Text 2
Forests give us shade, quiet and one of the harder challenges in the fight against climate change. Even as we humans count on forests to soak up a good share of the carbon dioxide we produce, we are threatening their ability to do so.The climate change we are hastening could one day leave us with forests that emit more carbon than they absorb.
Thankfully, there is a way out of this trap - but it involves striking a subtle balance. Helping forests flourish as valuable "carbon sinks" long into the future may require reducing their capacity to absorb carbon now. California is leading the way, as it does on so many climate efforts, in figuring out the details.
The state's proposed Forest Carbon Plan aims to double efforts to thin out young trees and clear brush in parts of the forest. This temporarily lowers carbon-carrying capacity. But the remaining trees draw a greater share of the available moisture, so they grow and thrive, restoring the forest's capacity to pull carbon from the air. Healthy trees are also better able to fend off insects. The landscape is rendered less easily burnable. Even in the event of a fire, fewer trees are consumed.
The need for such planning is increasingly urgent. Already, since 2010,drought and insects have killed over 100 million trees in California, most of them in 2016 alone, and wildfires have burned hundreds of thousands of acres.
California plans to treat 35,000 acres of forest a year by 2020, and 60,000 by 2030 -financed from the proceeds of the state' s emissions- permit auctions. That's only a small share of the total acreage that could benefit, about half a million acres in all, so it will be vital to prioritize areas at greatest risk of fire or drought.
The strategy also aims to ensure that carbon in woody material removed from the forests is locked away in the form of solid lumber or burned as biofuel in vehicles that would otherwise run on fossil fuels. New research on transportation biofuels is already under way.
State governments are well accustomed to managing forests, but traditionally they've focused on wildlife, watersheds and opportunities for recreation. Only recently have they come to see the vital part forests will have to play in storing carbon. California's plan, which is expected to be finalized by the governor next year, should serve as a model.
26. By saying “one of the harder challenges ,”the author implies that_________.
A. global climate change may get out of control
B. people may misunderstand global warming
C. extreme weather conditions may arise
D. forests may become a potential threat
27. To maintain forests as valuable “carbon sinks," we may need to__________.
A. preserve the diversity of species in them
B. accelerate the growth of young trees
C. strike a balance among different plants
D. lower their present carbon-absorbing capacity
28. California's Forest Carbon Plan endeavors to_______.
A. cultivate more drought-resistant trees
B. reduce the density of some of its forests
C. find more effective ways to kill insects
D. restore its forests quickly after wildfires
29.What is essential to California's plan according to Paragraph 5?
A. To handle the areas in serious danger first.
B. To carry it out before the year of 2020.
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. supportive
D. Cautious
【参考答案】BBDCA
Text 3
American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigration, and a similarly sustained pickup in the U.S. job market, 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 have so far failed in Congress. If this doesn’t change, American businesses, communities and consumers will be the losers.
Perhaps half of U.S. farm laborers are undocumented immigrants. As fewer such workers enter the U.S., 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 agricultural 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 annually. Even so, employers frequently complain that they aren’t allotted 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 ，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. From 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?
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?
【参考答案】DACBC
