完形填空 Whatever else historians say about the Copenhagen talks on climate change, they may be remembered as a time when the world concluded that it must protect forests, and pay for them. In the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, forests were a big absentee: that was partly because the nations like Brazil were unwilling, at any price, to accept limits on their freedom to fell. All that is history.
        41    Over the past two years, skillful campaigning by pro-forest groups has successfully disseminated the idea that trees cannot be ignored in any serious deliberation on the planet's future.
    Most people at the summit accepted the case that is endlessly made by friends of the forest: cutting down trees contributes up to 20% of global greenhouse emissions, and avoiding this loss would be a quick, cheap way of limiting heat-trapping gases.     42   
    On December 16th six rich nations gave advocates of that view a boost when they pledged $ 3.5 billion as a down payment on a much larger effort to 'slow, halt and eventually reverse' deforestation in poor countries. The benefactors—Australia, France, Japan, Norway, Britain and the United States—endorsed tree protection in terms that went beyond the immediate need to stem emissions.     43   
    Impressive as it was, the rich nations offer did not settle the questions that need resolving in any global forest deal.     44    The most ambitious proposals called for a 50% reduction in deforestation by 2020 and a complete halt by 2030. But forested nations were unwilling to accept those ideas until they saw what the rich world was offering. The other question was how so much money will be ladled out, how it will be raised and who would receive it: national governments, regional authorities or local people, including the indigenous. Any plan that did not give local people cause to keep their trees standing would surely fail.
    Tony La Vina, the chief negotiator on the UN initiative known as 'Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)' was optimistic, as of December 16th, that the issues left to settle were 'manageable.' The question of how much money to raise from government transfers, and how much from carbon trading, is not merely of concern to radical greens. Some Europeans fear that throwing forests into the carbon market will depress the price; but for America's Congress, a healthy market in offsets may be the only thing that makes payment to protect forests palatable.
    Supporters of REDD say it offers performance-related finance for saving forests on a far larger scale than ever before. It aims to ensure rigorous verification.     45    These may come from inflated national baselines for deforestation, or allowances that permit some sorts of tree-felling to be ignored. Sceptics also claim that REDD ignores some causes of deforestation, like the demand for soy, beef, palm oil, and timber which tempts people to act illegally.
    A. The proposal's critics insist that a superficially good deal could prove terrible because of loopholes in carbon accounting.
    B. As the UN talks went into their second week, trees looked like being one of the few matters on which governments could more or less see eye to eye.
    C. One was whether or not to include timetables and targets.
    D. Keeping trees standing would protect biodiversity and help development of the right sort, they said.
    E. In the longer term, Copenhagen's decisions may do a lot more to make the forests lucrative in themselves.
    F. The fact that REDD has been broadened to include rewards for countries that have conserved their forests (as opposed to repentant sinners) is an encouraging sign. But that does not mean the problems are negligible.
    G. Unless forests are better protected, so their argument goes, dangerous levels of climate change look virtually inevitable.

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