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

游客2025-01-21  24
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] History proves Wilson’s championing of the League of Nations to be______.
选项 A、high-flown
B、futile
C、lofty
D、wise
答案 D
解析 跨段归纳题型，答案是D。此题涉及对威尔逊倡导加入国家联盟这一决策的评价，原文第三、四段均与此有关。A、B选项中的futile和high-flown为第三段原词，答题者如果仅把阅读重心放在第三段，可能会对威尔逊的决策产生负面印象，并从上面两个选项中选择其一。如果通读三、四两段后，就会发现文章欲扬先抑的书写逻辑。第四段开头指出，国际联盟失败后，1930年代的经济危机最终导致了二战的爆发，事实以荒谬的方式佐证了威尔逊决策的正确性。总结归纳两段内容可见正确答案应当是D。本题核心：不可断章取义，仅凭原文出现的个别字句或个别段落得出片面结论。
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