D. global climate change may get out of control
27. To maintain forests as valuable “carbon sinks,” we may need to
. A. lower their present carbon-absorbing capacity
B. strike a balance among different plants
C. accelerate the growth of young trees
D. preserve the diversity of species in them
28. California’s Forest Carbon Plan endeavors to
A. cultivate more drought-resistant trees
B. find more effective ways to kill insects
C. reduce the density of some of its forests
D. restore its forests quickly after wildfires
29. What is essential to California’s plan according to paragraph 5?
A. To carry it out before the year of 2020
B. To handle the areas in serious danger first
C. To perfect the emissions-permit auctions
D. To obtain enough financial support
30. The author’s attitude to California’s plan can best be described as
. A. ambiguous
B. tolerant C. cautious D. supportive
Text 3
American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers.
Efforts to create a more straightforward agricultural-workers visa that would enable foreign workers to stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry. If this doesn’t change, American businesses, communities and consumers will be the losers.
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Perhaps half of U.S. farm laborers are undocumented immigrants. As fewer such workers enter the country, the characteristics of the agricultural workforce are changing. Today’s farm laborers, while still predominantly born in Mexico, are more likely to be settled, rather than migrating, and more likely to be married than single. They are also aging. At the start of this century, about one-third of crop workers were over the age of 35. Now, more than half are. And crop picking is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it has been all along: Native U.S. workers won’t be returning to the farm.
Mechanization is not the answer either— not yet at least. Production of corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat have been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms, where robots currently do only a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they are automated.
As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the workforce. Starting around 2012, requests for the visas rose sharply; from 2011 to 2016 the number of visas issued more than doubled.
The H-2A visa has no numerical cap, unlike the H-2B visa for nonagricultural work, which is limited to 66,000 a year. Even so, employers complain that they aren’t given all the workers they need. The process is cumbersome, expensive and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led H-2A workers to arrive on the job an average of 22 days late. And the shortage is compounded by federal immigration raids, which remove some workers and drive others underground.
In a 2012 survey by, 71 percent of tree-fruit growers and nearly 80 percent of raisin and berry growers said they were short of labor. Some western growers have responded by moving operations to Mexico. In 1998-2000, 14.5 percent of the fruit Americans consumed was imported. Little more than a decade later, the share of imported fruit had increased to 25.8 percent.
In effect, the U.S. can import food or it can import the workers who pick it.
31. What problem should be addressed according to the first two paragraphs?
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A. Discrimination against foreign workers in the U.S.
B. Biased laws in favor of some American businesses.
C. Flaws in U.S. immigration rules for farm workers.
D. Decline of job opportunities in U.S. agriculture.
32. One trouble with U.S. agricultural workforce is
. A. the rising number of illegal immigrants
B. the high mobility of crop workers
C. the lack of experienced laborers
D. the aging of immigrant farm workers
33.What is the much-argued solution to the labor shortage in U.S. farming?
A. To attract younger laborers to farm work.
B. To get native U.S. workers back to farming.
C. To use more robots to grow high-value crops.
D. To strengthen financial support for farmers.
34. Agricultural employers complain about the H-2A visa for its
. A. slow granting procedures
B. limit on duration of stay
C. tightened requirements D.control of annual admissions
35. Which of the following could be the best title for this text?
A. U.S. Agriculture in Decline
B. Import Food or Labor
C. America Saved by Mexico
D. Manpower vs. Automation
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Text 4
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dia Mirza and Adrian Grenier have a message for you: It’s easy to beat plastic. They’re part of a bunch of celebrities staring in a new video for World Environment Day-encouraging you, the consumer, to swap out your single-use Plastic staples to combat the plastic crisis.
The key messages that have been put together for World Environment Day do include a call for governments to enact legislation to curb single-us plastics. But the overarching message is directed at individuals.
My concern with leaving it up to the individual, however, is our limited sense of what needs to be achieved. On their own, taking our own bags to the grocery store or quitting plastic straws, for example, will accomplish little and require very little of us. They could even be detrimental, satisfying a need to have “done our bit” without ever progressing onto bigger, bolder, more effective actions—a kind of “moral licensing” that allays our concerns and stops us doing more and asking more of those in charge.
While the conversation around our environment and our responsibility toward it remains centered on shopping bags and straws, we’re ignoring the balance of power that implies that as “consumers” we must shop sustainably, rather than as “ citizens” hole our governments and industries to account to push for real systemic change.
It’s important to acknowledge that the environment isn’t everyone’s priority-or even most people’s. We shouldn’t expect it to be. In her latest book, Why Could People Do Bad Environmental Things. Elizabeth R. De Sombre argues that the best way to collectively change the behavior of large numbers of people is for the change to be structural.
This might mean implementing policy such as a plastic tax that adds a cost to environmentally problematic action, or banning single-use plastics altogether. India has just announced it will “eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022.” There are also incentive-based ways of making better environmental choices easier, such as ensuring recycling is at least as easy as trash disposal.
De Sombre isn’t saying people should stop caring about the environment. It’s just that individual actions are too slow, she says, for that to be the only, or even primary, approach to changing widespread behavior.
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None of this is about writing off the individual. It’s just about putting things into perspective. We don’t have time to wait. We need progressive policies that shape collective action, alongside engaged citizens pushing for change.
36. Some celebrities star in a new video to
. A. demand new laws on the use of plastics
B. urge consumers to cut the use of plastics
C. invite public opinion on the plastics crisis D.disclose the causes of the plastics crisis
37.The author is concerned that “moral licensing” may
. A. mislead us into doing worthless things
B. prevent us from making further efforts
C. weaken our sense of accomplishment
D. suppress our desire for success
38. By pointing out our identity “citizens”, the author indicates that
.
A. our focus should be shifted to community welfare
B. our relationship with local industries is improving C.We have been actively exercising our civil rights D.We should press our governments to lead the combat
39. De Sombre argues that the best way for a collective change should be
.
A. a win-win arrangement
B. a self-driven mechanism
C. a cost-effective approach
D. a top down process
40. The author concludes that individual efforts
. A. can be too aggressive
B. can be too inconsistent
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