Australia has promised to introduce the most comprehensive （全面的） carbon trading program outside Europe in 2010. The government in Canberra plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions (排放) by at least five percent by 2020, but it could make bigger reductions if other countries agree to tougher targets.
The Australian government warns that without tough environmental measures the country could lose key industries and jobs. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says the economy is under threat and decisive action is needed.
Central to the government’s climate change plan is a carbon emissions trading program that will be introduced within two years. It would involve one thousand of the nation’s biggest companies and would cover about three-quarters of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Many scientists believe that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, contribute to global warming. Many of them are released by burning fuels such as coal and oil.
Companies will be required to buy permits for each ton of carbon they emit, although big polluting exporters will receive up to 90 percent of their carbon licenses free.
Many business leaders want the government to delay the plan because of the current global financial crisis, which is slowing the Australian economy. Peter Anderson from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry says it is irresponsible to bring in a carbon trading plan now.
Environmentalists, on the other hand, say Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has not properly addressed the threat of climate change. Activists had sought a minimum emissions cut of 25 percent.
Instead, the Rudd government aims to cuts carbon emissions by at least five percent of 2000 levels by 2020. That amount could rise to 15 percent, if future global agreements set such a target.
Ray Nias of the environmental group WWF says Australia will pay the price for low targets. “This is a deeply, deeply disappointing target,” Nias said. “It commits Australia to long-term climate change. It will make Australia’s ability to negotiate (协商) global agreements very, very difficult. It is much lower than even we had imagined.”
Australia has one of the highest per-person greenhouse emissions rates in the world because of its reliance on coal for electricity.
Some scientists warn that the vast, dry Australian continent, which has been suffering a series of droughts in recent years, could be one of the region’s hardest hit by global warming.
1.Which group supports to cut carbon emissions by at least 25%?
A. Environmentalists.B. The government.
C. Business leaders.D. Scientists.
2.Who most probably agrees to a higher goal of carbon emissions?
A. Penny Wong.B. Peter Anderson.
C. Kevin Rudd.D. Ray Nias.
3.Many business leaders are against the Australian program because ________.
A. they believe the program will only benefit the big companies
B. they believe the program will cause the global warming
C. they don’t want to pay extra money for carbon emissions
D. they don’t think carbon emission will surely cause the global warming
4.The underlined sentence means ________.
A. The Australian government will be blamed for the low target
B. Australia will suffer a lot from climate change caused by carbon emissions
C. The Australian government will have to spend lots of money on carbon emissions
D. Many Australian companies will close down because of the low target
The largest campaign of killing rats in history is set to poison millions of rats on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. Scientists say the campaign planned for 2013 and 2014 will restore beautiful South Georgia to the position it once held as the world’s most important nesting sites for seabirds.
It was sailors in the late 18th century who unintentionally introduced rats to what had been a fresh environment. “If we can destroy the rats, at least 100 million birds will return to their home on South Georgia,” says Tony Martin, a biology professor at the University of Dundee who was invited to lead the project.
South Georgia is by far the largest island to get rid of animals that destroy native wildlife after being introduced deliberately or accidentally by people. Though rats and mice have done the most damage, cats, foxes, goats, deer, rabbits and other species have been targeted in the campaigns around the world.
South Georgia is seven times the size of New Zealand’s Campbell Island, currently the largest area ever killing rats. The successful war against Campbell Island rats was carried out in 2001 with 132 tons of poison dropped from five helicopters.
“New Zealand pioneered the techniques for ridding islands of rats and in fact our operation on South Georgia is based on New Zealand’s technology.” Says Martin. “Some New Zealanders will be helping our campaign, including our chief pilot, Peter Garden, who was also chief pilot for the projects at Campbell Island and Rat Island, in the Aleutian chain of the north Pacific.”
The second and third stages in 2013 and 2014 will involve dropping as much as 300 tons of poison from the air onto every part of the island where rats might live. It is a huge operation, carried out during the stormy southern autumn when the rats are hungry and the risks of poisoning native wildlife are less than in the spring and summer months. “Ideally we’d do in winter but the weather makes that too risky,” Martin says.
The ecological payback will be priceless. But Martin says, “The full benefits will take decades to arrive, because some of these birds are slow to hatch.”
1.According to the passage, how did the rats appear on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia?
A. They were introduced there by sailors accidentally.
B. They escaped there from Campbell Island.
C. They were attracted there by wildlife.
D. They were brought in by people deliberately.
2.Which of the following is True about Peter Garden?
A. He is in charge of the campaign on the sub-Antarctic island.
B. He will be the only pilot for the project on the sub-Antarctic island.
C. He will benefit a lot from the campaign on the sub-Antarctic island.
D. He made great contributions to the project at Campbell Island and Rat Island.
3.The operation of ridding South Georgia of rats is to carried out in autumn because _________.
A. the war against Campbell Island rats failed in all seasons except autumn.
B. only then do the New Zealanders to help the operation have the spare time.
C. the poison kills rats more effectively than it does in any other season.
D. rats then need more food and the operation does less harm to native wildlife.
4.What can we infer from the passage?.
A. Rats aren’t the only species to be blamed for the disappearance of wildlife.
B. The campaign of killing rats will benefit the native wildlife in a short time.
C. The first stage of killing rats on the sub-Antarctic island didn’t make great achievements.
D. The campaign in South Georgia will fully follow in the footsteps of that on Campbell Island.
French surgeons have performed what they said on Wednesday was the world's first partial face transplant— giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman attacked by a dog.
Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation on a 38-year-old woman on Sunday in the northern city of Amiens by taking the face from a brain-dead woman, who had hanged herself just hours before the operation. Her family agreed on the operation.
“The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal,” the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.
The woman had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her last May, and was unable to talk or chew properly. Such injuries are “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said.
The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the woman who had been the source of her new face.
The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand transplants.
Skin transplants have long been used to treat burns and other injuries, but operations around the mouth and nose have been considered very difficult because of the area's high sensitivity to foreign tissue.
Teams in France, the United States and Britain had been developing techniques to make face transplants a reality.
There was a short-term risk for the patient if blood vessels became blocked, a medium-term danger of her body rejecting the new skin and a long-term possibility that the drugs used could cause cancers.
Experts say that although such medical advances should be celebrated, the transplant had thrown up moral（道德的）and ethical(伦理的) issues. Little is known about the psychological effect of the transplant.
1.The best title for the passage would be ________.
A. First Face Transplant Opens Debate
B. French Woman has First Partial Face Transplant
C. A Complete Face Transplant of a French Woman
D. Risks and Ethical Problems of a Face Transplant
2.Which of the following is NOT one of the risks of the operation?
A. Heart damage.
B. Organ rejection
C. Block of blood vessels.
D. Side effect of the drugs.
3.What can we learn about the operation?
A. There has arisen a debate about the operation.
B. The woman had used the dead woman' s whole face.
C. The woman will suffer from psychological damage soon.
D. Such transplants have been performed by doctors.
When I was about five years old, I used to watch a bird in the skies of southern Alberta from the Blackfoot Blood Reserve in northern Montana where I was born．I loved this bird; I would ________ him for hours. He would ________ effortlessly in that gigantic sky, or he would come down and light on the ________ and float there beautifully．Sometimes when I watched him, he would not make a sound and liked to move ________ into the grasses．We called him meksikatsi, which in the Blackfoot language ________ “pink-colored feet”; meksikatsi and I became very good friends.
The bird had a very particular significance to me ________ I desperately wanted to be able to fly too．I felt very much as if I was the kind of person who had been born into a world where ________ was impossible. And most of the things that I ________ about would not be possible for me but would be possible only for other people．
When I was ten years old, something unexpected ________ my life suddenly. I found myself become an ________ child in a family I was not born into; I found myself in a ________ position that many native Americans find themselves in, living in a city that they do not understand at all, not in another culture but ________ two cultures．
A teacher of the English language told me that meksikatsi was not called meksikatsi, even though that is what ________ people have called that bird for thousands of years．Meksikatsi, he said, was really “duck”．I was very ________ with English．I could not understand it．First of all, the bird did not look like “duck”, and when it made a ________, it did not sound like “duck”, I was even more ________ when I found out that the meaning of the verb “to duck” came from the bird．
As I ________ to understand English better, I understand that it made a great deal of ________, but I never forgot that meksikatsi made a different kind of meaning．I ________ that languages are not just different words for the same things but totally different ________, totally different ways of experiencing and looking at the world．
1.A．keepB．watchC．followD．search
2.A．jumpB．diveC．circleD．wander
3.A．nestB．hillC．waterD．road
4.A．quicklyB．naturallyC．freelyD．quietly
5.A．meansB．readsC．showsD．states
6.A．thoughB．becauseC．whileD．until
7.A．communicationB．imaginationC．beliefD．flight
8.A．dreamedB．worriedC．knewD．argued
9.A．improvedB．enrichedC．changedD．ruined
10.A．educatedB．adoptedC．outgoingD．independent
11.A．weakB．comfortableC．terribleD．central
12.A．betweenB．againstC．withoutD．beyond
13.A．mostB．fewC．theirD．my
14.A．desperateB．bored
C．uncomfortableD．disappointed
15.A．noiseB．callC．decisionD．choice
16.A．ashamedB．confusedC．embarrassedD．frightened
17.A．triedB．cameC．determinedD．expected
18.A．evidenceB．distinctionC．profitD．sense
19.A．identifiedB．confirmedC．realizedD．predicted
20.A．conceptsB．regulationsC．messagesD．evaluations
—I promise her daughter ________ get a nice present on her birthday.
—Will it be a big surprise to her?
A. shouldB. mustC. wouldD. shall
I still remember my happy childhood when my mother ________ take me to Disneyland at weekends.
A. mightB. mustC. wouldD. should
