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
Not Seeing the Forest for the Dollar Bills A)The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finally declared the spotted owl an endanger
Not Seeing the Forest for the Dollar Bills A)The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finally declared the spotted owl an endanger
admin
2014-12-31
54
问题
Not Seeing the Forest for the Dollar Bills
A)The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finally declared the spotted owl an endangered species. The decision will, if the administration enforces the law of the land, drastically cut back logging in the owl’s habitat—old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest.
B)The logging companies are fighting back. They will go to court to "dispute the science" behind the finding. Knowing that the science is not on their side, they have also leaned on the administration not to enforce the law. And they are trying to get the law changed.
C)The law in question is the Endangered Species Act. The companies want it to take into account economic considerations. If it did, they say over and over to the press, the politicians, and the public, we would never choose to sacrifice 28,000 jobs for an owl.
D)That is not the choice at all, of course. The choice is not between an owl and jobs, but between a forest and greed.
E)The spotted owl is, like every other species, the holder of a unique genetic code that is millions of years old and irreplaceable. Even more important, the owl is a canary, in the old miners’ sense—a sign that all is well. It is an indicator species, a creature high up the food chain that depends upon a large area of healthy land for its livelihood. Every thriving family of spotted owls means that 4,000 acres of forest are well. The trees are living their full lives and returning stored nutrients to the soil when they die. Two hundred other vertebrates that live in the forest are well, as are 1, 500 insects and spiders and untold numbers of smaller creatures. The spongy soil under the trees is storing and filtering rain, controlling floods and droughts, keeping the streams clear and pure.
F)When old-growth is clear-cut, the trees and the owls disappear and so does everything else. Burned slash release to sky nutrients that have been sequestered and recycled by living things for 500 years. What’ s left of the soil bleeds downhill as from an open wound. Waters cloud and silt, flood and dry up. The temperature goes up, and the humidity goes down. It will take hundreds of years to regather the nutrients, rebuild the soil, and restore the complex system of intact forest, if there is still old-growth forest to recolonize, and it forest companies stay away.
G)There are unlikely to stay away. On their own land, they replant with a single, commercially valuable, fast-growing species and call it a forest. It bears as much resemblance to a 500-year-old natural forest as a suburb of identical ticky-tacky houses bears to Renaissance cathedral. Ecologists call such plantations "cornfields". It’s not at all certain how many cycles of these cornfields will be possible, given the loss of soil and nutrients when they are cut every fifty years or so.
H)In the past ten years, 13,000 forest-related jobs were lost in Oregon alone, though the annual cut increased. Jobs were lost to automation and to moving mills offshore, not to the Endangered Species Act.
I)The forest companies are interested not in jobs or forests, but in multiplying money. Old-growth forests make higher profit than second-growth plantations. Therefore 85 percent of the old-growth is already gone. The companies have stripped it from their own lands. Nearly all that remains is on federal land, owned by you and me. In Washington and Oregon, 2.4 million acres of old-growth are left of which 800,000 are protected in national parks. The rest, in national forests, is marked for cutting.
J)Our elected representatives are selling off old-growth logging rights in national forests at a rate of about 100,000 acres per year, and at a loss. Taxpayers are subsidizing this process. At the present cutting rate, all but the last protected bits will be gone in about twenty years. The owls will be on their way out—the 800,000 acres remaining will be too fragmented to sustain them. The jobs will be gone, not because of owls, but because of rapacious forestry.
K)If loggers and their communities cannot be sustained by second-growth cutting on private lands, then they were in trouble anyway. A compassionate nation would look for a dignified way to help them build a viable economy. It wouldn’t sacrifice the biological treasure of intact forest to keep them going twenty more years. That’s the kind of behavior we are righteously telling the Brazilians to stop.
L)The Endangered Species Act should not take into account economic considerations. Economics doesn’t know how to value a species or a forest. Its logic drives people to exploit resources to the point of extinction. The Endangered Species Act tells us that extinction is morally unacceptable. It was enacted by a Congress and President in a wise mood, to express a higher value than a bottom line. It should not be weakened. It should be enforced.
Clear-cutting of the old-growth means the disappearance of the trees and the owls.
选项
答案
F
解析
题干:原始森林的消失同时意味着树木和猫头鹰的消失。题干关键词为Clear-cutting,disappearance和owls。文中F段第一句提到,如果原始森林没有了,那树木和猫头鹰还有其他所有生物就都消失了。与题干意思一致,故选F。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/ULq7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
A、Sheissellingmobilephones.B、Sheissellingofficeequipment.C、Sheispurchasingelectronicproducts.D、Sheisemployedin
TheNationalMinistryofHealthrequestedthat______(所有医院都要更加谨慎地应对这种疾病).
Isitcheapertobeawoman—oraman?Tocelebratethelaunchofgenderequalityinfinancialservices,Moneyexploredother
Isitcheapertobeawoman—oraman?Tocelebratethelaunchofgenderequalityinfinancialservices,Moneyexploredother
Troubledbythepersistentlypoorgraduationratesofbasketballandfootballplayers,theNationalCollegiateAthleticAssociat
Troubledbythepersistentlypoorgraduationratesofbasketballandfootballplayers,theNationalCollegiateAthleticAssociat
Infuturetradethekeydevelopmenttowatchistherelationshipbetweentheindustrializedandthedevelopingnations.TheThir
A、Hepaintsitpink.B、Hechangesitintohishomeoffice.C、Heturnsitintoamultifunctionalroom.D、Hereplacesitswindows
Whenwasthelasttimeyouflashedafakesmileattheoffice?Forsome,itmaybejustanothermundane(乏味的)aspectofworklife—
随机试题
显性教育功能
基础代谢率与下列哪项具有比例关系
甲氨蝶呤属于
背景资料在河谷较宽的山区河流上修建混凝土坝枢纽,河道宽且流量较大。施工期间,为确保大体积混凝土不出现温度裂缝,监理单位对施工单位提出了混凝土浇筑稳度控制的要求。问题:大体积混凝土温控措施主要有哪些?
前进公司2013年12月31日结账后有关损益类账户的本期累计发生额如下:主营业务收入2500000元,其他业务收入250000元,营业外收入20000元,投资收益170000元,营业外支出70000元,其他业务成本150000元,财务费用30
海关调查走私案件时,无须经直属海关或其授权的隶属海关关长批准,可以直接查询案件涉嫌单位和涉嫌人员的存款和汇款。()
某公司年销售额100万元,变动成本率70%,全部固定成本和财务费用20万元,总资产50万元,资产负债率40%,负债平均利率为10%,所得税税率25%。该公司拟改变经营计划,追加投资40万元,每年固定成本增加5万元,可使销售额增加20%,并使变动成本率降至6
刘老师与学生一起讨论“网络谣言”的危害,形成了“拒绝网络谣言”的认识,共同提出相应的具体要求并被全班同学所认可。这种品德培养方法是()。
下列做法中符合用电安全的是()。
坚持党对公安工作的绝对领导是公安工作的根本原则。()
最新回复
(
0
)