告的可行性提供合理保证,其原因是()。
下列哪个选项不属于我国国家监督体系?()
乙公司得知甲公司正在就某合同项目与丙公司谈判,乙公司本来并不需要这个合同项目,但为排挤甲公司,就向丙公司提出了更好的条件。甲公司退出后,乙公司也借故中止谈判,给丙公司造成了损失。乙公司的行为应定性为()。
Anannouncementoffurthercutsingovernmentexpenditureis______.
最新回复
(
0
)