单项选择题X 纠错

Amold Schwarzenegger, Dia Mirza and Adrian Grenier have a message for you: It's easy to beat plastic. They're part of a bunch of celebrities starring in a new video for World Environment Day encouraging you, the consumer, to swap out your single-use plastic staples like straws and cutlery to combat the plastics crisis.
The key messages that have been put together for World Environment Day do include a call for governments to enact legislation to curb single-use plastics. But the overarching message is directed at individuals.
My concern with leaving it up to the individual, however, is our limited sense of what needs to be achieved. On their own, taking our own bags to the grocery store or quitting plastic straws, for example, will accomplish little and require very little of us. They could even be detrimental, satisfying a need to have "done our bit" without ever progressing onto bigger, bolder, more effective actions a kind of "moral licensing" that allays our concerns and stops us doing more and asking more of those in charge.
While the conversation around our environment and our responsibility toward it remains centered on shopping bags and straws, we're ignoring the balance of power that implies that as "consumers" we must shop sustainably, rather than as"citizens" hold our governments and industries to account to push for real systemic change.
It's important to acknowledge that the environment isn't everyone's priority - or even most people's. We shouldn't expect it to be. In her latest book, Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things, Wellesley College professor Elizabeth R. DeSombre argues that the best way to collectively change the behavior of large numbers of people is for the change to be structural.
This might mean implementing policy such as a plastic tax that adds a cost to environmentally problematic action,or banning single-use plastics altogether. India has just announced it will "eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022." There are also incentive-based ways of making better environmental choices easier, such as ensuring recycling is at least as easy as trash disposal.
DeSombre isn't saying people should stop caring about the environment. It's just that individual actions are too slow,she says, for that to be the only, or even primary, approach to changing widespread behavior.
None of this is about writing off the individual, It's just about putting things into perspective. We don't have time to wait. We need progressive policies that shape collective action (and rein in polluting businesses), alongside engaged citizens pushing for change.

单项选择题

Amold Schwarzenegger, Dia Mirza and Adrian Grenier have a message for you: It's easy to beat plastic. They're part of a bunch of celebrities starring in a new video for World Environment Day encouraging you, the consumer, to swap out your single-use plastic staples like straws and cutlery to combat the plastics crisis.
The key messages that have been put together for World Environment Day do include a call for governments to enact legislation to curb single-use plastics. But the overarching message is directed at individuals.
My concern with leaving it up to the individual, however, is our limited sense of what needs to be achieved. On their own, taking our own bags to the grocery store or quitting plastic straws, for example, will accomplish little and require very little of us. They could even be detrimental, satisfying a need to have "done our bit" without ever progressing onto bigger, bolder, more effective actions a kind of "moral licensing" that allays our concerns and stops us doing more and asking more of those in charge.
While the conversation around our environment and our responsibility toward it remains centered on shopping bags and straws, we're ignoring the balance of power that implies that as "consumers" we must shop sustainably, rather than as"citizens" hold our governments and industries to account to push for real systemic change.
It's important to acknowledge that the environment isn't everyone's priority - or even most people's. We shouldn't expect it to be. In her latest book, Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things, Wellesley College professor Elizabeth R. DeSombre argues that the best way to collectively change the behavior of large numbers of people is for the change to be structural.
This might mean implementing policy such as a plastic tax that adds a cost to environmentally problematic action,or banning single-use plastics altogether. India has just announced it will "eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022." There are also incentive-based ways of making better environmental choices easier, such as ensuring recycling is at least as easy as trash disposal.
DeSombre isn't saying people should stop caring about the environment. It's just that individual actions are too slow,she says, for that to be the only, or even primary, approach to changing widespread behavior.
None of this is about writing off the individual, It's just about putting things into perspective. We don't have time to wait. We need progressive policies that shape collective action (and rein in polluting businesses), alongside engaged citizens pushing for change.

单项选择题

Amold Schwarzenegger, Dia Mirza and Adrian Grenier have a message for you: It's easy to beat plastic. They're part of a bunch of celebrities starring in a new video for World Environment Day encouraging you, the consumer, to swap out your single-use plastic staples like straws and cutlery to combat the plastics crisis.
The key messages that have been put together for World Environment Day do include a call for governments to enact legislation to curb single-use plastics. But the overarching message is directed at individuals.
My concern with leaving it up to the individual, however, is our limited sense of what needs to be achieved. On their own, taking our own bags to the grocery store or quitting plastic straws, for example, will accomplish little and require very little of us. They could even be detrimental, satisfying a need to have "done our bit" without ever progressing onto bigger, bolder, more effective actions a kind of "moral licensing" that allays our concerns and stops us doing more and asking more of those in charge.
While the conversation around our environment and our responsibility toward it remains centered on shopping bags and straws, we're ignoring the balance of power that implies that as "consumers" we must shop sustainably, rather than as"citizens" hold our governments and industries to account to push for real systemic change.
It's important to acknowledge that the environment isn't everyone's priority - or even most people's. We shouldn't expect it to be. In her latest book, Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things, Wellesley College professor Elizabeth R. DeSombre argues that the best way to collectively change the behavior of large numbers of people is for the change to be structural.
This might mean implementing policy such as a plastic tax that adds a cost to environmentally problematic action,or banning single-use plastics altogether. India has just announced it will "eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022." There are also incentive-based ways of making better environmental choices easier, such as ensuring recycling is at least as easy as trash disposal.
DeSombre isn't saying people should stop caring about the environment. It's just that individual actions are too slow,she says, for that to be the only, or even primary, approach to changing widespread behavior.
None of this is about writing off the individual, It's just about putting things into perspective. We don't have time to wait. We need progressive policies that shape collective action (and rein in polluting businesses), alongside engaged citizens pushing for change.

单项选择题

Amold Schwarzenegger, Dia Mirza and Adrian Grenier have a message for you: It's easy to beat plastic. They're part of a bunch of celebrities starring in a new video for World Environment Day encouraging you, the consumer, to swap out your single-use plastic staples like straws and cutlery to combat the plastics crisis.
The key messages that have been put together for World Environment Day do include a call for governments to enact legislation to curb single-use plastics. But the overarching message is directed at individuals.
My concern with leaving it up to the individual, however, is our limited sense of what needs to be achieved. On their own, taking our own bags to the grocery store or quitting plastic straws, for example, will accomplish little and require very little of us. They could even be detrimental, satisfying a need to have "done our bit" without ever progressing onto bigger, bolder, more effective actions a kind of "moral licensing" that allays our concerns and stops us doing more and asking more of those in charge.
While the conversation around our environment and our responsibility toward it remains centered on shopping bags and straws, we're ignoring the balance of power that implies that as "consumers" we must shop sustainably, rather than as"citizens" hold our governments and industries to account to push for real systemic change.
It's important to acknowledge that the environment isn't everyone's priority - or even most people's. We shouldn't expect it to be. In her latest book, Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things, Wellesley College professor Elizabeth R. DeSombre argues that the best way to collectively change the behavior of large numbers of people is for the change to be structural.
This might mean implementing policy such as a plastic tax that adds a cost to environmentally problematic action,or banning single-use plastics altogether. India has just announced it will "eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022." There are also incentive-based ways of making better environmental choices easier, such as ensuring recycling is at least as easy as trash disposal.
DeSombre isn't saying people should stop caring about the environment. It's just that individual actions are too slow,she says, for that to be the only, or even primary, approach to changing widespread behavior.
None of this is about writing off the individual, It's just about putting things into perspective. We don't have time to wait. We need progressive policies that shape collective action (and rein in polluting businesses), alongside engaged citizens pushing for change.

单项选择题

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years.The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm works.
　　Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry.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 country, 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're 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 picking crops is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it's 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 com,cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms,where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they ' re automated.
　　As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the 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 a year. Even so, employers complain they aren’t given all the workers they need.The process is cumbersome,expensive,and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to arrive on the job 22 days late. 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.

单项选择题

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years.The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm works.
　　Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry.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 country, 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're 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 picking crops is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it's 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 com,cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms,where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they ' re automated.
　　As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the 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 a year. Even so, employers complain they aren’t given all the workers they need.The process is cumbersome,expensive,and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to arrive on the job 22 days late. 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.

单项选择题

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years.The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm works.
　　Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry.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 country, 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're 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 picking crops is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it's 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 com,cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms,where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they ' re automated.
　　As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the 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 a year. Even so, employers complain they aren’t given all the workers they need.The process is cumbersome,expensive,and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to arrive on the job 22 days late. 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.

单项选择题

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years.The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm works.
　　Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry.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 country, 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're 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 picking crops is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it's 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 com,cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms,where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they ' re automated.
　　As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the 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 a year. Even so, employers complain they aren’t given all the workers they need.The process is cumbersome,expensive,and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to arrive on the job 22 days late. 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.

单项选择题

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years.The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm works.
　　Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry.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 country, 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're 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 picking crops is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it's 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 com,cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms,where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they ' re automated.
　　As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the 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 a year. Even so, employers complain they aren’t given all the workers they need.The process is cumbersome,expensive,and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to arrive on the job 22 days late. 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.

单项选择题

　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 100million 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 60,00 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. Califormia's plan, which is expected to be finalized by the governor next year, should serve as a model.

单项选择题

　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 100million 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 60,00 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. Califormia's plan, which is expected to be finalized by the governor next year, should serve as a model.