四、2013年3月30日托福真题解析-写作

　　独立写作题目：Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Despite the fact that many countries say they care about environmental problems, the environmental situation will not improve significantly in the future.重复2012.3.23NA

　　范文：

　　These days, countries are much more willing to acknowledge environmental issues than they were in the past. Part of the reason is that many environmental problems have reached a point where they can't be easily hidden or ignored anymore. More promisingly, I think countries are also beginning to recognize that alleviating environmental problems is in their best economic interest in the long-term. For those reasons, I'm willing to bet that the environmental situation will gradually improve as we keep moving forward.

　　Firstly, countries have been facing mounting pressure to be more environmentally conscious from not only their own citizens, but also other countries as well. With the global village being as connected as it is today, and with citizens being generally more diligent and aware, it is now very difficult to get away with the kind of gross negligence towards the environment that would have been easy to hide twenty or thirty years ago. For example, if factories are dumping chemicals in local rivers and streams, there are now plenty of nongovernmental organizations to catch them. On the international level, there are treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol that seek to reign in the greenhouse gas emissions of various countries.

　　Secondly, it is becoming apparent that long-term environmental damage also leads to long-term economic losses. An organization in China, for example, published that in 2008 over one trillion RMB was lost due to land degradation and ecological damage costs—at the time, that was almost 4 percent of China's GDP. Factoring the potential long-term costs of environmental recovery, the costs are even higher. Damage to forests, for instance, does not just mean the short-term deprivation of wood resources—it also means higher rates of soil erosion, long-term loss of biodiversity, and long-term economic losses in the form of reduced wood harvests in the future. The actual costs and figures are now there to back all this up, so countries can start to make informed environmental decisions based on this data.

　　Granted, there may be some cause to remain cynical about things showing much improvement—after all, today there are more cars on the road than ever; industries are booming; fossil fuel consumption is at an all-time high; and many developing countries hold the (not entirely unreasonable) attitude that, "You guys had your chance to pollute and grow, why are you now denying us ours?" But against this somewhat pessimistic backdrop, a countervailing wave of hope is beginning to crest: more and more people are adopting alternative forms of transport; green technologies are flourishing; the steady march towards fusion power continues; and environmental issues are more prominent in politics than they have ever been. For these reasons and more, I cannot but see the situation only getting better from here. (Richard, 459)