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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,

admin2022-04-28  101
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.
What is NOT a fundamental concern for the concerted action of rich countries?
选项 A、The spirit of worldwide coordination should play a part in decision-making.
B、The disadvantaged interest groups should be taken into consideration.
C、Countries and regions should be treated indiscriminately.
D、No countries should suffer any change in terms of life quality.
答案A
解析 推断题。题目问的是“为了使发达国家联合行动，哪一项不是根本的考虑?”。由文章第三段第一句“…global warming is above all a threat to the poor and the unborn, the ‘two parties with little or no political voice. ’”可知：全球变暖对于穷人和未出生的人来说是头号威胁，这两个群体很少或根本没有政治发言权，而且第二句提到了“revolutionary empowerment”，由此可以推断联合行动需要考虑这两个弱势群体，这与B项内容相符。再由第三 段第三句“…if it can be shown that privileged groups possess no preferential ‘exit’ option…and that greenhouse gas reduction could be achieved without major sacrifices in upscale Northern Hemispheric standards of living…”可知：联合行动需要消除某些国家的特权，而且不能影响到生活水平，这与C和D项内容相符。A项文中没有提及。故选A。
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