“It is unrealistic to expect individual nations to make, independently, the sacrifices necessary to conserve energy. International leadership and worldwide cooperation are essential if we expect to protect the world’s energy resources for future generations.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
“指望单个国家独立地做出必要的牺牲来保存能源是不现实的。如果我们希望为下一代保护世界的能源资源，国际领导力量和全球性的公司是基本的。”
1.To conserve the energy is a world-wide project. No individual country is able to do it independently.
2.It is unfair to let individual nations to make sacrifices while the others do not.
3.The best and the most efficient way is the whole wolrd conserve the energy simultaneously and collectively.
1，首先，虽然不愿意，但仍然要承认，自私几乎是天性。self consideration优先。在没有广泛的行动时，每一个国家都不愿意在自己作出牺牲的同时，其他国家没有行动。这样不公平，也不可能达到。这时，领导的作用很重要。安排各国家工作，协调各国家活动。有一个行动的指导作用。function as the leader of the group.
2，而且，保护资源是全球的问题，指望单个国家作出牺牲是不够的。因为在全球化经济发展下，资源几乎是全球运转的。比如，美国会向中国进口木材等原料。所以需要合作。大的跨国公司在其中扮演重要的角色。比如，开发非洲的，有很多是欧洲的公司，跨国公司的举动会影响到很多国家的经济政策。nuclear weapons proliferation
by the same token(同样道理)
the problem of energy conservation transcends the national borders in that either all nations must cooperate, or all will suffer.(sample上的句子)
3，当然，这样是不够的，必须由各个国家充分地发挥主动的作用take positive action。因为资源是全人类的，每个国家都有责任并且都有必要。只有将统一领导与各国的积极性作用一起结合，才是最effective的方法。
Optional words:
Sacrifice/ expense/ offering/ cost
Conserve/ protect/ guard/ keep/ maintain
Thesis sentence:
To conserve the energy resources is a worldwide project, however, individual nations have been take the responsibilities of energy conservation initiatively without international leadership.
View1:
International leadership and worldwide cooperation play important roles in the protection of energy resources.
Evidence: OPEC is one of the best examples. OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is an international organization of eleven developing countries that are heavily reliant on oil revenues as their main source of income. Since oil revenues are so vital for the economic development of these nations, they aim to bring stability and harmony to the oil market by adjusting their oil output to help ensure a balance between supply and demand. In the long run, the stabilized out-put help to cease the problem of over-refining and over utilization of oil energy.
View2:
It is not idealistic to expect the sacrifices necessary to conserve energy independently. Factors other than international leadership and world wide cooperation have driven individual nations to conserve energy. These countries conserve energy purely for their own benefit in the future.
Evidence:
Most nations in Europe have developed and used automobiles that are highly energy efficient.
Japan is a country naturally with nearly no energy resources, so it make great effort to conserve energy for future generations. An famous case is that Japan once brought crude oil from other countries and buried it under the sea .
The speaker asserts that an international effort is needed to preserve the world’s energy resources for future generations. While individual nations, like people, are at times willing to make voluntary sacrifices for the benefit of others, my view is that international coordination is nevertheless necessary in light of the strong propensity of nations to act selfishly, and because the problem is international in scope.
The main reason why an international effort is necessary is that, left to their own devices, individual nations, like people, will act according to their short-term motives and self-interest. The mere existence of military weapons indicates that self-interest and national survival are every nation’s prime drivers. And excessive consumption by industrialized nations of natural resources they know to be finite, when alternatives are at hand demonstrates that self-interest and short-sightedness extend to the use of energy resources as well. Furthermore, nations, like people, tend to rationalize their own self-serving policies and actions. Emerging nations might argue, for example, that they should be exempt from energy conservation because it is the industrialized nations who can better afford to make sacrifices and who use more resources in the first place.
Another reason why an international effort is required is that other problems of an international nature have also required global cooperation. For example, has each nation independently recognized the folly of nuclear weapons proliferation and voluntarily disarmed? No: only by way of an international effort, based largely on coercion of strong leaders against detractors, along with an appeal to self-interest, have we made some progress. By the same token, efforts of individual nations to thwart international drug trafficking have proven largely futile, because efforts have not been internationally based. Similarly, the problem of energy conservation transcends national borders in that either all nations must cooperate, or all will ultimately suffer.
In conclusion, nations are made up of individuals who, when left unconstrained, tend to act in their own self-interest and with short-term motives. In light of how we have dealt, or not dealt, with other global problems, it appears that an international effort is needed to ensure the preservation of natural resources for future generations.