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今天提早发下,过会打网球去,不知道什么时候才能回来用网。 速度训练 Breaking a Long Silence on Population Control 计时一 Major American environmental groups have dodged the subject of population control for decades, wary of getting caught up in the bruising politics of reproductive health. Related
The condoms' packages were designed to start a discussion about how human population growth affects other species.
Yet, virtually alone, the Center for Biological Diversity is breaking the taboo by directly tying population growth to environmental problems through efforts like giving away condoms in colorful packages depicting endangered animals. The idea is to start a debate about how overpopulation crowds out species and hastens climate change — just when the world is welcoming Baby No. 7 Billion.
“Wrap with care, save the polar bear,” reads one of the packages. “Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl,” says another.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the center, a membership-based nonprofit organization in Tucson, said he had an aha moment a few years ago. “All the species that we save from extinction will eventually be gobbled up if the human population keeps growing,” he said.
In the United States, the birth rate has fallen steadily since the baby boom, from 3.6 births per woman in 1960 to 2.0 today, or just under the replacement level, at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next. Yet even at that rate, demographers estimate, the country will grow from 311 million people now to 478 million by the end of the century, because of both births and immigration.
The highest birth rates — from five to more than six births per woman — are occurring in a handful of nations in Africa and Asia, including Nigeria and Yemen. Yet among large economies, the United States is second only to Australia in the amount of carbon dioxide it emits per capita, according to the latest figures from the federal Energy Information Administration.
“Every person you add to the country makes all these tremendous demands on the environment,” said Joel E. Cohen, chief of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University.
——335 计时二 But experts are reluctant to suggest an ideal birth rate. “There isn’t any magic number,” Dr. Cohen said.
As recently as the 1970s, the subject of population control was less controversial, partly because the baby boom years had given rise to concerns about scarcity of resources, some population experts and environmentalists said. Then came China’s coercive one-child policy and a rise in social conservatism in the United States, combined with the country’s aversion to anything perceived as restricting individual freedoms, be it the right to bear arms or children.
Some groups also fear whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment and opposition to family planning. Immigration now accounts for about one-third of the growth rate in the United States.
“We see reluctance and fear to deal with this issue,” said Jose Miguel Guzman of the United Nations Population Fund.
Groups contacted for this article generally declined to discuss the issue or did not return calls.
The Center for Biological Diversity’s condom campaign, begun on college campuses last year, now includes video ads in Times Square and lobbying in Washington for more family planning services. It is an aggressive strategy even for the center, which is best known for barraging federal agencies with lawsuits intended to protect species and ecosystems.
The condom campaign is intended to raise awareness and help reduce unintended pregnancies. “Reproduction is always going to be a matter of free will,” said Randy Serraglio, the manager of the campaign. “This is about getting people to make the connection.”
A study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed how slowing the country’s population growth rate to 1.5 births per woman from 2.0 could result in a 10 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury and a 33 percent drop by the end of the century.
But the notion that curbing births is an effective way to control emissions is not an easy sell.
When Oregon State University released a study two years ago calculating the extra carbon dioxide emissions a person helps generate by choosing to have children, the researchers received hate mail labeling them “eugenicists” and “Nazis.”
——354
计时三 The study, which also calculated the impact of a birth beyond the child’s lifetime “should the offspring reproduce,” said that each American child generated seven times as much carbon dioxide over time as one child in China, and 169 times as much as one in Bangladesh. Reducing car travel, recycling and making homes more energy efficient would have a fraction of the impact on emissions that reducing the birth rate would, it found.
“There are important consequences to having children, and we tried to quantify them,” said Paul A. Murtaugh, an associate professor of statistics and one of the study’s co-authors. “It should be on the table. It needs to be.” Related
Some groups, like the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, said they worked on population-related issues mostly internationally. The president of the National Audubon Society declined an interview without explanation. The chairwoman of the Green Group, a loose association of several dozen environmental organizations, did not return calls or e-mails.
The Natural Resources Defense Council president, Frances Beinecke, said her group focused on addressing climate change through energy strategies and conservation efforts. “Particularly in this economic environment, we’re not in a position to just add, add, add,” Ms. Beinecke said of her group’s agenda.
Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the research on reducing emissions by cutting birth rates was not yet “robust” enough to make a convincing case for a clear way forward.
A country’s carbon footprint does not necessarily shrink when the birth rate drops, Mr. Knobloch said. In India and China, he pointed out, smaller families have consumed more as their incomes rose — a common trend in developing countries. “It gets complex very quickly,” he said.
Carl Pope, the chairman of the Sierra Club, said his organization now had one population officer on staff who was working on international reproductive health services. In this country, Mr. Pope said, there are reasons for keeping a low profile on the issue. ——329
计时四 “Look at Planned Parenthood,” he said, recalling the group’s bruising battle with Republican lawmakers over federal financing last spring. “There’s a huge atmosphere of intimidation. The moment you say ‘family planning,’ immediately somebody pulls out abortion.”
The 2.0 fertility rate in the United States is higher than the rates in other developed countries, including Germany and Japan (1.3), Canada (1.6) and Britain (1.8), according to figures from the United Nations.
John Seager, president of the group Population Connection, said organizations had been more assertive about lobbying the Obama administration for money to finance family planning services overseas.
Unintended pregnancies account for roughly half of all annual births in the United States, according to studies by the Guttmacher Institute, which is based in New York and promotes reproductive health worldwide.
By tackling such pregnancies, the fertility rate could be brought down to about 1.9 births per woman, slightly below replacement level yet high enough to ease concerns about economic stagnation and support for the elderly, said John Bongaarts, a demographer with the Population Council, a research group in New York.
Dr. Bongaarts described the inaction by environmental groups as a missed opportunity. “The global warming community is staying away from anything having to do with population,” he said, “and that’s frustrating.” ——230
越障 Keynesian economics Keynesian economics also called Keynesianism and Keynesian theory) is a school of macroeconomic thought based on the ideas of 20th-century English economist John Maynard Keynes.
Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and, therefore, advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.[1] The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936. The interpretations of Keynes are contentious and several schools of thought claim his legacy.
Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy — predominantly private sector, but with a significant role of government and public sector — and served as the economic model during the later part of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war economic expansion (1945–1973), though it lost some influence following the stagflation of the 1970s. The advent of the global financial crisis in 2007 has caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought.[2] According to Keynesian theory, some individually-rational microeconomic-level actions — if taken collectively by a large proportion of individuals and firms — can lead to inefficient aggregate macroeconomic outcomes, wherein the economy operates below its potential output and growth rate. Such a situation had previously been referred to by classical economists as a general glut. There was disagreement among classical economists (some of whom believed in Say's Law—that "supply creates its own demand"), on whether a general glut was possible. Keynes contended that a general glut would occur when aggregate demand for goods was insufficient, leading to an economic downturn resulting in losses of potential output due to unnecessarily high unemployment, which results from the defensive (or reactive) decisions of the producers. In such a situation, government policies could be used to increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing unemployment and deflation. Most Keynesians advocate an activist stabilization policy to reduce the amplitude of the business cycle, which they rank among the most serious of economic problems. For example, when the unemployment rate is very high, a government can use a dose of expansionary monetary policy.
Keynes argued that the solution to the Great Depression was to stimulate the economy ("inducement to invest") through some combination of two approaches: a reduction in interest rates and government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.[3]
A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that, in some situations, no strong automatic mechanism moves output and employment towards full employment levels. This conclusion conflicts with economic approaches that assume a strong general tendency towards equilibrium. In the 'neoclassical synthesis', which combines Keynesian macro concepts with a micro foundation, the conditions of general equilibrium allow for price adjustment to eventually achieve this goal. More broadly, Keynes saw his theory as a general theory, in which utilization of resources could be high or low, whereas previous economics focused on the particular case of full utilization.
The new classical macroeconomics movement, which began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, criticized Keynesian theories, while New Keynesian economics has sought to base Keynes' ideas on more rigorous theoretical foundations.
Some interpretations of Keynes have emphasized his stress on the international coordination of Keynesian policies, the need for international economic institutions, and the ways in which economic forces could lead to war or could promote peace.[4]
Keynes sought to distinguish his theories from and oppose them to "classical economics," by which he meant the economic theories of David Ricardo and his followers, including John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, and Arthur Cecil Pigou. A central tenet of the classical view, known as Say's law, states that "supply creates its own demand." Say's Law can be interpreted in two ways. First, the claim that the total value of output is equal to the sum of income earned in production is a result of a national income accounting identity, and is therefore indisputable. A second and stronger claim, however, that the "costs of output are always covered in the aggregate by the sale-proceeds resulting from demand" depends on how consumption and saving are linked to production and investment. In particular, Keynes argued that the second, strong form of Say's Law only holds if increases in individual savings exactly match an increase in aggregate investment.[11]
Keynes sought to develop a theory that would explain determinants of saving, consumption, investment and production. In that theory, the interaction of aggregate demand and aggregate supply determines the level of output and employment in the economy.
Because of what he considered the failure of the “Classical Theory” in the 1930s, Keynes firmly objects to its main theory—adjustments in prices would automatically make demand tend to the full employment level.
Neo-classical theory supports that the two main costs that shift demand and supply are labor and money. Through the distribution of the monetary policy, demand and supply can be adjusted. If there were more labor than demand for it, wages would fall until hiring began again. If there were too much saving, and not enough consumption, then interest rates would fall until people either cut their savings rate or started borrowing. During the Great Depression, the classical theory defined economic collapse as simply a lost incentive to produce, and the mass unemployment as a result of high and rigid real wages.[citation needed]
To Keynes, the determination of wages is more complicated. First, he argued that it is not real but nominal wages that are set in negotiations between employers and workers, as opposed to a barter relationship. Second, nominal wage cuts would be difficult to put into effect because of laws and wage contracts. Even classical economists admitted that these exist; unlike Keynes, they advocated abolishing minimum wages, unions, and long-term contracts, increasing labor-market flexibility. However, to Keynes, people will resist nominal wage reductions, even without unions, until they see other wages falling and a general fall of prices.
He also argued that to boost employment, real wages had to go down: Nominal wages would have to fall more than prices. However, doing so would reduce consumer demand, so that the aggregate demand for goods would drop. This would in turn reduce business sales revenues and expected profits. Investment in new plants and equipment—perhaps already discouraged by previous excesses—would then become more risky, less likely. Instead of raising business expectations, wage cuts could make matters much worse.
Further, if wages and prices were falling, people would start to expect them to fall. This could make the economy spiral downward as those who had money would simply wait as falling prices made it more valuable—rather than spending. As Irving Fisher argued in 1933, in his Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions, deflation (falling prices) can make a depression deeper as falling prices and wages made pre-existing nominal debts more valuable in real terms. The heart of the 'new Keynesian' view rests on microeconomic models that indicate that nominal wages and prices are "sticky," i.e., do not change easily or quickly with changes in supply and demand, so that quantity adjustment prevails. According to economist Paul Krugman, "while I regard the evidence for such stickiness as overwhelming, the assumption of at least temporarily rigid nominal prices is one of those things that works beautifully in practice but very badly in theory."[26] This integration is further spurred by the work of other economists that questions rational decision-making in a perfect information environment as a necessity for micro-economic theory. Imperfect decision-making such as that investigated by Joseph Stiglitz underlines the importance of management of risk in the economy.
Over time, many macroeconomists have returned to the IS-LM model and the Phillips curve as a first approximation of how an economy works. New versions of the Phillips curve, such as the "Triangle Model", allow for stagflation, since the curve can shift due to supply shocks or changes in built-in inflation. In the 1990s, the original ideas of "full employment" had been modified by the NAIRU doctrine, sometimes called the "natural rate of unemployment." NAIRU advocates suggest restraint in combating unemployment, in case accelerating inflation should result. However, it is unclear exactly what the value of the NAIRU should be—or whether it even exists.
The Crash of 2008 led to a revival of interest in and debate about Keynes. Keynes' biographer, Robert Skidelsky, wrote a book entitled Keynes: The Return of the Master.[27] Other books about Keynes published immediately following the Crash were generally favorable.[28]
GMAT阅读单项突破
Passage 28 (28/63) The settlement of the United States has occupied traditional historians since 1893 when Frederick Jackson Turner developed his Frontier Thesis, a thesis that explained American development in terms of westward expansion. From the perspective of women’s history, Turner’s exclusively masculine assumptions constitute a major drawback: his defenders and critics alike have reconstructed men’s, not women’s, lives on the frontier. However, precisely because of this masculine orientation, revising the Frontier Thesis by focusing on women’s experience introduces new themes into women’s history—woman as lawmaker and entrepreneur—and, consequently, new interpretations of women’s relationship to capital, labor, and statute. Turner claimed that the frontier produced the individualism that is the hallmark of American culture, and that this individualism in turn promoted democratic institutions and economic equality. He argued for the frontier as an agent of social change. Most novelists and historians writing in the early to midtwentieth century who considered women in the West, when they considered women at all, fell under Turner’s spell. In their works these authors tended to glorify women’s contributions to frontier life. Western women, in Turnerian tradition, were a fiercely independent, capable, and durable lot, free from the constraints binding their eastern sisters. This interpretation implied that the West provided a congenial environment where women could aspire to their own goals, free from constrictive stereotypes and sexist attitudes. In Turnerian terminology, the frontier had furnished “a gate of escape from the bondage of the past.” By the middle of the twentieth century, the Frontier Thesis fell into disfavor among historians. Later, Reactionist writers took the view that frontier women were lonely, displaced persons in a hostile milieu that intensified the worst aspects of gender relations. The renaissance of the feminist movement during the 1970’s led to the Stasist school, which sidestepped the good bad dichotomy and argued that frontier women lived lives similar to the live of women in the East. In one now-standard text, Faragher demonstrated the persistence of the “cult of true womanhood” and the illusionary quality of change on the westward journey. Recently the Stasist position has been revised but not entirely discounted by new research.
  assage 28
1. The primary purpose of the passage is to 【 】 (A) provide a framework within which the history of women in nineteenth-century America can be organized (B) discuss divergent interpretations of women’s experience on the western frontier (C) introduce a new hypothesis about women’s experience in nineteenth-century America (D) advocate an empirical approach to women’s experience on the western frontier (E) resolve ambiguities in several theories about women’s experience on the western frontier 2. Which of the following can be inferred about the novelists and historians mentioned in lines 19-20? 【 】 (A) They misunderstood the powerful influence of constrictive stereotypes on women in the East. (B) They assumed that the frontier had offered more opportunities to women than had the East. (C) They included accurate information about women’s experiences on the frontier. (D) They underestimated the endurance and fortitude of frontier women. (E) They agreed with some of Turner’s assumptions about frontier women, but disagreed with other assumptions that he made. 3. Which of the following, if true, would provide additional evidence for the Stasists’ argument as it is described in the passage? 【 】 (A) Frontier women relied on smaller support groups of relatives and friends in the West than they had in the East. (B) The urban frontier in the West offered more occupational opportunity than the agricultural frontier offered. (C) Women participated more fully in the economic decisions of the family group in the West than they had in the East. (D) Western women received financial compensation for labor that was comparable to what women received in the East. (E) Western women did not have an effect on divorce laws, but lawmakers in the West were more responsive to women’s concerns than lawmakers in the East were. 4. According to the passage, Turner makes which of the following connections in his Frontier Thesis? 【 】 I. A connection between American individualism and economic equality II. A connection between geographical expansion and social change III. A connection between social change and financial prosperity (A) I only (B) II only (C) III only (D) I and II only (E) I, II and III 5. It can be inferred that which of the following statements is consistent with the Reactionist position as it is described in the passage? 【 】 (A) Continuity, not change, marked women’s lives as they moved from East to West. (B) Women’s experience on the North American frontier has not received enough attention from modern historians. (C) Despite its rigors, the frontier offered women opportunities that had not been available in the East. (D) Gender relations were more difficult for women in the West than they were in the East. (E) Women on the North American frontier adopted new roles while at the same time reaffirming traditional roles. 6. Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage? 【 】 (A) A current interpretation of a phenomenon is described and then ways in which it was developed are discussed. (B) Three theories are presented and then a new hypothesis that discounts those theories is described. (C) An important theory and its effects are discussed and then ways in which it has been revised are described. (D) A controversial theory is discussed and then viewpoints both for and against it are described. (E) A phenomenon is described and then theories concerning its correctness are discussed. 7. Which of the following is true of the Stasist School as it is described in the passage? 【 】 (A) It provides new interpretations of women’s relationship to work and the law. (B) It resolves some of the ambiguities inherent in Turnerian and Reactionist thought. (C) It has recently been discounted by new research gathered on women’s experience. (D) It avoids extreme positions taken by other writers on women’s history. (E) It was the first school of thought to suggest substantial revisions to the Frontier Thesis.
1. B 2. B 3. D 4. D 5. D 6. C 7. D
Passage 28 (28/63) The settlement of the United States has occupied traditional historians since 1893 when Frederick Jackson Turner developed his Frontier Thesis, a thesis that explained American development in terms of westward expansion. From the perspective of women’s history, Turner’s exclusively masculine assumptions constitute a major drawback: his defenders and critics alike have reconstructed men’s, not women’s, lives on the frontier. However, precisely because of this masculine orientation, revising the Frontier Thesis by focusing on women’s experience introduces new themes into women’s history—woman as lawmaker and entrepreneur—and, consequently, new interpretations of women’s relationship to capital, labor, and statute.
Turner claimed that the frontier produced the individualism that is the hallmark of American culture, and that this individualism in turn promoted democratic institutions and economic equality. He argued for the frontier as an agent of social change. (第四题定位)Most novelists and historians writing in the early to midtwentieth century who considered women in the West, when they considered women at all, fell under Turner’s spell. (第二题定位)In their works these authors tended to glorify women’s contributions to frontier life. Western women, in Turnerian tradition, were a fiercely independent, capable, and durable lot, free from the constraints binding their eastern sisters. This interpretation implied that the West provided a congenial environment where women could aspire to their own goals, free from constrictive stereotypes and sexist attitudes. In Turnerian terminology, the frontier had furnished “a gate of escape from the bondage of the past.”
By the middle of the twentieth century, the Frontier Thesis fell into disfavor among historians. Later, Reactionist writers took the view that frontier women were lonely, displaced persons in a hostile milieu that intensified the worst aspects of gender relations.(第五题) The renaissance of the feminist movement during the 1970’s led to the Stasist school, which sidestepped the good bad dichotomy (第七题定位)and argued that frontier women lived lives similar to the live of women in the East. In one now-standard text, Faragher demonstrated the persistence of the “cult of true womanhood” and the illusionary quality of change on the westward journey. Recently the Stasist position has been revised but not entirely discounted by new research.(第三题定位)
又到了我写解析的时候了。 今天这篇文章,刚开始做的时候我也错了几个,太能考察细节了,稍一疏忽就做错了,自责一下。说实话我不是真太喜欢这种历史文章,可是每次我写解析都赶上了。稍显郁闷。还好,还好。
还有这篇文章涉及到一个叫turner的。此人实际甚是牛叉,大家可以wiki下他,或者百度下他,他中文名是弗雷德里克·杰克逊·特纳。他的边疆理论也就是本文中出现的那个theory对美国历史研究由很重要的影响。(丫的,美国人历史总共200多年,哪来的历史学家)
首先文章一开篇就是对turner理论的一个概述,然后表示这个理论一个缺点。大家要注意提出缺点的那人的身份,是研究女性的历史学家,所以文章的基本就可以认定是关于女权的了。不然gmac是不会神经兮兮的提到这个的。同时一点个人的见解是像这种一开篇就提出一个旧理论的文章,基本在主旨题中都会含有revise这类意思的词的。因为gmac强调一种历史的进行,所以不要只看重单个的历史问题。注意转折词总是没错的。比如这段中的however,它是一个段内转折,这点一点要和段首的however区别开!因为此时此刻,转折的程度和段首的那种是不一样的。你看此时,文章表示有人指出turner的理论有问题了,可它这么一转折,又开始说只要稍加改变turner的说法就会把女性包括进去了。在感情色彩上对turner理论依旧是肯定的。有点微妙的感觉哈。
然后就是第二段,分明是在说turner理论的种种好的。记下出现的人名,然后略读下就好了。
第三段注意了,第一句话明显是在否定turner的理论,但它没有转折词啊。各位以后文章一定小心啊!这种没有转折词的转折要人命啊。然后就是各种反对turner理论的人的说法。这些说法中还有一个小小的递进,巴拉巴拉的一大摊,知道就好了,做题的时候再用。
说题目。
第一题,主旨题,按分析来看就是对一种理论的不同解释,找个差不多的选项就是。
第二题,细节定位加推理。总之先找到那个位置吧(汗死了,这个版本没有给高亮。),然后我们细看。Most novelists and historians writing in the early to midtwentieth century who considered women in the West, when they considered women at all, fell under Turner’s spell. In their works these authors tended to glorify women’s contributions to frontier life. 就是这句了。答案应该很快就能出来吧。话说我做错了这个题的,压根就没回文章就想当然的随便选了。提个醒,因为这是infer题,所以原文中没有直接答案。那个比较级的问题,是根据turner的理论导出的。重点是这句fell under Turner’s spell.和turner的趋同就好了。
第三题,定位在最后一句,找个支持它的观点就好。就是找个能够表明西部和东部女性是一样的答案就行了。
第四题,定好位,就能解决。注意一下第三个,上面说的社会变化和金融繁荣。文章只说了经济的平等,没有涉及繁荣的问题。
第五题,首先找到Reactionist出现的位置,能看出来其认为是在加重性别上的差异。答案中的比较级可以反映这一点的。
第六题,文章结构题。应该比较容易吧。看看前面的解析应该没有大问题的。还有一点,这个文章主要是在讲各种改写的版本。同时controversial这个是不对的。文章没有提到turner的理论有争议而是说其在女性问题上有不妥,需要补充。
第七题,找到这句话就好了Stasist school, which sidestepped the good bad dichotomy。 |
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