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
2015-01-31
46
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.
For logging companies, the choice is just a weigh between a forest and greed.
选项
答案
D
解析
题干:对伐木公司来说,选择只不过是森林和贪婪之间的权衡。题干关键词为choice,forest和greed。文中D段提到,这不是猫头鹰和就业机会之间的选择,而是森林和贪婪之间的选择。与题干意思一致,故选D。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/mrq7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Alotofpeopleinstinctivelybelieve—withoutreallyknowing—thatpoorreadersarenotespeciallysmart.Anewstudybyres
Alotofpeopleinstinctivelybelieve—withoutreallyknowing—thatpoorreadersarenotespeciallysmart.Anewstudybyres
A、Thewomanshouldbealerttoheavytraffic.B、Manypeoplegotothecountrysideattheweekend.C、Thewomanshouldguardagain
A、Hehasbeenonholiday.B、Hehasbeenonbusiness.C、He’sbeentotheGreatLakes.D、Hestayedintheoffice.B女士说有些日子没见到男士了,问
Peoplewhosejobsrequirethemtositforlongperiodsoftimesufferasmuchfrombackpainaspeoplewholiftalldaylong.
Peoplewhosejobsrequirethemtositforlongperiodsoftimesufferasmuchfrombackpainaspeoplewholiftalldaylong.
ShoppersonBlackFriday,thetraditionalstartoftheholidayshoppingseasoninAmerica,arenotoriously(声名狼藉地)aggressive.Som
A、Itisonlypreparedforchildrenfarawayfromtheirschool.B、ItinvolvesabusservicefromMiltontoImpingtonandback.C、
TheaveragecollegestudentinAmericaspentanestimated$700ontextbookslastyear.TheNationalAssociationofCollegeStor
TheaveragecollegestudentinAmericaspentanestimated$700ontextbookslastyear.TheNationalAssociationofCollegeStor
随机试题
患者,男,38岁,农民。发热伴咳嗽、咳痰1周,劳力性呼吸困难2天来诊。在当地医院曾诊为“急性支气管炎”,予抗生素治疗3天(具体不详),体温已经正常,咳嗽有好转,但仍感气短,夜间不能平卧。既往:无高血压病史。吸烟史10余年,每日10支。门诊查体:体温36.9
血源性腹膜炎盆腔脏器感染并腹膜炎
患者,男,57岁,患"椎基底动脉供血不足"。症见眩晕头痛而重,胸闷呕恶,舌苔白腻,脉弦滑。治宜选用
男,4岁。发热,咳脓痰2周,体温波动于38~39℃,X线胸片示右肺下叶大片致密影,右胸腔积液。最常见的致病菌为
( )也称作组织柔性原则,是现代组织设计的一个基本要求。
企业使用累计原始凭证,如限额领料单,既可以对领用材料进行事前控制,又可以减少凭证的使用手续。()
甲有限公司的控股股东李某拖欠银行巨额贷款,但是他不但不积极经营企业还贷,还以企业名义继续向银行借款,借新还旧,供自己挥霍,当银行起诉后,李某以企业为有限责任公司,属于有限责任为由,请求法院宣告自己的企业破产。下列说法正确的有()。
甲公司是一家高科技上市公司,目前正处于高速成长时期。公司为了开发新的项目,急需筹资10000万元,甲公司拟采取发行附送认股权证债券的方式筹资并初拟了筹资方案,相关资料如下:(1)发行10年期附认股权证债券10万份,每份债券面值为1000元,票面利率为7%
《爱莲说》的作者是北宋时期的大思想家()。
设F(x,y)是一个二维随机向量(X,Y)的分布函数,x1
最新回复
(
0
)