2009年5月英译汉+完型真题.docVIP

Last Friday an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency issued an extraordinary scientific opinion: The European Union should suspend its goal of having 10 percent of transportation fuel made from biofuel by 2020. The European Unions biofuel targets were increased and extended from 5.75 percent by 2010 to 10 percent by 2020 just last year. Still, Europes well-meaning rush to biofuels, the scientists concluded, had produced a slew of harmful ripple effects - from deforestation in Southeast Asia to higher prices for grains. In a recommendation released last weekend, the 20-member panel, made up of some of Europes most distinguished climate scientists, called the 10 percent target overambitious and an experiment whose unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control. The idea was that we felt we needed to slow down, to analyze the issue carefully and then come back at the problem, Laszlo Somlyody, the panels chairman and a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, said in a telephone interview. He said that part of the problem was that when it set the targets, the European Union was trying desperately to solve the problem of rising transportation emissions in isolation, without adequately studying the effects of other sectors like land use and food supply. The starting point was correct: Im happy that the European Union took the lead in cutting greenhouse gasses and we need to control traffic emissions, Somlyody said. But the basic problem is it thought of transport alone, without considering all these other effects. And we dont understand those very well yet. The panels advice is not binding and it is not clear whether the European Commission will follow the recommendation. It has become increasingly clear that the global pursuit of biofuels - encouraged by a rash of targets and subsides in both Europe and the United States - has not produced the desired effect. Investigations have shown, for exampl