【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 has been around for a while. What is striking about James Walvin’s new book is that, while focusing only on sugar, it does not restrict itself to the past. Rather, the book takes the story of perhaps the most popular crop of all time and brings it disturbingly into the present day. Walvin begins his research where most of us begin our relationship with the stuff: the sweet shops of childhood memory. If sugar is a guilty pleasure then it is one with which almost every one of us is drunk on a daily basis. The unstoppable march of sugar raises the question: why? After all, sugar cane(甘蔗 )is difficult to grow and the processes of refinement and clarification required to produce eatable sugar are timeconsuming and expensive. Yet, as Walvin explains, sugar has one enormous temptation: it satisfies our seemingly born desire for sweet tastes, but the satisfaction that sugar provides es at a terrible cost, both to those who produce it and those who consume it. Sugar changed world history more profoundly than any other crop. It fuelled the Atlantic slave trade and the African wars. We’re familiar with the story of how millions of enslaved Africans were transported to the Caribbean, the US and Brazil, but the growing global demand for sugar also led to the migrations of other groups. The profitability of sugar production also inspired American producers to ship thousands of poor Indians from their homeland to the Caribbean, South America and Fiji as well as Japanese peasants to plantations in Hawaii. The story of sugar, then, is not just one of changing diets and expanding waistlines, but also one of mass migrations—both forced and voluntary, both familiar and unfamiliar. Sugar’s story in the 20th and 21st centuries can only be told with reference to the development of American agricultural businesses and the giant food corporations, most notably the CocaCola Company. The modern antisugar movement is demanding better labelling and the reduction of sugar in foods and drinks targeted at children. The sugar industry stands today where the tobacco corporations stood in the 1960s, accused of knowingly contributing to a global health crisis and obesity. This is just the latest moral crisis faced by the food giants of the sweet stuff. 58. What can we learn from Paragraph 1? A. Walvin’s book focuses only on sugar in the past. B. History of sugar is investigated for its destructive effects. C. Walvin’s book coversstories from the past to the present day. D. A single crop can reflect the whole course of human history. 59. By mentioning migrations of differentgroups, the author aims to ________. A. illustrate the difficulty of sugar cane plantation B. criticize the greed of American sugar producers C. confirm the huge impact of sugar on human history D. explain the reasons for slave trade and African wars 60. What attitude does the author hold towards sugar according to the passage? A. Critical. B. Ambiguous. C. Casual. D. Favorable. C The most eyecatching part of the government’s recent airquality strategy is to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040. The reason behind the government’s strategy is poor air quality, which is thought to be linked to about 40,000 premature deaths a year. Client Earth, the campaign group leading the call for reform, has described the ban as “not enough”. It emphasises that clean air zones and sustainable transport infrastructures both work, and can be implemented more quickly. Even so, some argue that the target is too soon. The motor industry, however, does not argue that the cars won’t be ready in time. This is unsurprising, given that Tesla already has an allelectric model, most manufacturers have at least one hybrid (混動汽車 )on sale. The voices of disagreement offer three main arguments: electric vehicles don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions。 we don’t have enough power available。 and there are not enough essential materials like lithium(鋰 )which support most new electric vehicle battery technologies. The first two arguments are closely related. The problem is not the absolute amount of electric vehicles on the road but when we charge them. The issue is “peak demand”. We design our electricity infrastructure systems to ensure these peaks are covered. Peak demand in the UK is between 5pm and 7pm in winter. This is usually when electricity is at its most “dirty”, as this is when we need almost all of our generating(發(fā)電 )capacity, including the old coal plants, diesel backup generation and gas. Without managed charging, drivers plugging the car in on return from work face using diesel engines and coalderived power to charge vehicles. Hardly a win for air quality or climate change. The last problem, material availability, is trickier. Lithium and the rare earth metals used in electric vehicles present problems. It’s not only a question of whether there are enough of these materials, but also their toxicity, convenience of recycling and their geopolitical availability of their supply chains. Much like the issue of peak demand, without strong policy and behavioural and technical advances, we could easily see the rise of global conflict and exploitation around the critical materials for electric mobility. While a ban on petrol and diesel car sales in 2040 is easily achievable, what really matters is how well the above issues are dealt with. Electric cars do nothing for traffic jams. Their power source needs careful management, and their supply chains may be no less problematic than those of petrochemical fuels. Conversely, they can reduce air pollution and help meet climate change mitments. Like many technical solutions they need strong regulation around them. We should improve our dialogue on electric mobility, seeking clear government policy on energy market integration and strong standards on material sust