(精选)商务英语综合教程(上册)Unit 9 Climate Change -Hot under the Collar课件.pptVIP

Unit Nine ;Introduction; Text ; 1 Britain has had an easy ride on cutting carbon emissions. Not any more. 2 One of the Labor Partys many transformations during Tony Blairs leadership was its conversion to environmentalism. A party with its roots in dirty, heavy industry such as coal-mines and blast-furnaces presented itself as an eco-friendly guardian of the planets future. The most visible form of this was a commitment, in Labours 1997 manifesto, to cut 20% off British greenhouse-gas emissions by 2010 compared with their 1990 levels. That went above and beyond the 12.5% required by the Kyoto treaty. ; 5 Power generation is a good example of why. The governments “flagship policy” on climate change has been to offer subsidies to renewable energy. But much of the cut in emissions predates these handouts and owed more to economy than ecology. Newly liberalized electricity firms replaced old, dirty coal-fired power plants with new, clean gas-fired ones in the “dash for gas” in the 1990s because they were cheaper, not because they were cleaner—that was just a happy coincidence. Indeed, part of the reason for modest emissions rises in the past two years is that high gas prices have prompted some companies to switch back to coal. ; 6 More gas power plants (and possibly nuclear ones, too) will eventually be built, but not fast enough to rescue the government from its difficulties. Renewables will help, too, but wind farms are often unpopular with local residents, and with the public finances looking sickly, call for an extravagant subsidy (forecast to reach ￡1 billion—$1.72 billion—a year by 2010). 7 Industry already bears the brunt of Britains climate commitments through the Climate Change Levy, a tax on energy use, and the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which allocates tradable emissions limits for firms. Introducing new restrictions will be politically difficult. Ministers tacitly acknowledged as much last year,