托福写作原创满分范文2：提升油价治理污染

TOEFL ESSAYS NO.2

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? The best way for governments to reduce air pollution is to raise the price of gasoline. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

The statement above, as I see it, tries to formulate a one-size-fits-all policy to address air pollution. The underlying assumption is that one would think twice before driving or purchasing an automobile for fear of the soaring prices of fuel. However, such an assumption, at best, only makes intuitive sense. Whoever came up with the idea of raising gasoline prices to reduce air pollution oversimplifies environmental issues. [70]

Let’s begin by talking about how ineffective this policy might eventually be. Yes, it is counterintuitive, but my point is easily understood when one considers how the price of gasoline in China has steadily risen in the past few decades, and yet—how ironically!— the number of automobiles has been dramatically increasing during the same period of time. Why? The reason is simply that people have chosen to commute by car for the sake of convenience; most urban residents regard their rising expenditure on fuel as a necessary price to pay to live comfortably. Now the Chinese government is spending large sums of money dealing with traffic congestion in major cities—not with air pollution—by building flyovers and underground railways. Given what has been going on in China, would one still believe raising the price of gasoline as an effective way of clearing the air? [153]

There is yet another problem with this proposition: side effects. Raising the price of gasoline means raising the price of everything, literally. The first to be affected by this mandatory policy is public transportation; taking a cab, a train or an airplane costs more. The retail industry follows; people would have to pay more for daily necessities due to the passively rising cost of transporting merchandise. All other industries dance to the same beat. It is a ripple effect. Although sometimes, from a macroeconomic point of view, the government can raise the price of a certain product, it can also be risky to make everything more costly. The general public as well as private companies would become discontent, and, in a worst case scenario, would not reelect such a government. [139]

Finally, isn’t it overconfident to use the word “best” without comparing the proposed measure with other potentially effective ones? Air pollution is a complicated environmental issue, so much so that it could not possibly be solved with a cure-all policy. It would be “best,” instead, to comprehensively analyze all the possible causes of air pollution and design strategies accordingly. For one thing, the government can subsidize the application of environmentally friendly energy sources in industries that rely heavily on fossil fuels. For another, investing in electric cars and making them more affordable can discourage people from driving or purchasing cars powered by internal combustion engines. The list goes on. To raise the price of gasoline, without due consideration, leaves one with little more than an all-or-nothing impression. [135]

Air pollution must be taken seriously, or humanity, as illustrated in science fiction, would have to wear masks to breathe. Yet could any government underestimate the complexity of air pollution so badly that it wishes to see the darn thing settled once and for all? [48]

Word Count: 521

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