發(fā)布時(shí)間： 2017年05月22日

四級(jí)六級(jí)閱讀練習(xí)（47）：我們對(duì)垃圾的愛

小編寄語：熟悉四六級(jí)閱讀理解題型的同學(xué)應(yīng)該都了解，英語四六級(jí)考試閱讀理解材料大多選自《時(shí)代》《衛(wèi)報(bào)》《今日美國》等外刊。要想閱讀理解這部分拿到高分，必須在平常多閱讀，掌握新詞匯，鍛煉閱讀速度。但對(duì)于很多同學(xué)來說，如何每日在浩瀚的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)世界尋找合適的閱讀材料進(jìn)行分析解讀是一項(xiàng)很耗時(shí)間的事情。為此，　英語每日精選《衛(wèi)報(bào)》《時(shí)代》等外刊上的文章供大家進(jìn)行閱讀練習(xí)。

【今日閱讀推薦】本篇閱讀材料“我們對(duì)垃圾的愛——垃圾成堆”選自《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》（原文標(biāo)題：Our love of garbage Rubbish heaps 2012.4.17）。如果大家覺得比較簡(jiǎn)單，就當(dāng)作泛讀材料了解了解，認(rèn)識(shí)幾個(gè)新單詞或新表達(dá)方式也不錯(cuò)。如果大家覺得這些材料理解上有難度，不妨當(dāng)做挑戰(zhàn)自己的拔高訓(xùn)練，希望大家都有進(jìn)步^^

ALTHOUGH it is the buried tombs and the lost cities that get all the press, one of the most valuable things that an archaeologist can dig up is rubbish. Palace murals and heroic statues record the sanitised, official version of history, but a society’s garbage tells the true story of how its members lived.

With that thought in mind, archaeologists of the future are in for a treat. The industrial societies of the world’s developed countries are the most wasteful ever, their spoor turning up in every corner of the Earth. Almost by definition, waste is something that most people prefer not to think too much about. But Edward Humes, an American journalist, is fascinated by the stuff. “Garbology” is his attempt to make sense of our historically unprecedented readiness to throw things away.

The book begins at the Puente Hills landfill, an artificial mountain near Los Angeles. It is the biggest dump in America, 30 years old, 170 metres high and containing 130m tonnes of rubbish within a 700-acre footprint. If it were a building, it would be among the 20 tallest in the city. Building a rubbish pile is, it turns out, surprisingly high-tech. The mountain is a giant, putrid layer-cake, with dozens of strata of rubbish separated by soil and plastic liners designed to contain the brew of noxious chemicals that would otherwise leach into groundwater. The rot produces methane, which is collected via a network of pipes that penetrate the mountain, and burned to produce electricity.

From there, Mr Humes traces the history of garbage in America, beginning with New York’s “White Wings”, an army of municipal rubbish collectors created to clean the city’s stinking streets in the 19th century, through the heyday of backyard incinerators (and the smog they produced) to the modern day, where the most common solutions often involve burying the stuff in the ground or dumping it in the sea. He talks to the researchers who are chronicling the plasticisation of the oceans, a swelling suspended solution of pulverised plastic. And he describes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an enormous expanse of the Pacific Ocean where currents concentrate the trash over a continent-sized area.

The author is just as interested in the creation of rubbish as its disposal. But whereas few will disagree with the gist of his observations about the shortcomings of our modern, disposable, consumer culture, the analysis is rather superficial. Mr Humes comes close to blaming a single man—J. Gordon Lippincott, an industrial designer—for the creation of the entire wasteful model of modern consumerism. And although it is understandable that an American author should write a book looking mostly at the problems of America, it nevertheless feels like a missed opportunity. Some of the most interesting parts of the book come towards the end, where he discusses some of the possible solutions—such as Denmark’s strategy of burning rubbish to produce electricity, or an Irish scheme to charge shoppers for plastic bags, which led to a 90% drop in their use. Food for thought, and more.

【重點(diǎn)單詞及短語】

dig up 挖出；掘起；開墾；發(fā)現(xiàn)

Palace mural 宮廷壁畫

heroic statue 英雄雕像

in for a treat 會(huì)喜歡的

spoor n. 足跡；痕跡

turn up 出現(xiàn)；發(fā)生

by definition 按照定義；顯然地；當(dāng)然地

make sense of 了解……的意義；理解；懂得

unprecedented adj. 空前的；無前例的

readiness n. 敏捷；準(zhǔn)備

putrid adj. 腐敗的；腐爛的；令人厭惡的