1 . The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report. It stated that the world is quickly running out of time to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the level widely agreed to be the conservative, safety-first goal to prevent serious climate harm. To get there, the world would have to cut current emissions (排放物) by 45 percent by 2030. That sounds absurdly unlikely.
But before we give in to despair, we should remember that the technology to address climate change is going along at high speed. The largest source of US carbon emissions is transportation, and a Green New Deal program for motor vehicles would be quite straightforward.
The reason is simple: With some subsidies (补贴), electric cars and buses are cost- competitive with fossil-fuel vehicles. Electric buses have gone into the market at the greatest speed, because they are a logical choice for electrification. At the end of 2018, electric vehicles were displacing about 280,000 barrels of oil demand per day. That’s more than the whole consumption of Greece.
And the electric car market is also reaching maturity, with appealing designs, longer range, and a quickly-expanding rapid charging network in many countries. It’s worth emphasizing that most of the basic systems necessary to recharge electric vehicles already exist. People often tend to assume that we would need to replace every gas station, but virtually all homes and businesses already have an electrical connection which can be easily improved for fast charging. All that is needed to go fully electric is enough battery capacity and fast charging stations to deal with long trips.
Now America would have to repair its electricity production, rails, shipping, and so on to fully decarbonize (脱碳) the transportation sector. It will be considerably more difficult than simply rooting out fossil fuel vehicles from the market.
But greening America’s vehicles would be straightforward, relatively cheap, and a huge step forward on climate. The politics of climate change are so fearful that despair can seem logical, but the first step in achieving a tough goal is the firm belief that it can be done. And this particular step wouldn’t even be that tough.
1. What can we infer from the IPCC’s report?| A．The world is suffering serious climate harm. |
| B．Global warming is growing out of our control. |
| C．We are too conservative to deal with global warming. |
| D．Cutting emissions is the easiest way to stop climate change. |
| A．By running at the greatest speed. |
| B．By changing the way of transportation. |
| C．By making consumers have logical choices. |
| D．By getting financial support from governments. |
| A．They aren’t so efficient in reducing emissions. |
| B．There’s still much room for designing new ones. |
| C．There aren’t enough fast charging stations for them. |
| D．Home electrical connection can be used for charging them. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Critical. | C．Positive. | D．Uncaring. |
1. 交通安全的重要性；
2. 你的建议；
3. 增强安全意识，倡议文明出行。
注意：1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Traffic Safety Depends on Everyone
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________| A．On the train. | B．At the airport. | C．In the car. |
| A．To a supermarket. | B．To a bank. | C．To a restaurant. |
Today you could get a ticket if you don’t drive on your side of the road. Worse yet, you could have a head-on collision(正面碰撞). But in 1917, Dr. June McCarroll could not get drivers to understand what seems so obvious today.
June McCarroll was born in New York in 1867. Unlike most young women of her age, she attended medical college in Chicago. After her husband became ill, the couple moved to Southern California in 1904.
In 1917, while driving down a familiar road near Indio, California Dr. McCarroll had a driving accident. In order to avoid a head-on collision with a truck going in the opposite direction, her car was driven off the road and into a ditch (沟). This gave Dr. McCarrolla new idea—paint lines on the road, separating lanes(车道) with a center line.
“My car and I found ourselves face-to-face with a truck on the highway. It did not take me long to choose between a sandy ditch to the right and a ten-ton truck to the left! Then an idea struck me.”
McCarroll wrote to the local government. However, the government didn’t take McCarroll seriously. After receiving no response to her letters, McCarroll took her idea and matters into her own hands. She painted a white line down the center of the street to make two separate lanes of traffic as a way to prevent future collisions.
Dr. McCarroll then asked women’s groups through the state of California to organize letter writing campaigns to state and local politicians and in 1924 California approved of the practice of painting traffic lines on highway roads. The safety practice quickly spread to other states, then other countries. By virtue of the lines, thousands of accidents are prevented and an untold number of lives are saved each year.
1. What is the text mainly about?(no more than 10 words)2. What encouraged the idea of painting lines on the highway
3. How did the local government treat McCarroll’s suggestion at the beginning? (no more than 10 words)
4. What do the underlined words “By virtue of” in Paragraph 6 probably mean? (no more than 5 words)
5. According to the last two paragraphs, what do you think of McCarroll?(no more than 20 words)
6 . We are all aware of the damaging pollution that’s created by driving petrol and diesel(柴油) vehicles. Many of the world’s cities are blocked with traffic, creating fumes containing gases such as nitrogen oxides.The solution for a cleaner, greener future could be electric vehicles. But how optimistic should we be? There was much excitement last year when the UK government announced it will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. But is that easier said than done?
The road to global traffic being totally electric is still a long way off. Currently, battery life is an issue ——a fully charged battery won’t take you as far as a full tank of petrol. There are also limited numbers of charging points to plug an electric vehicle into. Of course, technology is always improving. Some of the biggest tech companies, like Google and Tesla, are spending huge amounts of money developing electric cars. And most of the big car manufacturers are now making them too. Colin Herron, a consultant on low-carbon vehicle technology, told the BBC, “The big leap forward will come with solid-state batteries, which will appear first in mobile phones and laptops before they progress to cars. “These will charge more quickly and give cars a bigger range. Cost is another issue that may discourage people switching to electric power. But some countries offer incentive, such as cutting prices by reducing import taxes, and not charging for road tax and parking. Some also provide exclusive lanes for electric cars to be driven on, overtaking traditional cars which might be stuck in jams.
These kinds of measures have made Norway the country with the most electric cars per capita(人均) at more than thirty electric cars per 1000 inhabitants. But Colin Herron warns that “electric motoring” doesn’t mean a zero-carbon future. “It’s emission-free motoring, but the car has to be built, the battery has to be built, and the electricity does come from somewhere.” Maybe it’s time to think about making fewer journeys or using public transport.
1. What can we infer from the question at the end of Paragraph 1?| A．It is not easy to obtain a greener future by means of electric vehicles. |
| B．Electric vehicles may not solve the traffic problems. |
| C．We should not be too optimistic about the future. |
| D．It’s not a good idea to replace petrol vehicles with electric ones. |
| A．permission | B．encouragement | C．admission | D．insistence |
| A．Electric motoring will create a zero-carbon future. |
| B．Putting solid-state batteries in electric cars first will be a “great leap forward”. |
| C．There are four obstacles on the road to global traffic being totally electric. |
| D．Electric cars might not get stuck in traffic jams in the future. |
| A．Electric Power or Petrol: A Tough Decision to Make |
| B．Electric Vehicles: A Road to a Greener Future |
| C．Total Electric Traffic: A Long Way to Go |
| D．Petrol and Diesel Vehicles: A Main Source of Gases |
| A．He was stuck in traffic, | B．He had a traffic accident. | C．His car broke down on the road. |
1. Where is the Pink Flamingo?
| A．On Pine Street. | B．On 2nd Street. | C．On 3rd Street. |
| A．At 10:30 p.m. | B．At 11:30 p.m. | C．At 12:00 p.m. |
| A．15. | B．45. | C．50. |
| A．On fool. | B．By subway. | C．By car. |
