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  3. Cutting toxic levels of city air pollution to safer levels is simple, but no

Cutting toxic levels of city air pollution to safer levels is simple, but no

游客2023-06-28  19
问题     Cutting toxic levels of city air pollution to safer levels is simple, but not easy—it requires resolve. Yet, despite the key culprit (罪犯) in the UK being well known—diesel (柴油机的) vehicles—the government has been asleep at the wheel for years.
    Levels of nitrogen dioxide (二氧化氮) have been illegally high across much of the UK since 2010. In 2015 86% of major urban areas broke annual limits. Cutting this pollution means choking off diesel emissions and there is a wide range of effective measures available.
    Creating zones in city centres where polluting cars are either banned or charged is important, while making cities safe for cycling and walking cuts traffic too.
    Cleaner buses and taxis have an important role to play and change to the perverse taxes that encourage people to buy diesel over cleaner cars is needed. There is also some support for a revival of a scrappage scheme which saw dirty old bangers taken off the road.
    The environment and transport departments were well aware of all this and proposed many of these measures internally, only for the Treasury to reject most of them, arguing they "would be politically very difficult, especially given the impacts on motorists".
    Motorists happen to be particularly badly exposed to air pollution, but the real political difficulty for the government is two humiliating legal defeats in two years where judges ruled its air pollution plans were so bad they were illegal.
    Ministers have now been forced to come up with a third plan, but clean air zones and car tax changes take time to clean up the air. Yet the UK government is also in the slow lane when it comes to emergency measures.
    When foul air descended on Paris in December, officials there swung into action. Public transport was made free and the number of cars allowed on roads was restricted, alternately barring those with odd and even licence plates. In the UK, during the same December smog, the government sent a few tweets.
    At the root of the problem are diesel cars, which successive governments across Europe have utterly failed to ensure meet legal emissions limits when driving in real-world conditions on the road. The gaming of regulatory tests by carmakers was blown open by the Volkswagen scandal. The scandal of governments prioritising supposed driver freedom over the lungs and health of their citizens is only now playing out. [br] Why do the UK ministers have to put forward a third air pollution plan?
选项 A、Because drivers are suffering the most from air pollution.
B、Because the first two plans were found illegal by the judges.
C、Because long-term solutions are ignored by the government.
D、Because emergency measures are falling behind.
答案 B
解析 推理判断题。第六段提到，政府面临的真正政治困难是两年内遇到的两起不光彩的法律败诉案，案件中法官判决政府的空气污染治理计划太糟糕，因而非法。紧接着第七段第一句又指出大臣们如今被迫提出第三套方案。由此推出，英国大臣们不得不提出第三套空气污染治理方案，是因为前两套被判非法，不能使用，故答案为B)。A)“因为司机受空气污染的影响最严重”，第六段提到汽车驾驶员恰恰受到空气污染的影响尤为严重，但这是为了讽刺上文中财政部由于汽车驾驶员的原因而否决大部分治污措施，与提出的第三套方案无关，可以排除；C)“长期解决方案被政府忽视”，原文并未提及政府是否忽视长期解决方案，故排除；D)“应急措施落后”，第七段第二句提到英国政府在应急措施方面也很落后，但这是为了说明当前没有合适的应急措施作为第三套方案，而不是大臣们被迫提出第三套方案的原因，故排除。
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