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

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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 sug.gests 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 ofCommerce 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 climatesteps 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.
    请回答下列问题。
We can learn from Paragraph 5 that global warming is______________.

选项 A、not only an economic issue
B、a great threat to human beings
C、extravagant to spend the defense budget
D、caused partly by the Pentagon

答案A

解析 推断题。根据题干关键词定位到第五段。由“The Pentagon has warned that … a significant threat to national security”可知全球变暖会对国家安全造成威胁,故A项“不仅仅是个经济问题”符合题意,为正确答案。B项扩大了影响范围,文中谈论的是对美国的影响,并未提到人类。C项是对文中“Is it really extravagant to spend another 8 percent of that budget to reduce a serious threat”的曲解,原文以反问的口气表明花费国防预算的8%减少全球变暖对美国国家安全的威胁并不是奢侈的事情。D项属于对原文的曲解。故本题选A。
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