I.     Reading Comprehension (60 points).

A       Multiple Choice (36 points).

Please read the following passages and choose A, B, C or D to best complete the statements about them.

The Greening of America

— How America is likely to take over leadership of the fight against climate change; and how it can get it right.

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

A country with a presidential system tends to get identified with its leader. So, for the rest of the world, America is George Bush's America right now. It is the country that has mismanaged the Iraq war; holds prisoners without trial at Guantánamo Bay; restricts funding for stem-cell research because of fundamentalist religious beliefs; and destroyed the chance of a global climate-change deal based on the Kyoto Protocol.

But to simplify thus is to misunderstand—especially in the case of the huge, federal America. One of its great strengths is the diversity of its political, economic and cultural life. While the White House dug its heels in on global warming, much of the rest of the country was moving. That's what forced the president's concession to greens in the state-of-the-union address. His poll ratings sinking under the weight of Iraq, President Bush is grasping for popular issues to keep him afloat; and global warming has evidently become such an issue. Albeit in the context of energy security, a now familiar concern of his, President Bush spoke for the first time to Congress of "the serious challenge of global climate change" and proposed measures designed, in part, to combat it.

It's the weather, appropriately, that has turned public opinion—starting with Hurricane Katrina. Scientists had been warning Americans for years that the risk of "extreme weather events" would probably increase as a result of climate change. But scientific papers do not drive messages home as convincingly as the destruction of a city. And the heat wave that torched America's west coast last year, accompanied by a constant drip of new research on melting glaciers and dying polar bears, has only strengthened the belief that something must be done.

Business is changing its mind too. Five years ago corporate America was solidly against carbon controls. But the threat of a patchwork of state regulations, combined with the opportunity to profit from new technologies, began to shift business attitudes. And that movement has gained momentum, because companies that saw their competitors espouse carbon controls began to fear that, once the government got down to designing regulations, they would be left out of the discussion if they did not jump on the bandwagon. So now the loudest voices are not resisting change but arguing for it.

Support for carbon controls has also grown among some unlikely groups: security hawks (who want to reduce America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil); farmers (who like subsidies for growing the raw material for ethanol); and evangelicals (who worry that man should looking after the Earth God gave him a little better). This alliance has helped persuade politicians to move. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Republican governor, has led the advance, with muscular measures legislating Kyoto-style curbs in his state. His popularity has rebounded as a result. And now there is movement too at the federal level, which is where it really matters. Bills to tackle climate change have proliferated. And three of the serious candidates for the presidency in 2008—John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—are all pushing for federal measures.

Unfortunately, President Bush's newfound interest in climate change is coupled with, and distorted by, his focus on energy security. Reducing America's petrol consumption by 20% 2017, a target he announced in the state-of-the-union address, would certainly diminish the country's dependence on Middle Eastern oil, but the way he plans to go about it may not be either efficient or clean. Increasing fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks will go part of the way, but for most of the switch America will have to rely on a greater use of alternative fuels. That means ethanol (inefficient because of heavy subsidies and high tariffs on imports of foreign ethanol) or liquefied coal (filthy because of high carbon emissions)

The measure of President Bush's failure to tackle this issue seriously is his continued rejection of the only two clean and efficient solutions to climate change. One is a carbon tax, which this paper has long advocated. The second is a cap-and-trade system of the sort Europe introduced to meet the Kyoto targets. It would limit companies' emissions while allowing them to buy and sell permits to pollute. Either system should, by setting a price on carbon, discourage emission; and, in doing so, encourage the development and use of cleaner-energy technologies. Just as America's adoption of catalytic converters led eventually to the world's conversion to lead-free petrol, so its drive to clean-energy technologies will ensure that these too spread.

A tax is unlikely because of America's aversion to that three-letter word. Given that, it should go for a tough cap-and-trade system. In doing so, it can usefully learn from Europe's experience. First, get good data. Europe failed to do so: companies were given too many permits, and emissions have therefore not fallen. Second, auction permits (which are, in effect, money) rather than giving them away free. Europe gave them away, which allowed polluters to make windfall profits. This will be a huge fight; for, if the federal government did what the Europeans did, it would hand out $40 billion to $50 billion in permits. Third, set a long time-horizon. Europeans do not know whether carbon emissions will still be constrained after 2012, when Kyoto runs out. Since most clean-energy projects have a payback period of more than five years, the system thus fails to encourage green investment.

One of America's most admirable characteristics is its belief that it has a duty of moral leadership. At present, however, it's not doing too well on that score. Global warming could change that. By tackling the issue now it could regain the high moral ground (at the same time forging ahead in the clean-energy business, which Europe might otherwise dominate). And it looks as though it will; for even if the Toxic Texan continues to evade the issue, his successor will grasp it.

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

(1)   It can be inferred from the first paragraph that ________.

[A]       America is busy dealing with the Iraq war and the Guantánamo Bay prisoners

[B]       America is interested in stem-cell research

[C]       America despises the global climate-change deal

[D]       America declines to sign the Kyoto protocol

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

(2)   "Dig one's heels in" in the second paragraph means _______.

[A]       improve by pressure

[B]  judge by oneself     

[C]  refuse to change one's mind

[D]  pay more attention to

(3)   Which is NOT the reason that causes the corporate America to change its mind over carbon

controls ? ________.

[A]  The state regulations are getting strict

[B]  There is an opportunity to profit from new technologies

[C]  Some competitors approve of carbon controls

[D]  The loudest voices are supporting carbon controls

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

(4)   According to the author, which is NOT a practicable way to reduce carbon emissions in America? _______.

[A]       Imposition of a carbon tax

[B]       Establishment of a cap-and-trade system

[C]       Permission to buy and sell permits to pollute

[D]       Setting a price on carbon

(5)   Because of the Americans' distaste for tax, the author suggests that all of the following should be done EXCEPT that ________.

[A]  a suitable number of permits be offered

[B]  the price for the permits be set

[C]       carbon emissions be tackled in a long-term view

[D]       carbon emissions be loosened after 2012

(6)   The polluters' "windfall profits" (para. 8) stands for _______.

[A]  the privilege granted by the permits

[B]  the unexpected lucky gain from the permits

[C]  the financial support from the federal government

[D]  the illegal interests made by the polluters

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

C    Gap Filling (14 points).

Please choose the best sentence from the list after the passage to fill in each of the gaps in the text. There are more sentences than gaps.

Truths to live by

The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. (18)       ____________________. The rabbis of old put it this way: "A man comes into this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open."

(19)       _______________. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love to love when it was tendered.

(20)       _______________. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.

One morning, I had to have some additional tests. The required machines were located in a building at the opposite end of the hospital, so I had to be wheeled across the courtyard.

As we emerged from our unit, the sunlight hit me. That's all there was to my experience. Just the light of the sun. (21) ______________.

I looked to see whether anyone else relished the sun's golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with their eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean concerns to respond to the splendor of it all.

The insight gleaned from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life's gifts are precious but we are too heedless of them.

Here then is the first pole of life's paradoxical demands on us: Never be too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. (22) ____________. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.

(23) _____________. This is the second side of life's coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.

This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, may, will, be ours. (24)       ____________.

[A]  Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of God's own earth.

[B]  But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this second truth dawns upon us.

[C]  For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment.

[D]  When life is treated with the proper attitude, regret will surely not be left behind.

[E]  A recent experience re-taught me this truth.

[F]  Hold fast to life ... but not so fast that you cannot let go.

[G] Be reverent before each dawning day.

[H]  And yet how beautiful it was --- how warming, how sparkling, how brilliant!

环球时代 英语专业考研 北京外国语大学 英研 专四专八 09考研 真题

II.                Please read the following passage and translate the underlined parts into Chinese (40 points, 8 points each).

Developing self-confidence

(25)       Confidence is a feeling — an inner fire and an outer radiance, a basic satisfaction with what one is plus a reaching out to become more. Confidence is not something a few people are born with and others are not, for it is an acquired characteristic.

Confidence is the personal possession of no one; the person who has it learns it—and goes on learning. The most gifted individual on earth has to construct confidence in his gifts from the basis of faith and experience, like anybody else. The tools will differ from one person to the next, but the essential task is the same. Confidence and pose are available to us all according to our abilities and needs—not somebody else's—provided we utilize our gifts and expand them.