墨尔本PTE素材库——Cutting Carbon Pollution Could Save Health Care Money

墨尔本PTE素材库——Cutting Carbon Pollution Could Save Health Care Money

中文批注

减少碳排放竟然还能降低国家卫生保健支出？近日美国杜克大学的Shindell及其团队对此进行了研究，并且提出了这一结论。巴黎气候协议号召全球国家共同行动，将全球气候变化控制在2℃内，然而美国对于这一协定并未采取任何措施。于是Shindell博士及其团队就对如何达到这个目标，以及达成目标后能有何种好处进行了研究。他们发现，如果减少全美碳排放，则能很大程度的降低由于空气污染造成的儿童早夭，从而降低国家的卫生保健财政支出。

这段Podcast是一段非常好的Re-tell Lecture, Summarize  Spoken/Written Text素材。大家可以总结一下控制碳排放和财政支出有何种关系，在现实中又遇到了什么问题等。

澳大利亚语言学院整理的PTE素材库，旨在用最贴近PTE Official Question Criteria的材料，最适合PTE难度和话题的素材，给大家提供一系列不同话题的PTE练习素材！让大家可以在平时练习听力、阅读、口语、写作，不至于陷入“题荒”的境地！

【Key Vocabulary】

ambitious adj. 野心勃勃的，有雄心的

pledge to 承诺

forecast n. & v.  预测

electrify v. 使电气化

renewable adj. 可再生的 n. 再生性能源

estimate v. 估计，估价

premature adj. 早产的，比预期早的 n. 早产儿

financial adj. 财政的，金融的

energy conversion 能量转换，能量变换

politician n. 政客，政治家

election n. 选举

lag n. 落后,延迟

Full Transcript

Some 300,000 premature deaths could be avoided by 2030 if the U.S. abides by the ambitious Paris Climate Agreement, according to a new analysis. Christopher Intagliata reports.

The Paris Climate Agreement pledges to limit global temperature rise to “well below 2 degrees Celsius.” “But really nobody—and certainly not the United States—has laid out the plan to get there.” Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University. “So we wanted to model, what would be the effects of actually putting into place policies that would get us to a level we’ve pledged to reach?”

Shindell and his colleagues forecast that, to stay within two degrees C, we’d have to electrify nearly every car in the nation. And we’d have to get more than half our power from renewables. And if we do all that? In addition to keeping warming in check, the researchers estimate that we’d avoid nearly 300,000 premature deaths due to air pollution in the U.S., by 2030.

And they say the health-related financial benefits of that clean energy conversion—amounting to $250 billion dollars over the next 15 years—would likely outweigh the cost of implementing all that new technology. The analysis appears in the journal Nature Climate Change. [Drew T. Shindell et al, Climate and health impacts of U.S. emissions reductions consistent with 2 degrees C]

Big caveat: a lot of politicians these days don’t think on 15-year time scales. They’re looking only as far as the next election. “Right, but you start putting in these policies and you know you see the benefits for public health the same year the policies start to go into place. There’s no lag time. Air quality is something that, unlike climate, doesn’t take decades. Air quality is responding to what came out of a coal plant or a vehicle tailpipe last week, not last year.” Meaning cutting carbon pollution might have real impacts on the nation’s health and wealth almost immediately for us…and not just for our children’s children.

—Christopher Intagliata

(Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/cutting-carbon-pollution-could-save-health-care/)