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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.
It can be inferred from Paragraph 6 that______.
选项 A、if one area was struck by natural disasters once, no habitation should be allowed there any more
B、the government shouldn’t lift one policy just because it has some unpredicted side effects
C、people living in hazardous places would rather risk their lives for a high insurance compensation
D、the premium the insurance companies charge is not positively correlated with the risk
答案D
解析 本题考查对文章第六段内容的理解。第六段的中心句是第一句话“governments must eliminate the perverse incentives their own policies produce”，“政府必须消除他们颁布的措施可能带来的负面效应。”这一段提到了两条有可能带来意想不到的负面效应的政策。第一，政府总是迫于压力而限制保险公司保费的最高限度。这无意中低估了生活在危险地区的风险。第二，对于一再被洪水和森林大火吞没的地区，政府的重建工作往往也是变相鼓励人们在危险地带生活。根据这些信息，我们可以判断[A]选项错误，作者认为国家不应该重建那些经常性被自然灾害侵害的地区，但并没有说遭受过一次自然灾害，就禁止人们在该地区居住。[B]选项无法通过文章内容推断出来。作者认为政府应该消除他们的政策所可能带来的负面效应，那是否应该因为某一政策具有负面效应就取缔之，这一点我们无法根据文章内容进行推断。[C]选项错误，第六段提到在加州的海岸线上仍然有许多奢华的别墅屹立在那里，之所以不离开这个危险地带是因为他们交的保费并不高，这让他们对自身面临的危险产生了错误的判断，而并不是他们想要冒生命危险换取高额赔偿。[D]选项正确，根据第六段内容我们可以判断，一般保险公司会根据风险大小制定保费，但是政府的干预使得保险费反映风险的能力受到了干扰。
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