高级英语阅读_Unit_2_Text_B.pptVIP

Unit 2 TEXT BAn Ugly New Footprint In The Sand ;;However …;;1. There were strangers on our beach yesterday, for the first time in a month. A new footprint on our sand is nearly as rare as in Robinson Crusoe. We are at the very edge of the Atlantic; half a mile out in front of us is a coral reef and then nothing but 3,000 miles of ocean to West Africa. It is a wild and lonely beach, with the same surf beating on it as when Columbus came by. And yet the beach is polluted. 2. Oil tankers over the horizon have fouled it more than legions of picnickers could. The oil comes ashore in floating patches that stain the coral black and gray. It has blighted the rock crabs and the crayfish and has coated the delicate whorls of the conch shells with black goo. ;And it has congealed upon itself, littering the beach with globes of tar that resemble the cannonballs of a deserted battlefield. The islanders, as they go beachcombing for the treasures the sea has washed up for centuries, now wear old shoes to protect their feet from the oil that washes up too. 3. You have to try to get away from pollution to realize how bad it really is. We have known for the last few years how bad our cities are. Now there is no longer an escape. If there is oil on this island far out in the Atlantic, there is oil on nearly every other island.;4. It is still early here. The air is still clear over the island, but it won’t be when they build the airstrip they are talking about. The water out over the reef is still blue and green, but it is dirtier than it was a few years ago. And if the land is not despoiled, it is only because there are not yet enough people here to despoil it. There will be. And so for the moment on this island we are witnesses to the beginning, as it were, of the pollution of our environment. 5. When you watch a bird over the beach or a fish along the reef you realize how ill-adapted man is to this environment anyway. Physically there is nothing he can do that some other creatur