pollution and politics Flashcards
polluter
[pə’lu:tər]
[NOUN] A polluter is someone or something that pollutes the environment.
substance
track record
cry wolf
There’s no reason to take these complaints seriously, at least in terms of substance. Polluters and their political friends have a track record of crying wolf.
[NOUN] [oft with brd-neg] [FORMAL] Substance is the quality of being important or significant.
[NOUN] If you talk about the track record of a person, company, or product, you are referring to their past performance, achievements, or failures in it.
If someone cries wolf, they say that there is a problem when there is not, with the result that people do not believe them when there really is a problem.
curl into a ball
quivering
[‘kwɪvər]
Again and again, they have insisted that American business — which they usually portray as endlessly innovative, able to overcome any obstacle — would curl into a quivering ball if asked to limit emissions.
[verb] If a person or animal curls into a ball, they move into a position in which their body makes a rounded shape.
[VERB] If you say that someone or their voice is quivering with an emotion such as rage or excitement, you mean that they are strongly affected by this emotion and show it in their appearance or voice.
cap and trade
A major amendment of the law, which among other things made possible the cap-and-trade system that limits acid rain, was signed in 1990 by former President George H.W. Bush.
Emissions trading, or cap and trade, is a market-based approach to controlling pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants.[1] In contrast to command-and-control environmental regulations such as best available technology (BAT) standards and government subsidies, cap and trade (CAT) schemes are a type of flexible environmental regulation[2] that allows organizations to decide how best to meet policy targets. Various countries, states and groups of companies have adopted such trading systems, notably for mitigating climate change.[3]
배출권 거래
conspiracy
[kəns’pɪrəsi]
hoax
[hoʊks]
[NOUN] Conspiracy is the secret planning by a group of people to do something illegal.
[NOUN] A hoax is a trick in which someone tells people a lie, for example that there is a bomb somewhere when there is not, or that a picture is genuine when it is not.
그 뿐만이 아니다. (그 밖에 다른 것도 많다.)
And this isn’t an isolated case.
gusher
[|ɡʌʃə]
You might be tempted simply to blame money in politics, and there’s no question that gushers of cash from polluters fuel the anti-environmental movement at all levels.
[NOUN] something, such as a spurting oil well, that gushes
trajectory
[trə’dʒektəri]
Today that number is just 5 percent. Political spending by the oil and gas industry has followed a similar trajectory.
[NOUN] [with supp] The trajectory of something such as a person’s career is the course that it follows over time.
tank
But the modern conservative movement insists that government is always the problem, never the solution, which creates the will to believe that environmental problems are fake and environmental policy will tank the economy.
[VERB] if something such as a product tanks, it fails completely
cater to
True, Democrats often cater to the interests of the 1 percent, but Republicans always do.
to provide something that satisfies what a particular type of person wants
pay for
Any policy that benefits lower like health reform, which guarantees insurance to all and pays for that guarantee in part with taxes on higher incomes will face bitter Republican opposition.
[VERB] If a government or organization makes someone pay for something, it makes them responsible for providing the money for it, for example by increasing prices or taxes.
