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  3. The thousands of people forced to abandon their homes in recent weeks to floodwaters are victims not just of nature but of human

The thousands of people forced to abandon their homes in recent weeks to floodwaters are victims not just of nature but of human

admin2012-08-10  98
问题     The thousands of people forced to abandon their homes in recent weeks to floodwaters are victims not just of nature but of human error as well. Years of mismanagement of the vast Mississippi River ecosystem—the continuous and often inadvisable construction of levees (堤坝) and navigation (导航) channels, the paving over of wetlands, the commercial development of flood plains—have made the damage worse than it might otherwise have been.
    The Obama administration is now completing an inspection of the guidelines governing dams, levees and other water-related projects built with federal money.
    Historically, projects had been shaped by two main factors; the Army Corps of Engineers’ conviction that nature can be subdued by levees and dams, and its reflexive green-lighting of any flood control project that encouraged commercial or agricultural development. The new rules, Congress said, should require the Corps and other federal agencies to give equal weight to less easily measurable benefits like wildlife habitat and to "nonstructural" solutions to flood control like preserving wetlands, flood plains and other " natural systems. "
    To give the Corps its due, it has performed nobly in the present emergency. Its main-stem levees have held. Its decision to blow holes in levees guarding the New Madrid floodway in Missouri clearly saved Cairo, Illinois, and other places downstream. These methods had long been part of Corps emergency plans, and they worked.
    The question the environmental community and many in Congress are asking is whether this would have been necessary if the river had been better managed. In populated areas, some levees were built solely to attract more development, while others closed off flood plains that could have acted as a natural safety valve.
    Meanwhile, over the years, the upper Mississippi watershed has lost millions of acres of wetlands that could have served as a natural sponge for floodwaters.
    So-called 100-year floods seemed to be hitting the Mississippi with scary regularity—a $ 16 billion flood in 1993, a bad one in 2001, another in 2008, and now this one. Climate change, which some suspect of causing violent downpours, may be part of the problem, though the connection is unclear. What is clear is that we should learn from our mistakes, let nature help out where it can, and not build or farm in places where it makes no sense to do so. As the saying goes, nobody ever beats the river.
What can we learn from the last paragraph about climate change?
选项 A、It has nothing to do with the violent downpours and floods.
B、It is the main cause of the violent downpours and floods.
C、It has been proved to be related to violent downpours and floods.
D、It may be part of the reason causing violent downpours and floods.
答案D
解析 事实细节题。定位句指出，一些人怀疑气候变化是造成暴雨的原因，当然尽管二者之间的联系并不那么清楚，它也确实有可能是造成洪水的部分原因。由此推断D)“它可能是造成暴雨和洪水的部分原因”为答案。A)“它和暴雨及洪水没有关系”、B)“它是造成暴雨及洪水的主要原因”和C)“它已被证明和暴雨及洪水之间有关”均不符合原文意思，故排除。
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