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  3. In popular discussions of emissions-rights trading systems, it is common to mistake the smokestacks for the trees. For example,

In popular discussions of emissions-rights trading systems, it is common to mistake the smokestacks for the trees. For example,

admin2014-06-20  58
问题     In popular discussions of emissions-rights trading systems, it is common to mistake the smokestacks for the trees. For example, the wealthy oil enclave of Abu Dhabi brags that it has planted more than 130 million trees—each of which does its duty in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, this artificial forest in the desert also consumes huge quantities of irrigation water produced, or recycled, from expensive desalination plants. The trees may allow its leaders to wear a halo at international meetings, but the rude fact is that they are an energy-intensive beauty strip, like most of so-called green capitalism. And, while we’re at it, let’s just ask: What if the buying and selling of carbon credits and pollution offsets fails to reduce global warming? What exactly will motivate governments and global industries then to join hands in a crusade to reduce emissions through regulation and taxation?
    Kyoto-type climate diplomacy assumes that all the major actors will recognize an overriding common interest in gaining harness over the runaway greenhouse effect. But global warming is not War of the Worlds, where invading Martians are dedicated to annihilating all of humanity without distinction. Climate change, instead, will initially produce dramatically unequal impacts across regions and social classes. It will reinforce, not diminish, geopolitical inequality and conflict.
    As the UNDP emphasized in its report last year, global warming is above all a threat to the poor and the unborn, the "two parties with little or no political voice". Coordinated global action on their behalf thus presupposes either their revolutionary empowerment or the transformation of the self-interest of rich countries and classes into an enlightened "solidarity" without precedent in history. From a rational perspective, the latter outcome only seems realistic if it can be shown that privileged groups possess no preferential "exit" option, that internationalist public opinion drives policymaking in key countries, and that greenhouse gas reduction could be achieved without major sacrifices in upscale Northern Hemispheric standards of living—none of which seems highly likely.
    And what if growing environmental and social turbulence, instead of stimulating heroic innovation and international cooperation, simply drives elite publics into even more frenzied attempts to wall themselves off from the rest of humanity? Global intervention, in this unexplored but not improbable scenario, would be silently abandoned(as, to some extent, it already has been)in favor of accelerated investment in selective adaptation for Earth’s first-class passengers. We’re talking here of the prospect of creating green and gated oases of permanent affluence on an otherwise stricken planet.
    Of course, there will still be treaties, carbon credits, famine relief, humanitarian acrobatics, and perhaps, the full-scale conversion of some European cities and small countries to alternative energy. But the shift to low-, or zero-emission lifestyles would be almost unimaginably expensive. And this will certainly become even more unimaginable after perhaps 2030, when the combined impacts of climate change, peak oil, peak water, and an additional 1. 5 billion people on the planet may begin to seriously threaten growth.
According to the author, which of the following statements is true?
选项 A、International cooperation can help curb environmental and social crisis.
B、Innovation and cooperation in environmental issues are unlikely to happen.
C、Rich countries will possibly seclude themselves from the rest of the world.
D、Investment in environmental conservation will largely increase in selected areas.
答案C
解析 推断题。题目问的是“根据作者，下面哪一句说法是正确的?”。由文章第四段第一句“And what if growing environmentaland social turbulence，instead of stimulating heroic innovation andinternational cooperation，simply drives elite publics into even morefrenzied attempts to wall themselves off from the rest of humanity?”可知：革新与合作有利于环境保护，这与A和B项内容相悖。此外，通过该句还可知：“elite publics”有可能进一步将其与其他人类社会隔离，这与C项内容相符。再由第四段第二句“Global in—tervention，…would be silently abandoned in favor of accelerated in—vestment in selective adaptation for Earth’s first—class passengers．”可知：如果不提倡国际干预，投资就会加速流向发达国家，这与D项内容不符。故选C。
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