1、专业英语八级（阅读）模拟试卷 95及答案与解析 SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A , B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. 0 (1)If
2、there was a pub where you could drink your fill and leave the hangover with the landlord, would you go there? Idle dreaming, but this is the deal in the world of carbon accounting, where responsibility is shared out among countries, and targets set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (2)If I want
3、 to own and enjoy a cheap, garage-sized TV, all the fossil fuel emissions that result from making it dont get added to my home account, but to the country of manufacture, most probably the developing countries. (3)As a result, the origins of demand and the place of consumption become insulated from
4、environmental consequences. (4)Worse still, as the latest, most comprehensive set of figures on the hidden trade in “embodied carbon“ reveal, it allows countries such as the UK and the US to delude themselves, by suggesting that the real problems in tackling climate change lay elsewhere, and to dang
5、erously misunderstand the scale of domestic challenges. (5)It allows us to think that, even if too slowly, we are heading in the right downward direction in terms of our emissions. When in fact the more comprehensive, latest figures reveal that the UKs CO2 emissions didnt fall by 28m tonnes between
6、1990 and 2008 at all, as the official record indicates, but rose by a substantial 100m tonnes. Rich country emissions went up 12% over the period when hidden, traded emissions are included, and anomalies such as Russia, whose economy collapsed in the early 1990s, are left out. (6)Trades share of the
7、 global economy increased steadily in the last two decades and emissions from the production of traded goods and services rose from one fifth to more than one quarter of global CO2 emissions. (7)The UK has targets under the Kyoto protocol, and legal obligations under the Climate Change Act to reduce
8、 emissions. But the benchmark against which those targets and obligations are set excludes this “off-shored“ carbon. Using a faulty accounting system creates a kind of Alice in Climate Wonderland world in which up is down, the wrong people take the blame and the kingdom is never put in order. (8)Ent
9、er the governments “green deal“, a centrepiece of the coalitions pledge to be the greenest government ever, which is about to arrive for scrutiny in the House of Commons. (9)Like a spoon of sugar at the Hatters tea party, it will allow motivated households to install home insulation and pay off the
10、cost over time through their fuel bills. (10)Parliaments environmental audit committee is currently investigating whether there are contradictions between how the UK addresses climate change in its aid programme, and how we behave at home. (11)The contradiction is so large that perhaps it is difficu
11、lt to see. It is the economic model itself. It demands ever more damaging over-consumption by the already rich to deliver shrinking, unreliable benefits to the poor. Its a model in which most benefits accrue to the former, yet without significantly improving life satisfaction, and costs, to the latt
12、er. Economic insult is merely added to environmental injury that a large proportion of our current carbon debts(let alone larger historical ones)are borne by others because of an accounting quirk. (12)Other downright peculiarities emerge, such as the boomerang trade, which sees the UK importing and
13、exporting often near identical amounts of goods, like sending 5,000 tonnes of toilet paper to Germany, then importing 4,000 tonnes. (13)Apart from failing on its own terms and being distorted by faulty measurement, the model rising overall consumption fuelled by debt and export-led development assum
14、es endless supplies of cheap oil and infinite natural resources. Neither are available. (14)Last week saw commentators obsessed with minor fluctuations in the UKs GDP, a measure of the quantity, not quality, of economic activity. “Recovery“ has become synonymous with me return of rising consumption.
15、 In trying to revive a flawed and failing economic order, however, we appear as sad romantics, rather like those diehard Russians who still dream witii misplaced memories of a golden age, for me return of the tsars or “strong“ communist party leaders, rather man looking forward and imagining how me
16、world could be different, better. 1 Which of the following facts does NOT arise from the current carbon accounting system? （ A） Countries of manufacture are taking more responsibilities for carbon emissions. （ B） Rich countries underestimate the seriousness of their own carbon emissions. （ C） Rich c
17、ountries mistakenly believe mat they have reduced carbon emissions. （ D） Rich countries realize that me problem of carbon emissions is getting worse. 2 The sentence “. creates a kind of Alice in Climate Wonderland world.“ in Paragraph Seven implies that _. （ A） import-led countries take less respons
18、ibilities man they should （ B） export-led countries are to blame for traded carbon emissions （ C） export-led countries produce more carbon emissions （ D） import-led countries produce more carbon emissions 3 From the passage we can infer that _. （ A） peoples living standards have been improved greatl
19、y in me UK （ B） me gap between the rich and poor is widening in me UK （ C） economy has been developing steadily in me UK （ D） the UK copies Russias pattern in economic recovery 3 (1)You know tilings are bad when the nation loses 11,000 jobs in November and Americans are overjoyed. Sure, unemployment
20、 has come down a meager 0.2 percent to put us at 10 percent, but thats still me worst level in decades. And more important, theres no real end in sight. Even if jobs start to come back sooner man expected which may happen as more stimulus money starts to kick in U.S. unemployment is likely to remain
21、 high for years to come, as much as 7 or 8 percent even into next year. “The average American will not be better off in five years unemployment will remain high and wage growth will continue to be flat,“ says George Soros, who forecast an “age of wealth destruction“ four months before the crisis hit
22、. (2)But in this recovery, flat is the new up. Any near-term uptick in jobs will probably be small, because theres still plenty to be milked from existing workers. Novembers numbers show mat the average workweek is only 33 hours, giving bosses plenty of room to crack the whip before hiring new emplo
23、yees. And one big reason for me November surprise was that the Obama administration has spent billions making sure job losses werent worse. Even if me administration diverts bank-bailout money to support small businesses, as has been suggested, it will be impossible to replicate the stimulus surge o
24、f this year. Growing debts simply dont allow Washington to spend much more. (3)One of the key differences between this recession and past ones is that credit has remained so tight for so long. Even though interest rates remain as low as they were in the easiest years of easy money, the cash simply i
25、snt flowing. This is particularly devastating for the small businesses that create two thirds of Americas new jobs; they depend largely on bank loans, which have tailed off 17 percent since last year. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who attended Obamas recent jobs conference in Washin
26、gton, notes that small-business owners also tend to raise capital via home refinancing and credit cards. Now that the mortgage market has collapsed, and credit limits are being slashed and rates raised to 30 percent, neither of those options are viable. “Theres simply no magic bullet for jump-starti
27、ng job creation right now,“ says Stiglitz. (4)Meanwhile, globalization continues to take a toll, even on white-collar jobs. Emerging markets like China and Brazil have come out of the financial crisis richer and stronger; their better-educated, more-productive workers are increasingly able to perfor
28、m jobs higher up the food chain. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report found that 71 percent of U.S. workers hold jobs for which there is decreasing demand, increasing supply, or both. Even million-dollar-a-year McKinsey consultants should be worried; how much longer will it be before $200,000-a
29、-year partners at Indias Infosys eat their lunch? (5)The cultural and political implications are sobering. Studies show that high unemployment has disastrous consequences for civic engagement. Depressed, laid-off people retreat from their churches, schools, and ballot boxes, an effect that is viral.
30、 “Having ever been unemployed makes you permanently less connected to your community,“ says Harvard professor Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, the bestseller on social disengagement in America nearly a decade ago. Consider that unemployment among black men ages 16 to 19 stands at a devastatin
31、g 57 percent, up from 34 percent in November two years ago. Couple this with the fact that the crisis may exacerbate the gap between rich and poor, which has been widening since the 1980s, and you have a situation ripe for ugly, populist politics. (6)Any long-term fixes will mean focusing on primary
32、-and-secondary-school education, to ensure a globally competitive workforce, and on affordable health care for all to help buffer wage inequality. Neither is simple or cheap. But they are crucial if Americans want to maintain their standard of living. A new Fidelity survey found that one in four wor
33、kers aged 22 to 33, part of this new recession generation, now say they want to stay with the same employer for life, up from last years 14 percent. Its a touching commitment. The question is how many employers are really looking to get hitched. 4 The sentence “. giving bosses plenty of room to crac
34、k the whip before hiring new employees.“ in the second paragraph implies that_. （ A） employers are unwilling to hire more workers （ B） employers treat their employees cruelly （ C） employees are not working very hard （ D） employees are being exploited by employers 5 Which of the following does NOT co
35、ntribute to the high unemployment rate in America? （ A） Economic recession. （ B） A downturn in small businesses. （ C） Competitive foreign workforce. （ D） Inadequate government aid. 6 From the fourth paragraph, we can infer that _. （ A） globalization has a negative impact on employment in America （ B
36、） American employees are less competitive than foreign workers （ C） foreign workforce has entered the American job market （ D） American employees are less competent for many jobs 7 Which of the following best describes the authors development of argument? （ A） introducing the issuemaking suggestions
37、 to deal with me issueanalyzing the consequencesoffering reasons. （ B） describing the actual statusanalyzing me consequencesmaking suggestions to deal with the issueoffering reasons. （ C） introducing the issueoffering reasonsmaking suggestions to deal with the issueanalyzing the consequences. （ D） d
38、escribing the actual statusoffering reasonsanalyzing the consequencesmaking suggestions to deal with the issue. 7 (1)Weve spent more man 60 years dissecting Willy Loman, me character artfully sketched by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Willy is, perhaps, Americas consummate loser. But if you c
39、an bear with me for one moment, imagine he lived in current times, not amid me postwar prosperity of 1949. Sure, his career was ebbing, but Willy kept a job for 38 years, he owned his house he had just made me last mortgage payment and had a wife and two children. Today hed be a survivor. (2)Has our
40、 view of failure softened since Willy Lomans day? In a country with a high level of unemployment, and where promotions, bonuses, and retirement savings seem like relics, failure is something many of us are wrestling with right now. But if we begin to accept that success is not a simple, upward caree
41、r route, mis economic crisis may not just reduce the stigma of being sacked but transform me way we think of failing. Shocking as it sounds, failure can be a good thing. (3)Its true, recessions can wreck self-esteem. In a nation built on success and a gloriously entrepreneurial spirit, the prospect
42、of failure can make people fearful and shameful even when it is not their fault. “There is a crash in every generation,“ wrote Arthur Miller in 2005, just before he died, “sufficient to mark us with a kind of congenital fear of failure.“ Miller was commenting on a wonderful book by historian Scott S
43、andage called Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Sandage believes Willy Loman was a success. But me message of the play, he says, is that “if you are not continuing upwards, if you level off, you have to give up. You might as well not live.“ (4)In his book, Sandage argues mat Americas ide
44、as about failure were formed between 1819 and 1893, as busts followed a series of speculative booms. Before then, failure was not associated with individual identity. It just happened to you. Bankruptcy was thought to come from overreach living excessively not from lack of ambition. By me end of me
45、19th century, says Sandage, failure had gone from being a professional misfortune to “a name for a deficient self, an identity in me red.“ Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed mis in his journal in 1842: “Nobody fails who ought not to fail. There is always a reason, in me man, for his good or bad fortune.“
46、 By the middle of me last century, at the time Willy Loman was hawking his wares, Americans could not face “me possibility of defeat in ones personal life or ones work without being morally destroyed,“ according to sociologist David Riesman. This foolish, dangerous idea is under assault right now. S
47、hould financial success really be a moral imperative? Why do we think that an ordinary kind of life is of lesser worth? Studies have found that our most potent emotional experiences come from relationships, not careers. Those who work in palliative care(临终关怀 )report that, on their deambeds, most peo
48、ple dont regret not having clambered a rung higher, but having worked too hard, and having lost touch with friends. (5)And history shows it is only when me economy is in the mud that Americans feel free to do what they want to do. As me author J. K. Rowling said so concisely in her 2008 address to H
49、arvard graduates, failure can mean a “stripping away of the inessential.“ When she was an impoverished single mother, she started to write her magical tales: “I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other man what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.“ This doesnt mean it is an uplifting experience to be unemployed, of course. But it may mean we ease up on some of the judgment that springs from the false idea mat a person without a job has not j
