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  3. I once attended a Downing Street reception where Tony Blair invited questions

I once attended a Downing Street reception where Tony Blair invited questions

游客2023-12-21  19
问题    I once attended a Downing Street reception where Tony Blair invited questions from leading magazine editors. One woman, from a big consumer title, asked if New Labour had plans to tax one-use plastic bags that were destroying the environment. Blair pulled a mock-baffled "Hey, guys, I’m busy running the country here" face and answered in a tone of purest condescension. This was around 2005, a few years after Ireland, with little fuss at all, had introduced a small charge for plastic bags. Within a year, everyone had learnt to keep a jute sack or string shopper under their desk, and this young, adaptable, upbeat nation had cut the number of bags cluttering Irish hedgerows by 94 %.
   It is such an easy, clever bit of nudge politics, which has already worked right across northern Europe.(Is it not strange that we each use 158 plastic bags a year but a Dane only four?)And yet here we are in England—four years after Wales, two after Northern Ireland, a year after Scotland— bringing it in at last on Monday. And unlike the devolved nations, England can’t just keep it simple and charge 5p for bags in all stores, but only those with more than 250 employees. Corner shops in Aberdeen have coped, yet those in London can’t. The light from an explosion in deep space can take billions of years to be seen on Earth. And the gap between a social ill being identified, backed by irrefutable scientific evidence, and parliament changing the law, is often almost as long. That cigarettes are poisonous and young lungs fragile have been beyond doubt since the 1950s, yet it only became illegal for smokers to inflict their fumes upon children in cars this week. Even now, some libertarians grumble that enjoying an après school pick-up fag is every parent’s right and, besides, haven’t the police got better things to do?
   Yes, they have. But, still, progress is worth defending. And improvements in our lives are rarely brought about by vast, sweeping changes but by small, incremental shifts. Those simple life-savers, the Clean Air Acts, seatbelt and motorcycle helmet legislation: all regarded as quirky and inconvenient in their time. Every generation looks upon the unthinking habits of its parents and asks: why the hell did you do that? In Mad Men Don Draper is shown taking a last swig of his beer in a picnic, then lobbing the bottle deep into the forest. According to creator Matthew Weiner this was the show’s most controversial scene: horrified young people would ask him if their grandparents were really so crass? But in early-1960s America there was little stigma in dumping your trash.
   Back in the 1970s being capable of driving when lashed was a prized adult skill, we let our dogs defile parks and would have thought anyone who scooped up still-warm poop in little bags totally mad. And maybe we will look back at the plastic bag era in similar terms. How could these people use up all the oil, choke turtles and block flood defences, just to make carrying shopping home easier? A non-brand plastic bag flapping about on a tree, too high up to reach, is the ensign of our age. It is the saddest, most hopeless manifestation of a disposable age built upon laziness and greed.
   In the film American Beauty the misfit Ricky videos a bag dancing in the wind: the peculiar poignancy comes from seeing the most unloved, worthless object on Earth appearing to express joy. "Do you need a bag?" I’ve come to resent that question. Because I don’t want to say "yes". But my handbag is small. I don’t want to crease this book I’ve bought as a present. And sometimes a purchase without nice packaging feels less of a treat. But usually I say "no". Ten virtue points for that. Twenty for remembering to carry my bags-for-life from the car.
   It is irksome to forget, then watch the checkout lady unfurl dozens from the roll, pull each one open with a flourish: all that waste just to get my shopping home. Really this is just pretence of virtue. The 5p charge may reduce bags, and in Scotland usage has declined by 80 % in a year: that’ s 147 million fewer. But the oceans are already clogged with every other type of plastic: vast islands of detritus, micro-particles of broken-up Evian bottles and biscuit wrappers absorbed by sea life and then, in due course, us.
   But sometimes laws are there as much for society to declare intent as to have an effect. With smoking in cars I wonder if it is not a proxy for more sweeping legislation that would forbid low-life mums in supermarkets screaming swear words at their sobbing toddlers or pouring Coke in a baby’s tippy cup. It is a way of saying, we are watching, we have standards: your parenting is being judged. We’d like to police your home: but we can’t, so let’s start with your car. Likewise, the plastic bag law is a displacement activity for the bigger, dreary, ecological changes that are too daunting for us to make. Those five pences are tithes to the Church of Green. And dragging home our hessian totes of virtue we can feel less hopeless. The world is broken: but don’t blame me. [br] Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?
选项 A、England is following Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Holland in banning plastic bags.
B、Small changes in our habits can bring great improvements in our lives.
C、Looking back, we should feel angry at plastic bag habit.
D、Future generations will not wonder why it took so long to enforce plastic bag law.
答案 C
解析
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