研究生基础英语期末考试样卷(8)

研究生基础英语期末考试样卷

Passage Two There were strangers on our beach yesterday, for the first time in a month. A new footprint on our sand is nearly as rare as in Robinson Crusoe. We are at the very edge of the Atlantic; half a mile out in front of us is a coral reef （珊瑚礁）, and then nothing but 3000 miles of ocean to West Africa. It is a wild and lonely beach, with the same surf beating on it as when Columbus came by. And yet the beach is polluted.

Oil tankers over the horizon have fouled it more than legions of picnickers could. The oil comes ashore in floating patches that stain the coral black and gray. It has blighted the rock crabs and the crayfish and has coated the delicate whorls of the conch shells with black goo（黏质物质）. And it has congealed（凝结） upon itself, littering the beach with globes of tar that resemble the cannonballs of a deserted battlefield. The islanders, as they go beachcombing for the treasures the sea has washed up for centuries, now wear old shoes to protect their feet from the oil that washes up too.

You have to try to get away from pollution to realize how bad it really is. We have known for the last few years how bad our cities are. Now there is no longer an escape. If there is oil on this island far out in the Atlantic, there is oil on nearly every other island.

It is still early here. The air is still clear over the island, but it won’t be when they build the airstrip they are talking about. The water out over the reef is still blue and green, but it is dirtier than it was a few years ago. And if the land is not despoiled, it is only because there are not yet enough people here to despoil it. There will be. And so for the moment on this island we are witnesses to the beginning, as it were, of the pollution of our environment.

Until the pollution of our deserted beach, it seemed simple to blame everything on the “population explosion.” If the population of this island, for example, could be stabilized at a couple of hundred, there would be very little problem with the environment in this secluded（与世隔绝的） area. There would be no pollution of the environment if there were not too many people using it, and so if we concentrate on winning the war against overpopulation, we can save the earth for mankind.

But the oil on the beach belies this too-easy assumption. Those tankers are not out there because too many Chinese and Indians are being born every minute. They are not even out there because there are too many Americans and Europeans. They are delivering their oil, and cleaning their tanks at see and sending the residue up onto the beaches of the Atlantic and Pacific, in order to fuel the technology of mankind --- and the factories and the power plants, the vehicles and the engines that have enabled mankind to survive on his planet are now spoiling the planet for life.

The fishermen on this island are perfectly right in preferring the outboard motor to the sail. Their livelihood is involved, and the motor, for all its fouling smell, has helped increase the fisherman’s catch so that he can now afford to dispense with the far more obnoxious（讨厌的） outdoor privy. But the danger of technology is in its escalation, and there has already been a small amount of escalation here. You can see the motor oil slicks around the town dock. Electric generators can be heard over the sound of the surf. And while there are only about two dozen automobiles for the ten miles of road, already there is a wrecked jeep rusting in the harbor waters where is was dumped and abandoned. The escalation of technological pollution is coming here