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  3. Next week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to announce new rules designed to limit global warming. Although

Next week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to announce new rules designed to limit global warming. Although

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问题    Next week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to announce new rules designed to limit global warming. Although we don’t know the details yet, anti-environmental groups are already predicting vast costs and economic doom. Don’t believe them. Everything we know suggests that we can achieve large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at little cost to the economy.
   Just ask the United States Chamber of Commerce. That’s not the message the Chamber of Commerce was trying to deliver in the report it put out Wednesday. It clearly meant to convey the impression that the EPA’s new rules would wreak havoc. But if you focus on the report’s content rather than its rhetoric, you discover that despite the chamber’s best efforts to spin things, the report almost surely overstates the real cost of climate protection—the numbers are remarkably small.
   Specifically, the report considers a carbon-reduction program that’s probably considerably more ambitious than we’re actually going to see, and it concludes that between now and 2030 the program would cost $50.2 billion in constant dollars per year. That’s supposed to sound like a big deal. Instead, if you know anything about the U.S. economy, it’s just not a lot of money.
   Remember, we have a $17 trillion economy right now, and it’s going to grow over time. So what the Chamber of Commerce is actually saying is that we can take dramatic steps on climate—steps that would transform international negotiations, setting the stage for global action—while reducing our incomes by only one-fifth of 1 percent. That’s cheap!
   One more useful comparison: The Pentagon has warned that global warming and its consequences pose a significant threat to national security. (Republicans in the House responded with a legislative amendment that would forbid the military from even thinking about the issue.) Currently, we’re spending $600 billion a year on defense. Is it really extravagant to spend another 8 percent of that budget to reduce a serious threat?
   You might ask why the Chamber of Commerce is so fiercely opposed to action against global warming, if the cost of action is so small. The answer, of course, is that the chamber is serving special interests, notably the coal industry—what’s good for America isn’t good for the Koch brothers, and vice versa—and also catering to the ever more powerful anti-science sentiments of the Republican Party.
   
In this text, the author mainly discusses
选项 A、low cost of limiting global warming
B、the Chamber of Commerce’s functions
C、how to reduce gas emissions
D、coal industry’s hard time
答案A
解析 主旨题。文章第一、二段通过介绍反环保组织反对遏制全球变暖新规定引出主题，即美国可以在不让经济付出多少代价的情况下大幅减排温室气体。接下来四段对美国可以在低成本的条件下减少温室气体进行了详细解释。最后一段指出在低成本的情况下，美国商会反对遏制全球变暖行动的原因。因此，全文仅仅围绕“低成本可遏制全球变暖”这一主题进行阐述，故A项符合题意，为正确答案。
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