2007年12月大学英语六级真题试卷

Seven Ways to Save the World

Forget the old idea that conserving energy is a form of self-denial – riding bicycles, dimming the lights, and taking fewer showers. These days conservation is all about efficiency: getting the same – or better – results from just a fraction of the energy. When a slump in business travel forced Ulrich Romer to cut costs at his family-owned hotel in Germany, he replaced hundreds of the hotel’s wasteful light bulbs, getting the same light for 80 percent less power. He bought a new water boiler with a digitally controlled pump, and wrapped insulation around the pipes. Spending about Є100,000 on these and other improvements, he slashed his Є90,000 fuel and power bill by Є60,000 As a bonus, the hotel’s lower energy needs have reduced its annual carbon emissions by more than 200 metric tons. “For us, saving energy has been very, very profitable,” he says. “And most importantly, we’re not giving up a single comfort for our guests.”

Efficiency is also a great way to lower carbon emissions and help slow global warming. But the best argument for efficiency is its cost – or, more precisely, its profitability. That’s because quickly growing energy demand requires immense investment in new supply, not to mention the drain of rising energy prices.

No wonder efficiency has moved to the top of the political agenda. On Jan. 10, the European Union unveiled a plan to cut energy use across the continent by 20 percent by 2020. Last March, China imposed a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency by 2020. Even George W. Bush, the Texas oilman, is expected to talk about energy conservation in his State of the Union speech this week.

The good news is that the world is full of proven, cheap ways to save energy. Here are the seven that could have the biggest impact:

Insulate

Space heating and cooling eats up 36 percent of all the world’s energy. There’s virtually no limit to how much of that can be saved, as prototype “zero-energy homes” in Switzerland and Germany have shown. There’s been a surge in new ways of keeping heat in and cold out (or vice versa). The most advanced insulation follows the law of increasing returns: if you add enough, you can scale down or even eliminate heating and air-conditioning equipment, lowering costs even before you start saving on utility bills. Studies have shown that green workplaces (ones that don’t constantly need to have the heat or air-conditioner running) have higher worker productivity and lower sick rates.

Change Bulbs

Lighting eats up 20 percent of the world’s electricity, or the equivalent of roughly 600,000 tons of coal a day. Forty percent of that powers old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs – a 19th-century technology that wastes most of the power it consumes on unwanted heat.

Compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, not only use 75 to 80 percent leas electricity than incandescent bulbs to generate the same amount of light, but they also last 10 times longer, Phasing old bulbs out by 2030 would save the output of 650 power plants and avoid the release of 700 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year.

Comfort Zone

Water boilers, space heaters and air conditioners have been notoriously inefficient. The heat pump has altered that equation. It removes heat from the air outside or the ground below and uses it to supply heat to a building or its water supply. In the summer, the system can be reversed to cool buildings as well.

Most new residential buildings in Sweden are already heated with ground-source heat pumps. Such systems consume almost no conventional fuel at all. Several countries have used subsidies to jumpstart the market, including Japan, where almost 1 million heat pumps have been installed in the past two years to heat water for showers and hot tubs.

Remake Factories

From steel mills to paper factories, industry eats up about a third of the world’s energy. The opportunities to save are vast. In Ludwigshafen, German chemicals giant BASF runs an interconnected complex of more than 200 chemical factories, where heat produced by one chemical process is used to power the next. At the Ludwigshafen site alone, such recycling of heat and energy, saves the company Є200 million a year and almost half its CO2 emissions. Now BASF is doing the same for new plants in China. “Optimizing (优化) energy efficiency is a decisive competitive advantage,” says BASF CEO Jurgen Hambrecht.

Green Driving

A quarter of the world’s energy – including two thirds of the annual production of oil – is used for transportation. Some savings come free of charge: you can boost fuel efficiency by 6 percent simply by keeping your car’s tires properly inflated (充气). Gasoline-electric hybrid (混合型的) models like the Toyota Prius improve mileage by a further 20 percent over conventional models.

A Better Fridge

More than half of all residential power goes into running household appliances, producing a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions. And that’s true even though manufacturers have already hiked the efficiency of refrigerators and other white goods by as much as 70 percent since the 1980s. According to an International Energy Agency study, if consumers chose those models that would save them the most money over the life of the appliance, they’d cut global residential power consumption (and their utility bills) by 43 percent.

Flexible Payment

Who says you have to pay for all your conservation investments? “Energy service contractors” will pay for retrofitting (翻新改造) in return for a share of the client’s annual utility-bill savings. In Beijing, Shenwu Thermal Energy Technology Co. specializes in retrofitting China’s steel furnaces. Shenwu puts up the initial investment to install a heat exchanger that preheats the air going into the furnace, slashing the client’s fuel costs. Shenwu pockets a cut of those savings, so both Shenwu and the client profit.

If saving energy is so easy and profitable, why isn’t everyone doing it? It has to do with psychology and a lack of information. Most of us tend to look at today’s price tag more than tomorrow’s potential savings. That holds double for the landlord or developer, who won’t actually see a penny of the savings his investment in better insulation or a better heating system might generate. In many people’s minds, conservation is still associated with self-denial. Many environmentalists still push that view.

Smart governments can help push the market in the right direction. The EU’s 1994 law on labeling was such a success that it extended the same idea to entire buildings last year. To boost the market value of efficiency, all new buildings are required to have an “energy pass” detailing power and heating consumption. Countries like Japan and Germany have successively tightened building codes, requiring an increase in insulation levels but leaving it up to builders to decide how to meet them.

The most powerful incentives, of course, will come from the market itself. Over the past year, sky-high fuel prices have focused minds on efficiency like never before. Ever-increasing pressure to cut costs has finally forced more companies to do some math on their energy use.

Will it be enough? With global demand and emissions rising so fast, we may not have any choice but to try. Efficient technology is here now, proven and cheap. Compared with all other options, it’s the biggest, easiest and most profitable bang for the buck.

If you’re like most people, you’ve indulged in fake listening many times. You go to history class, sit in the third row, and look【B1】at the instructor as she speaks. But your mind is far away,【B2】in the clouds of pleasant daydreams.【B3】you come back to earth, the instructor writes an important term on the chalkboard, and you【B4】copy it in your notebook. Every once in a while the instructor makes a【B5】remark, causing others in the class to laugh. You smile politely, pretending that you’ve heard the remark and found it mildly【B6】You have a vague sense of【B7】that you aren’t paying close attention, but you tell yourself that any【B8】you miss can be picked up from a friend’s notes. Besides,【B9】.So back you go into your private little world. Only later do you realize you’ve missed important information for a test.

Fake listening may be easily exposed, since many speakers are sensitive to facial cues and can tell if you’re merely pretending to listen.【B10】.

Even if you’re not exposed, there’s another reason to avoid fakery: it’s easy for this behavior to become a habit. For some people, the habit is so deeply rooted that【B11】. As a result, they miss lots of valuable information.

Like most people, I’ve long understood that I will be judged by my occupation, that my profession is a gauge people use to see how smart or talented I am. Recently, however, I was disappointed to see that it also decides how I’m treated as a person.

Last year I left a professional position as a small-town reporter and took a job waiting tables. As someone paid to serve food to people, I had customers say and do things to me I suspect they’d never say or do to their most casual acquaintances. One night a man talking on his cell phone waved me away, then beckoned (示意) me back with his finger a minute later, complaining he was ready to order and asking where I’d been.

I had waited tables during summers in college and was treated like a peon (勤杂工) by plenty of people. But at 19 years old, I believed I deserved inferior treatment from professional adults. Besides, people responded to me differently after I told them I was in college. Customers would joke that one day I’d be sitting at their table, waiting to be served.

Once I graduated I took a job at a community newspaper. From my first day, I heard a respectful tone from everyone who called me. I assumed this was the way the professional world worked – cordially.

I soon found out differently. I sat several feet away from an advertising sales representative with a similar name. Our calls would often get mixed up and someone asking for Kristen would be transferred to Christie. The mistake was immediately evident. Perhaps it was because money was involved, but people used a tone with Kristen that they never used with me.

My job title made people treat me with courtesy. So it was a shock to return to the restaurant industry.

It’s no secret that there’s a lot to put up with when waiting tables, and fortunately, much of it can be easily forgotten when you pocket the tips. The service industry, by definition, exists to cater to others’ needs. Still, it seemed that many of my customers didn’t get the difference between server and servant.

I’m now applying to graduate school, which means someday I’ll return to a profession where people need to be nice to me in order to get what they want. I think I’ll take them to dinner first, and see how they treat someone whose only job is to serve them.

What’s hot for 2007 among the very rich? A ＄ 7.3 million diamond ring. A trip to Tanzania to hunt wild animals. Oh, and income inequality,

Sure, some leftish billionaires like George Soros have been railing against income inequality for years. But increasingly, centrist and right-wing billionaires are starting to worry about income inequality and the fate of the middle class.

In December, Mortimer Zuckerman wrote a column in U.S. News & World Report, which he owns. “Our nation’s core bargain with the middle class is disintegrating,” lamented (哀叹) the 117th-riehest main in America. “Most of our economic gains have gone to people at the very top of the income ladder. Average income for a household of people of working age, by contrast, has fallen five years in a row.” He noted that “Tens of millions of Americans live in fear that a major health problem can reduce them to bankruptcy.”

Wilbur Ross Jr. has echoed Zuckerman’s anger over the bitter struggles faced by middle-class Americans. “It’s an outrage that any American’s life expectancy should be shortened simply because the company they worked for went bankrupt and ended health-care coverage,” said the former chairman of the International Steel Group.

What’s happening? The very rich are just as trendy as you and I, and can be so when it comes to politics and policy. Given the recent change of control in Congress, the popularity of measures like increasing the minimum wage, and efforts by California’s governor to offer universal health care, these guys don’t need their own personal weathermen to know which way the wind blows.

It’s possible that plutocrats (有钱有势的人) are expressing solidarity with the struggling middle class as part of an effort to insulate themselves from confiscatory (没收性的) tax policies. But the prospect that income inequality will lead to higher taxes on the wealthy doesn’t keep plutocrats up at night. They can live with that.

No, what they fear was that the political challenges of sustaining support for global economic integration will be more difficult in the United States because of what has happened to the distribution of income and economic insecurity.

In other words, if middle-class Americans continue to struggle financially as the ultrawealthy grow ever wealthier, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain political support for the free flow of goods, services, and capital across borders. And when the United States places obstacles in the way of foreign investors and foreign goods, it’s likely to encourage reciprocal action abroad. For people who buy and sell companies, or who allocate capital to markets all around the world, that’s the real nightmare.

In 1915 Einstein made a trip to Gottingen to give some lectures at the invitation of the mathematical physicist David Hilbert. He was particularly eager – too eager, it would turn【B1】– to explain all the intricacies of relativity to him. The visit was a triumph, and he said to a friend excitedly, “I was able to【B2】Hilbert of the general theory of relativity.”

【B3】all of Einstein’s personal turmoil (焦躁) at the time, a new scientific anxiety was about to【B4】. He was struggling to find the right equations that would【B5】his new concept of gravity,【B6】that would define how objects move【B7】space and how space is curved by objects. By the end of the summer, he【B8】the mathematical approach he had been【B9】for almost three years was flawed. And now there was a【B10】pressure. Einstein discovered to his【B11】that Hilbert had taken what he had learned from Einstein’s lectures and was racing to come up【B12】the correct equations first.

It was an enormously complex task. Although Einstein was the better physicist, Hilbert was the better mathematician. So in October 1915 Einstein【B13】himself into a month-long frantic endeavor in【B14】he returned to an earlier mathematical strategy and wrestled with equations, proofs, corrections and updates that he【B15】to give as lectures to Berlin’s Prussian Academy of Sciences on four【B16】Thursdays.

His first lecture was delivered on Nov. 4, 1915, and it explained his new approach,【B17】he admitted he did not yet have the precise mathematical formulation of it. Einstein also took time off from【B18】revising his equations to engage in an awkward fandango (方丹戈双人舞) with his competitor Hilbert. Worried【B19】being scooped (抢先), he sent Hilbert a copy of his Nov. 4 lecture. “I am【B20】to know whether you will take kindly to this new solution,” Einstein noted with a touch of defensiveness.

Men, these days, are embracing fatherhood with the round-the-clock involvement their partners have always dreamed of – handing night feedings, packing lunches and bandaging knees. But unlike women, many find they’re negotiating their new roles with little support or information. “Men in my generation (aged 25-40) have a fear of becoming dads because we have no role models,” says Jon Smith, a writer. They often find themselves excluded from mothers’ support networks, and are eyed warily (警觉地) on the playground.

The challenge is particularly evident in the work-place. There, men are still expected to be breadwinners climbing the corporate ladder; traditionally-minded bosses are often unsympathetic to family needs. In Denmark most new fathers only take two weeks of paternity leave (父亲的陪产假) – even though they are allowed 34 days. As much as if not more so than women, fathers struggle to be taken seriously when they request flexible arrangements.

Though Wilfried-Fritz Maring, 54, a data-bank and Internet specialist with German firm FIZ Karlsruhe, feels that the time he spends with his daughter outweighs any disadvantages, he admits, “With my decision to work from home I dismissed any opportunity for promotion.”

Mind-sets (思维定势) are changing gradually. When Mating had a daughter, the company equipped him with a home office and allowed him to choose a job that could be performed from there. Danish telecom company TDC initiated an internal campaign last year to encourage dads to take paternity leave: 97 percent now do. “When an employee goes on paternity leave and is with his kids, he gets a new kind of training: in how to keep cool under stress,” says spokesperson Christine Elberg Holm. For a new generation of dads, kids may come before the company – but it’s a shift that benefits both.