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Obama’s Energy Policy While the Gulf of Mexico oil sp

游客2023-12-26  41
问题                         Obama’s Energy Policy
   While the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that prompted the president’s speech is an unprecedented catastrophe, it’s nothing compared to what’s ahead if we keep pretending that fossil fuels are cheap. Addressing our habits of carbon consumption isn’t just the most important possible response to this particular disaster. It’s probably the most important issue this president, or any other for the next few decades, will face. Moreover, there’s a fairly clear solution that’s already been outlined: at the moment, there’s an implicit public subsidy for carbon use that enables our reliance, so the government needs to compensate for it by jack up the price of energy somehow. A cap-and-trade system is the preferred method here in much the same way that an insurance mandate was in healthcare reform: it’s a politically palatable partial measure, but far better than nothing.
   But Obama gave a lame speech by only offering vague generalities about " increasing the cost of energy," failing to lay out the case for the reform that he knows perfectly well to be the only viable one. In fact, if the president decided to take the idea of energy reform to the people, he probably still wouldn’t get legislation passed. But even in failure, there’s something to be gained from speaking clearly and honestly to the public.
   Woodrow Wilson was a generally pretty detestable guy, but there’s something Obama could learn from him. At the end of World War I, Wilson expended massive, futile effort trying to convince Americans that the League of Nations was the world’s only hope for peace and stability. The Republicans who opposed Wilson over the League succeeded, in large part, because a weary country wasn’t willing to accept an intellectual president’s high-flown scheme to prevent the recent disaster from repeating.
   When the feeble League failed and the crisis of the 1930s developed into World War II, it offered a kind of perverse validation to Wilson’s effort. By forcefully campaigning for the United States to take a central role in global stability, he had elucidated the choices facing the American people. After World War II, the argument of 1919 reoccurred, but it was won by Wilson’s successor, Harry Truman. The reoccurrence of global war had validated Wilson’s argument, making it much easier for Truman to sell Americans on the Marshall Plan, NATO, the United Nations and, ultimately, the Cold War itself. By being ambitious and clear, Wilson lost, but his side won out in the long term for the same reason. [br] The author considers a cap-and-trade system to be______from a political perspective.
选项 A、vague and incomprehensive
B、obligatory but short-sighted
C、partial but acceptable
D、radical but reasonable
答案 C
解析 态度归纳题型，答案是C。本题涉及作者对美国实行总量管制与交易制度的态度，需对第一段最后一句话进行归纳总结。原文中反映作者态度的词汇包括preferred，politically palatable，partial和far better than nothing，可见作者认为该制度虽有偏颇之处但远胜于无，从政治角度考量尚合人意。四个选项各出现了两个描述词，A选项为“模糊不清，不够全面”，B选项为“带有强制意味但缺乏远见”，C选项为“有失偏颇但可以接受”，D选项“极端但合理”，对照可见C选项两词均能吻合原意，故为正确答案。本题核心：准确理解原文中的态度指示词，归纳总结并与选择项进行匹配。
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