单选题Directions:In this part of the test, there are six short
passages. Read each passage carefully, and then do the questions that
follow. Passage One
The best things in life are free, and that includes air and water.
Swimming and breathing usually don't cost anything, but neither does throwing
away garbage. Since dumping pollution into the environment costs nothing,
everybody does it, even though he may wish that he and everyone else would stop
doing it. Clean air and water have not been recognized by the market as limited
resources that can only absorb so much junk before they start spitting it
back—exactly what had started happening by the early 1960s. The solution is to
put a price on the use of these limited resources and stop classifying them as
"free". Protection of air and water have to be brought into the market system.
Very early on, then, the problem was properly diagnosed. But
that was exactly the problem. The dilemma we faced was just that: how do you put
a price on clean air—or at least on the act of fouling it while disposing of
society's wastes? Yet in there reluctance to perceive their concern as one of
mere economics, environmentalists rejected this approach. It failed to match the
religiosity of their cause. Instead, they supported a highly centralized,
bureaucratic system based on difficult goals, detailed regulatory prescriptions,
and awe-inspiring penalties for noncompliance. The way the
Clean Air Act of 1970 affected industry has more or less passed into legend. It
is not that it did not produce results. Air pollution has declined in many
areas, and has increased in only a few. The real question is the costs that were
incurred in the process. The major problem with the Clear Air
Act is that it lays the burden of costs only on the people who make the effort
to clean up. (The large fines were intended mainly as a threat, and are rarely
imposed.) No one has yet put a price on using clean air as a dumping ground. The
only standards for deciding who cleans up and who doesn't are the necessarily
arbitrary decisions arrived at by the state environmental agencies. Each
industry, therefore, has every incentive to spend years in litigation trying to
prove that it is someone else's pollution that is at fault.
单选题
In the first paragraph, the problem was properly diagnosed. What was
the diagnosis then?
A. The best things in life are free.
B. Dumping pollution into the environment costs nothing, so everybody does
it.
C. Clean air and water have not been recognized by the market as limited
resources.
D. A price should be put on the use of limited resources like clean air and
water.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】依据文章第一段，问题已被正确诊断出之前，该问题的解决方案已被提出。即“the solution is to put a price on…”显然选项D是正确的。
单选题
The word "dilemma" is closest in meaning to ______.