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A proposed rule on mercury, a pollutant bad for fish and the people who eat

游客2024-05-22  48
问题     A proposed rule on mercury, a pollutant bad for fish and the people who eat too many of them, could help the administration of President Barack Obama get near its short-term climate goal, even if the U. S. Congress fails this year or next to pass a bill tackling greenhouse gases directly.
    Senate Democrats crafting an energy bill have abandoned it until September, and for the rest of the year they probably will not debate climate measures like carbon caps on power plants and mandates(授权) for utilities to produce more power from renewable sources like wind and solar.
    But while many people concerned about climate control have been focusing on the Senate, the Environmental Protection Agency, under its administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, has been quietly preparing to crack down on coal, the most carbon-intensive fuel, as never before.
    Under Ms. Jackson—who has said the idea that progress on the environment has to hurt the economy is a "false choice"—the agency declared late last year that greenhouse gases endangered human health and welfare.
    The agency has begun to take steps to regulate greenhouse gases from automobiles, power plants and factories. But its proposed rules on mainstream pollutants, those that can cause diseases, may limit carbon dioxide emissions the most.
    While the agency is considering new rules for coal, its proposal for emissions of mercury, which go up smokestacks at coal-fired power plants and enter the environment, could pack a bigger punch.
    The rule, which the agency was required by U. S. courts to issue by November 2011, is likely to help push many of the oldest and dirtiest emitters of carbon into retirement.
    When combined with the agency’s other current and coming rules on "criteria" pollutants, like ones that cause acid rain and smog, the mercury measure would require utilities to invest tens of millions of dollars on technologies to remove the substances.
    Francois Broquin, who has written reports on coal for Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U. S. coal-fired electric generation capacity into retirement by 2015. "Obviously that will have an impact," he said.
    Frank O’donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental group, said that retirement of a large number of coal-fired plants could help the country exceed Mr. Obama’s goat of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent by 2020, measuring from 2005 levels.
    "We’ve thought for a long time that proper enforcement of the Clean Air Act, laws already on the books, can have the unintended benefit of really doing something on climate," he said.
    The World Resources Institute, an international environmental group, said that aggressive action on existing U. S. national rules and state plans could reduce emissions almost as much as Mr. Obama wants by 2020. But it said implementation of the proposed rules on mercury and other issues could get even closer. [br] According to Frank O’donnell, the effect of the enforcement of the Clean Air Act could ______.
选项 A、exceed Mr. Obama’s economic budget greatly
B、be overestimated by some environmental group
C、hetp U. S. government get closer to its climate goal
D、solve the climate problem on greenhouse gases
答案 C
解析 根据题干关键词Frank O’donnell, Clean Air Act定位到原文第十一段第一句：“We’ve thought for a long time that proper enforcement of the Clean Air Act, laws already on the books, can have the unintended benefit of really doing something on climate,” he said.可知，《清洁空气法案》早已制定出来，恰当地实施此法案会真正对控制气候产生意想不到的好处。即第十段最后一句提到的，《清洁空气法案》的实施会帮助美国政府达到其气候目标，故选C项。
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