Lesson 47 Too high a price? 代价太高?
Pollution is the price we pay for an overpopulated, overindustrialized planet. When you come to think about it, there are only fourways you can deal with rubbish: dump it, burn it, turn it into something youcan use again, attempt to produce less of it. We keep trying all four methods,but he sheer volume of rubbish we produce worldwide threatens to overwhelm us.
Rubbish, however, is only part of the problem of polluting ourplanet. The need to produce ever-increasing quantities of cheap food leads to adifferent kind of pollution. Industrialized farming methods produce cheap meatproducts: beef, pork and chicken. The use of pesticides and fertilizersproduces cheap grain and vegetables. The price we pay for cheap food may bealready too high: Mad Cow Disease in cattle, salmonella in chicken andeggs, and wisteria in dairy products. And if you think youll abandon meat andbecome a vegetarian, you have the choice of very expensive organically-grownvegetables or a steady diet of pesticides every time you think youre eatingfresh salads and vegetables, or just having an innocent glass of water!
However, there is an even more insidious kind of pollution thatparticularly affects urban areas and invades our daily lives, and that isnoise. Burglar alarms going off at any time of the day or night serve only toannoy passers-by and actually assist burglars to burgle. Car alarms constantlyscream at us in the street and are a source of profound irritation. A recentsurvey of the effects of noise revealed that dogs barkingincessantly in the night rated the highest form of noise pollution on a scaleranging from 1 to 7. The survey revealed a large number of sources of noisethat we really dislike. Lawn mowers whining on a summers day, late-nightparties in apartment blocks, noisy neighbors, vehicles of al kinds, especiallylarge container trucks thundering through quiet village, planes and helicoptersflying overhead, large radios carried round in public places and played atmaximum volume. New technology has also made its own contribution to noise. Alot of people object to mobile phones, especially when they are used in publicplaces like restaurants or on public transport. Loud conversations on mobilephones invade our thoughts or interrupt the pleasure of meeting friends for aquiet chat. The noise pollution survey revealed a rather spurring and possibly amusing old fashioned source of noise. It turned out to be snoring! Men werefound to be the worst offenders. It was revealed that 20% of men in theirmid-thirties snore. This figure rises to a staggering 60% of men in theirsixties. Against these figures, it was found that only 5% of women snoreregularly, while the rest are constantly woken or kept awake by theirtrumpeting partners. Whatever the source of noise, one thing is certain:silence, it seems, has become a golden memory.
【2014年考研英语新概念必背作文精选代价太高】相关文章:
最新
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-08-28
2020-08-28
2020-08-28