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  3. The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, reminded himself of saying ’This is mine’, and found people simple enough

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, reminded himself of saying ’This is mine’, and found people simple enough

admin2014-06-25  69
问题     The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, reminded himself of saying ’This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. Now it is not the land is being enclosed, but the rest of the natural world. In many countries, nature is being valued and commodified so that it can be exchanged for cash. We don’t call it nature any more; now the proper term is "natural capital". Natural processes have become "ecosystem services", as they exist only to serve us.
    The argument in favour of this approach is coherent and plausible. Business currently treats the natural world as if it is worth nothing. Pricing nature and incorporating that price into the cost of goods and services creates an economic incentive for its protection. It certainly appeals to both business and the self-hating states.
    Payments for ecosystem services look to me like the prelude to the greatest privatization. The government has already begun describing land owners as the "providers" of ecosystem services, as if they had created the rain and the hills and the rivers and the wildlife that inhabits them. They are to be paid for these services, either by the government or by "users". Land ownership since the time of the first deceiver has involved the gradual accumulation of exclusive rights, which were seized from commoners. Payments for ecosystem services extend this encroachment by appointing the landlord as the owner of the wildlife, the water flow, the natural processes that were previously deemed to belong to everyone and no one.
    But it doesn’t end there. Once a resource has been commodified, speculators and traders step in. The Ecosystem Markets Task Force now talks of "harnessing City financial expertise to assess the ways that these blended revenue streams and securitisations enhance the ROI[return on investment]of an environmental bond". This gives you an idea of how far this process has gone — and of the officialese it has begun to generate.
    Like other aspects of neoliberalism, the commodification of nature forestalls democratic choice. No longer will we be able to argue that an ecosystem or a landscape should be protected because it affords us wonder and delight; we’ll be told that its intrinsic value has already been calculated and, doubtless, that it turns out to be worth less than the other uses to which the land could be put. The market has spoken; end of debate.
    All those messy, subjective matters, the motivating forces of democracy, will be resolved in a column of figures. Governments won’t need to regulate; the market will make the decisions that politicians have ducked. But trade is an unstable master, and unresponsive to anyone except those with the money. The costing and sale of nature represents another transfer of power to corporations and the very rich.
According to the advocates, the commodification of nature offers a stimulus to______.
选项 A、business development
B、resources conservation
C、economic growth
D、political progress
答案B
解析 第二段介绍自然资源商品化支持者所持观点：目前商业对待自然界的态度就像它一文不值(因此肆意使用、不予保护)；若给大自然定价并将价格融人商品和服务成本，就可以为“保护自然资源”提供经济动力。由此可见，自然资源商品化倡导者认为自然资源商品化可以促进对自然资源的保护，[B]选项正确。
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