Yang told reporters that Chinas per capita1 emission2 of the gases compared to global warming is less than one third the average in developed countries. “There is one person who eats three pieces of bread for breakfast, and there are three people, each of whom eats only one piece. Who should be on a diet?” he said at a press conference. “If per capita energy burning up is necessary according to the principle that people are all born equal, then I dont think some people are right in talking about the large emissions of China, as if they have the moral high ground.” Chinas greenhouse gas output has raised in recent years as its largely coalpowered economy has expanded at doubledigit3 speed, and it now lines alongside the United States as the worlds biggest emitter4.
However China has a population of more than 1.3 billion people, compared with around 300 million in the United States. “Chinas emission of greenhouse gas is large. This is because China has the largest population in the world, but Chinas per capita emission level is very low,” Yang said. He also repeated Chinas longheld opinion that developed countries are mainly responsible for the climate change problem. “Climate change is mainly due to the longterm emissions by developed countries in the past and their current high per capita level of emissions,” said Yang.
Yang also pointed out that a large part of Chinas emissions was the result of manufacturing5 products that eventually are bought by consumers in Western countries, leading to what he named “transfer emission”. “I hope when people use highquality yet inexpensive Chinese products, they will also remember that China is under increasing pressure of transfer emission,” he said.
【生词注释】
1. per capita照人数分配的,人均2. emissionn. 排放（物）
3. doubledigitadj. 两位数的4. emittern. 发射器
5. manufacturingn. 制造业
1. What is Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechis opinion?
A. China should reduce greenhouse gas emissions at first.
B. Developed world should reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
C. Developing world neednt reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
D. Developing countries should reduce their population.
2. What is the main reason for the worlds climate change according to Yang Jiechi?
A. Chinas largely coalpowered economy has expanded.
B. The population of the world have become larger and larger.
C. Longterm and high per capita level of emissions in the past and now.
D. There are more cars, trucks and factories in the world.
3. We learn from the text that Chinas .
A. products are mainly exported to Asia and Africa
B. per capita emission level is the lowest in the world
C. population is three times as large as that of the U.S.
D. coalpowered manufacturing is developing fast
4. This massage mainly tells us .
A. Chinas opinion to the climate change problem
B. China is under the pressure of world environmentalist
C. western countries are all the worlds big emitters
D. greenhouse gas emissions in China is rising
If man were to disappear from the face of the Earth today, his footprint on the planet would remain for a very short time in geological terms.
Within hours, nature would begin to eradicate1 its impact. In 50,000 years all that would remain would be archaeological traces. Only radioactive materials and a few manmade chemical pollutants would last longer.
Modern human beings have managed just 150,000 years on Earth, and by contrast, the dinosaurs populated the planet for 165 million years.
Mans environmental footprint would, according to a report in New Scientist, begin to weaken almost immediately, with light pollution the first to go as power stations stopped to provide energy.
By tomorrow, street lights and house lights left on by their former occupants2 would start to go out. Streets and cultivated fields would be the next to go. Within 20 years village streets and rural roads would have vanished under a cover of weeds; fields would be overgrown within months. Urban streets would take a little longer, but even in huge manmade cities, such as London and Birmingham, plants would have taken over in about 50 years.
Buildings would decay rapidly. Wooden structures would collapse first, attacked by all kinds of insects. All such homes would be gone in a century. Glass and steel buildings in cities would mostly fall down within 200 years. Brick, stone and concrete structures would last longer. With exceptions-the pyramids are already 5,000 years old-by the next millennium3 there would be little more left than ruins.
Wildlife would thrive4 in the absence of Man. Most of the 15,589 threatened species will begin to recover immediately towards historical populations. Carbon dioxide emissions would continue to cause climate change for another 100 years, but after 1,000 years all would be back to preindustrial levels, with all manmade traces vanishing in 20,000 years.
If, 50,000 years hence, an alien archaeologist were to land on an Earth without Man, it might be quite frustrated by the paucity5 of evidence that we were here at all.
【生词注释】
1. eradicatevt. 摧毁, 完全根除2. occupantn. （房屋等的）居住者, 占有人