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  3. Commerce has long been at the mercy of the elements. The British East India Company was almost strangled at birth when it lost s

Commerce has long been at the mercy of the elements. The British East India Company was almost strangled at birth when it lost s

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问题     Commerce has long been at the mercy of the elements. The British East India Company was almost strangled at birth when it lost several of its ships in a storm. But the toll is rising. The world has been so preoccupied with the man-made catastrophes of subprime mortgages and sovereign debt that it may not have noticed how much economic chaos nature has wreaked. With earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, floods in Thailand and Australia and tornadoes in America, last year was the costliest on record for natural disasters.
    This trend is not, as is often thought, a result of climate change. There is little evidence that big hurricanes come ashore any more often than, say, a century ago. But disasters now extract a far higher price, for the simple reason that the world’s population and output are becoming concentrated in vulnerable cities near earthquake faults, on river deltas or along tropical coasts. Those risks will rise as the wealth of Shanghai and Kolkata comes to rival that of London and New York. Meanwhile, interconnected supply chains guarantee that when one region is knocked out by an earthquake or flood, the reverberations are global.
    This may sound grim, but the truth is more encouraging. Richer societies may lose more property to disaster but they are also better able to protect their people. Indeed, although the economic toll from disasters has risen, the death toll has not, despite the world’s growing population.
    The right role for government, then, is not to resist urbanization but to minimize the consequences when disaster strikes. This means, first, getting priorities right. At present, too large a slice of disaster budgets goes on rescue and repair after a tragedy, and not enough on consolidating defenses beforehand. Cyclone shelters are useless if they fall into disrepair.
    Second, government should be fiercer when private individuals and firms, left to pursue their own self-interest, put all of society at risk. For example, in their quest for growth, developers and local governments have eradicated sand dunes, mangrove swamps, reefs and flood plains that formed natural buffers between people and nature. Preserving or restoring more of this natural capital would make cities more resilient, much as increased financial capital does for the banking system.
    Third, governments must eliminate the perverse incentives their own policies produce. Politicians are often under pressure to limit the premiums insurance companies can charge. The result is to underprice the risk of living in dangerous areas—which is one reason that so many expensive homes await the next hurricane on Florida’s coast. When governments rebuild homes repeatedly struck by floods and wildfires, they are subsidizing people to live in hazardous places.
    For their part companies need to operate on the assumption that a disaster will strike at some point. This means preparing contingency plans, reinforcing supply chains and even, costly though this might be, having reserve suppliers lined up: there is no point in having a perfectly efficient supply chain if it can be snapped whenever nature takes a turn for the worst. Disasters are inevitable; their consequences need not be.
The natural capital in Paragraph 5 refers to______.
选项 A、the defense built by human being to prevent natural disasters
B、the barrier formed by natural features to natural disasters
C、the capital that government pour into restoring natural landscapes
D、the capital that banks reserves for relief work after natural disaster
答案B
解析 本题是一道根据上下文推测词义的题目。首先在文中确定关键词的位置，第五段最后一句话。第五段第一句话中，作者提到政府应该采取更严厉的措施限制企业损害全社会利益的行为。第二句话举例说明，例如：某些企业和某些当地政府为了追求经济发展，根除了沙丘、红树湿地、暗礁区、泛洪区。接着在最后一句话中就提到“Preserving or restoring more of this natural capital would make cities more resilient．much as increased financial capital does for the banking system．”因此，这里的natural capital指的就是上一句话中提到的能够在人类和自然之间构成缓冲地带的自然地貌，例如沙丘、湿地等。本题正确答案应该选[B]。
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