2022年考博英语-重庆大学考前模拟强化练习题（附答案详解）1. 单选题Section AThe role of governments in environmental management is difficult but inescapable. Sometimes, the state tries to manage the resources it owns, and does so badly. Often, however, governments act in an even more harmful way. They actually subsidize the exploitation and consumption of natural resources. A whole range of policies, from farm price support to protection for coal-mining, do environmental damage and (often) make no economic sense. Scrapping them offers a two-fold bonus: a cleaner environment and a more efficient economy. Growth and environmentalism can actually go hand in hand, if politicians have the courage to control the vested interest that subsidies create.Section BNo activity affects more of the earths surface than farming. It shapes a third of the planets land area, not counting Antarctica, and the proportion is rising. World food output per head has risen by 4 percent between the 1970s and 1980s mainly as a result of increases in yields from land already in cultivation, but also because more land has been brought under the plough. Higher yields have been achieved by increased irrigation, better crop breeding, and a doubling in the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the 1970s and 1980s.Section CAll these activities may have damaging environment impacts. For example, land clearing for agriculture is the largest single cause of deforestation; chemical fertilizers and pesticides may contaminate water supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment of fallow periods tend to exacerbate soil erosion; and the spread of monoculture and use of high-yielding varieties of crops have been accompanied by the disappearance of old varieties of food plants which might have provided some insurance against pests of diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the productivity of land in both rich and poor countries. The United State, where the most careful measurements have been done, discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmland was losing topsoil at a rate likely to diminish the soils productivity. The country subsequently embarked upon a program to convert 11 percent of its cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India and China is vanishing much faster than America.Section DGovernment policies have frequently compounded the environmental damage that farming can cause. In the rich countries, subsidies for growing crops and price supports for farm output drive up the price of land. The annual value of these subsidies is immense; about $250 billion, or more than all World Bank lending in the 1980s. To increase the output of crops per acre, a farmers easiest option is to use more of the most readily available inputs: fertilizers and pesticides. Fertilizer use doubled in Denmark in the period 1960-1985 and increased in The Netherlands by 150 percent. The quantity of pesticides applied has risen too: by 69 percent in 1975-1984 in Denmark, for example, with a rise of 115 percent in the frequency of application in the three years from 1981.In the late 1980s and early 1990s some efforts were made to reduce farm subsidies. The most dramatic example was that of New Zealand, which scrapped most farm support in 1984. A study of the environmental effects, conducted in 1993, found that the end of fertilizer subsidies had been followed by a fall in fertilizer use (a fall compounded by the decline in world commodity prices, which cut farm incomes). The removal of subsidies also stopped land-cleaning and over-stocking, which in the past had been the principal causes of erosion. Farms began to diversify. The one kind of subsidy whose removal appeared to have been bad for the environment was subsidy to manage soil erosion.In less enlightened countries, and in the European Union, the trend has been to reduce rather than eliminate subsidies, and to introduce new payments to encourage farmers to treat their land in environmentally friendlier ways, or to leave it fallow. It may sound strange but such payments need to be higher than the existing incentives for farmers to grow food crops. Farmers, however, dislike being paid to do nothing. In several countries, they have become interested in the possibility of using fuel produced from crop residues either as a replacement for petrol (as ethanol) or as fuel for power stations (as biomass). Such fuels produce far less carbon dioxide than coal or oil, and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. They are therefore less likely to contribute to the greenhouse effect. But they are rarely competitive with fossil fuels unless subsidized and growing them does no less environmental harm than other crops.Section EIn poor countries, governments aggravate other sorts of damage. Subsidies for pesticides and artificial fertilizers encourage farmers to use greater quantities than are needed to get the highest economic crop yield. A study by the international Rice Research institute of pesticide use