2. 职称英语
  3. The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a journal on environmental i

The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a journal on environmental i

游客2024-01-12  10
问题 The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a journal on environmental issues.
"Over the past year, the Crust Copper Company (CCC) has purchased over 10,000 square miles of land in the tropical nation of West Fredonia. Mining copper on this land will inevitably result in pollution and, since West Fredonia is the home of several endangered animal species, in environmental disasters. But such disasters can be prevented if consumers simply refuse to purchase products that are made with CCC’s copper unless the company abandons its mining plans."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
选项
答案     In this letter to a journal on environmental issues, the author calls for a boycott of Crust Copper Company’s product (CCC) because CCC’s alleged mining plan in West Fredonia, home to endangered wildlife, will inevitably produce pollution and environmental disasters. Although it might be true that CCC’s plan will have a huge environmental impact, the validity of the author’s conclusion and the potential effectiveness of his or her recommendation depend on a number of assumptions. Unfortunately, such assumptions are open to challenge from at least four different angles.
    To start with, the most fundamental assumption in the author’s argument is that CCC buys those lands to mine copper. Yet, this may not be correct, because the land can be used in many ways. It is possible that this land purchased by CCC will be devoted to a research and development complex, which will produce far less pollution than conventional copper mining. If this is the case, the validity of the author’s accusation and the recommendation will be seriously questioned.
    Even if we acknowledge for a moment CCC will mine copper on the land of West Fredonia, the so-called "inevitable" causal linkage between mining and pollution assumed by the author requires a second look. After all, there are many technological solutions to pollution prevention, containment, and mitigation. For example, the waste water from mining activities could be treated and the toxins be neutralized before they are discharged into the environment. In the case of CCC, we are not sure if there will be equipment and protocols to deal with pollution, but if there is a well-established procedure to eliminate pollution, it’s unreasonable to suggest CCC would be unavoidably polluting West Fredonia environment.
    Provided that CCC indeed produces pollution as an inevitable consequence of copper mining taking place in its mining facilities, questions remain whether pollution will impact endangered animals in the area in West Fredonia. Here the author basically assumes that pollutants are lethal to endangered species, an assumption susceptible to challenges. It might be the case that pollution can be local and its impact does not reach the wildlife in West Fredonia. Or the severity of the pollution produced by CCC is low, posing only a very limited threat to wildlife habitats, refuting the author’s claim and weakening his or her recommendation.
    Granted that CCC is seriously polluting the natural habitat of several endangered species, the author’s suggestion of boycott may not work. The underlying assumption behind such a suggestion is that the general public is the clients of CCC’s copper products, which however is a weak one. For example, if CCC primarily sells its copper to military contractors, which use copper for manufacturing ordinance, and its business does not involve civilian consumers at all, the effect of consumer boycott may have little effect on CCC’s behavior. Equally possible is that CCC’s business revolves around raw materials and does not directly produce consumer products; it is the buyers of CCC’s copper that do. In that case, consumers may find it very hard, if not impossible, to find out if the products they are to purchase contain copper from CCC. Either one of the cases, if true, will invalidate the assumption the author makes and render any consumer boycott against CCC futile.
    To summary, the author’s conclusion and suggestion to boycott CCC for the sake of wildlife protection is built upon a series of problematic and uncorroborated assumptions. Clearly when those assumptions are disproved by emerging evidence, the author’s conclusion will be seriously weakened despite his or her good intentions in environmental conservation. (587 words)
解析     本文是Argument题库当中一道比较简单的题目，因为其逻辑基本上是线性的：从开头的信息(CCC在西弗雷多尼亚购买土地)推导出会产生污染，进而导致物种灭绝，最后得出可以通过抵制产品来阻止这一生态灾难的发生。因为本题的行文结构很简单，中间没有复杂的支线推导。
    [(CCC在WF买了地→CCC挖矿会产生污染)+WF是野生动物栖息地]→WF的野生动物会灭绝→抵制CCC产品，就可以让CCC作罢
    逻辑导图中的箭头就是我们要挖掘的作者的逻辑问题和假设所在。
    首先，作者在原文中说“在这片土地上开采铜矿不可避免地会造成污染(Mining copper on this land will inevitably result in pollution)”，但是我们要注意到作者其实假设了“买地就一定会用来挖矿”，但买地不一定会产生污染，这是我们的第一段。
    第二，就算产生了污染，野生动物是否会灭绝?作者这里做了一个非常强的假设(“会造成环境灾难”)，我们可以设想挖矿产生的污染被有效控制了，或者污染的强度或者范围不足以影响野生动物的存活。本文中我们对于这两点都进行了阐述，如果大家在考场上时间不足的话，可以只选取一点来写，而把时间留给下一段。
    第三段是本文最重要的一个段落，因为它是题目最终的结论：通过抵制CCC公司的产品就可以避免环境灾难的发生。但我们不妨这样思考：在什么样的情况下抵制会是失败的?首先有可能CCC的产品不面向零售用户，其次有可能CCC的铜制品在产业链的上游，消费者无法识别哪些物品使用了CCC的铜，因此在这两种情况下抵制是无效的。本文中我们将这两点融合成一段来说，对于打字速度较快的同学而言可以拆解成两个独立的自然段，这样全文可以写成五个主旨段。
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