The Age of Obama
The 'Decade of Greed,' etc., R.I.P.
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
OCTOBER 29, 2008
Nineteen eighty-two was a lucky time (as your columnist can attest) to be leaving college. Whatever faults various authorities find in the "decade of greed," which was followed by another decade of greed, it marked the start of 25 years of exceptional prosperity and opportunity. Freer trade and the epochal joining of a couple billion Chinese and others into the global division of labor played a role. The ideas of Reagan and Thatcher, bringing the private sector back to a place of honor, played a role.
Is the age of Obama the beginning of a less golden age? We cast no aspersion on the man or his program. Mr. Obama, in his short career, has not strongly associated himself with any policy idea. His relation to his own proposals during the campaign has been pleasantly noncommittal, if generally liberal (as voters and the media are only now getting around to noticing).
His rise offers little insight either. His Senate primary and general election races were smoothed by the serendipitous bowing out of formidable opponents in each case, in divorce-related "scandals." His presidential hopes have been turned overnight into landslide hopes by a financial crisis that has left the public angry and confused, though not one that plays to any expertise of Mr. Obama's.
Yet if he wins next week, it could be with a sweeping mandate to decide, er, what his mandate will be. He's a presidential vehicle perfectly designed, or self-designed, to be driven by history, rather than driving it. And he comes just at the moment when, overnight, crashing down is just about every normal restraint against intrusive, redistributing, regulating government.
This is the door the remarkable Mr. Obama is about to waltz through.
In a two-party system, both parties need to be capable of governing, of having some long view of the central challenge -- which, arguably, in our case remains the financing challenge of the American welfare state. John McCain may not be much of an economist and hasn't adopted the "ownership society" as his slogan, but his health-care plan falls right in with tradition on the center right -- a spectrum that once included Bill Clinton -- of invoking a new role for individual responsibility and individual choice in making the welfare state work.
Democrats, in contrast, never really tell us where they want us to go. That hasn't been the Democratic way and Mr. Obama, in this, is a perfect Democrat -- as opaque on the big question as his party has been. Al Gore let on that he favored a single payer health-care system only two years after he lost the White House. Politics -- simple politics -- instead has been Democrats' governing philosophy, and Mr. Obama is, again, the perfect heir.
In an interesting piece of work, economist Henning Bohn has forecast the future voting propensities of an aging electorate based on two things: how much in taxes a median voter would expect to pay until retirement, and the present value of his or her expected Social Security and Medicare benefits.
His conclusion: It will make financial sense for the median voter to vote for higher taxes on his remaining working years and on younger people in order to secure his benefits.
If he's right, Democrats need to say only one thing when running for office -- and that's nothing intelligible about the funding dilemma of the welfare state or the need to address it. Mr. Obama has evidently learned his politics well. This week, he told Time Magazine's Joe Klein that, after the current financial crisis, "a new energy economy . . . That's going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office."
This is a cipher, an air sandwich. Mr. Obama here affords himself a placeholder for a priority to be named later. He knows that such impractical, centrally planned "energy revolutions" have been preached by candidates and op-ed writers for decades, only to be forgotten after inauguration day in favor of less rhetorical agendas.
Mr. Obama's knack for eliciting pleasing feelings of self-regard in his followers is certainly a political virtue. (That so many of John McCain's supporters must hold their noses is, in its way, the equal and opposite virtue.) More than that, the vagueness of Mr. Obama's governing philosophy is a natural fit for a party that has long been wedded to the strategy that you get where you're going (a bigger welfare state) by not saying where you're going.
安息吧，“貪婪的十年”
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
OCTOBER 29, 2008
1982年可是個離開大學(xué)的幸運時間（您的專欄作家可以證明這一點）。不論有關(guān)專家在這“貪婪的十年”里發(fā)現(xiàn)什么瑕疵，而且其后另一個貪婪的十年又接踵而來，它開啟了一個25年異常繁榮和充滿機會的時代。更加自由的貿(mào)易，幾十億中國人和其他國家的人劃時代地加入全球勞動大軍，發(fā)揮了作用。里根和撒切爾讓私有行業(yè)重歸榮耀的主張也發(fā)揮了作用。
奧巴馬時代會是黃金成色開始褪色的時代嗎？我們無意誹謗這個人或他的計劃，然而奧巴馬先生在他短暫的職業(yè)生涯里，從未對任何政策主張表現(xiàn)過強烈支持的態(tài)度。在選戰(zhàn)期間他對自己的個人主張的表述給人的感覺一直是八面玲瓏、態(tài)度曖昧，如果大體上看是主張變革的（正如選民和媒體直到現(xiàn)在才開始注意到）。
他的崛起也沒有多少玄機了。由于強大對手的意外放棄和離婚“丑聞”，他的參議院初選和大選角逐可以說是一片坦途。他的總統(tǒng)希望由于一場讓公眾感到憤怒和困惑的金融危機而有望一夜之間獲得壓倒性勝利，盡管這場危機沒有考驗過奧巴馬的任何才能。
然而如果他在下周的大選中獲勝，可能就會出臺一系列內(nèi)容廣泛的政令，這樣就可以知道他的政令將是怎樣的了。他是個完美設(shè)計或自我設(shè)計的總統(tǒng)機器，由時勢所造，而不是去駕馭它。當(dāng)突然爆發(fā)的經(jīng)濟崩潰按慣例將要對政府實施干預(yù)、重新分配和監(jiān)管政策形成遏制時，他就橫空出世了。
這是神奇的奧巴馬先生正要跳著華爾茲順利通過的大門。
在兩黨體系下，兩個黨都需要具備統(tǒng)治力，要能夠?qū)诵奶魬?zhàn)提出長遠觀點，而值得商榷的是，在我們這種情況下，這種核心挑戰(zhàn)僅剩下對美國福利國家地位的金融挑戰(zhàn)。約翰·麥凱恩可能不是個好的經(jīng)濟學(xué)家，也沒有接受“所有權(quán)社會”作為自己的口號，但是他的衛(wèi)生保健計劃正好符合了中右傳統(tǒng)，這一傳統(tǒng)的范圍曾經(jīng)包括了比爾·克林頓，它主張在保持福利國家正常運轉(zhuǎn)的過程中為個人責(zé)任和個人選擇賦予新的角色。
相比之下，民主黨實際上從來沒有告訴我們他們希望我們何去何從。這可不是慣常的民主作風(fēng)，而奧巴馬先生由于和他的黨一樣對重大問題態(tài)度模糊而成了完美的民主黨人。艾爾·戈爾直到在爭奪白宮總統(tǒng)寶座失利兩年后，才透露說他支持一個單一付款人的衛(wèi)生健康系統(tǒng)。權(quán)術(shù)，僅僅是權(quán)術(shù)，取而代之成為民主黨的統(tǒng)治哲學(xué)，而奧巴馬又正是其最佳繼承者。
在一篇有趣的文章中，經(jīng)濟學(xué)家海寧·波恩基于以下兩點對逐漸老齡化的選民的未來投票傾向進行了預(yù)測：中間年齡段的選民預(yù)期到退休前將支付的稅款，他或她預(yù)期將獲得的社會保險和醫(yī)療保險的現(xiàn)值。
他的結(jié)論是：如果中間年齡段的選民為了確保自己的利益而選擇投票支持對他的剩余工作年限和對更年輕的人征收更高的稅，那從金融方面是講得通的。
如果他是對的，民主黨人在競選公職時只需說一件事情- 這個福利國家的融資困境不是那么容易理解的，無需多言。奧巴馬先生顯然深悟此道。本周他告訴時代雜志的喬·克萊恩，在現(xiàn)在的金融危機結(jié)束之后，“一個新的能源經(jīng)濟…將成為我就職后首先要考慮的事情?！?/p>
這等于零，一個空中三明治。在這一點上奧巴馬先生為自己日后才會公布的優(yōu)先權(quán)留了一個預(yù)留位置。他知道盡管這樣一個不切實際、自上而下設(shè)計的“能源革命”被歷屆總統(tǒng)候選人和時事評論者鼓吹了幾十年了，總統(tǒng)就職日一過它就會被忘掉，取而代之的是不那么華麗浮夸的議事日程。
奧巴馬先生激發(fā)其追隨者自我關(guān)注的滿足感的本事無疑是個政治美德。(讓約翰·麥凱恩的支持者肯定會捂住鼻子的是，這本身就是個南轅北轍自相矛盾的美德。) 不僅如此，奧巴馬先生統(tǒng)治哲學(xué)的曖昧含糊天然就適合一個長期以來奉行走一步看一步戰(zhàn)略（比如一個更大的福利國家）的黨，而不告訴你們到底往哪里走。
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面臨崩潰的發(fā)達國家
Developed economies
Over the edge
Oct 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition?
AS RECENTLY as a month ago, there were still hopes that America and Europe might just pull back from the precipice of a recession. Those hopes have been dashed. The economies of the rich world seem to have fallen off a cliff. The question now is the height of the drop.
Central banks are trying to cushion the fall. On October 29th the Federal Reserve lowered its target for the federal funds rate to 1%, matching the trough it reached in 2003. It may cut again. With remarkable speed, worries have shifted from inflation, which is still around 5%, to deflation. Fed officials still think that, if even pessimistic forecasts came to pass, inflation would not fall below zero. But Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecaster, now reckons that core inflation will fall to 1.3% by 2010, too close to zero for the Fed’s comfort. They expect the Fed to cut the federal funds rate to 0.5% in December and then, with scant room for more cuts, that it may try to stimulate growth using unconventional measures such as further expanding its lending facilities to banks and other firms.
The rate cut was needed. America’s economic data have become starkly weaker since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in mid-September. The latest GDP numbers, released on October 30th, showed that output fell by an annualised 0.3% in the third quarter. Surveys of manufacturing activity have shifted down. Weekly initial claims for unemployment benefits have shot up. A monthly index of consumer attitudes compiled by the Conference Board, a research group, plummeted to a record low of 38 in October, down from 61.4 in September.
Confidence surveys are unreliable predictors of consumer spending. But the destruction of wealth through falling stockmarkets and tightening credit conditions are already having an effect. On a seasonally adjusted basis, light-vehicle sales in September were the lowest since 1992, according to Autodata Corp, a research firm. On October 28th Whirlpool, an appliance maker, gave warning that low home sales would cut revenue and Royal Caribbean Cruises, a cruise operator, lowered profit estimates because of “a significant deterioration recently in new bookings”.
A similar downward lurch is under way in Europe, where the European Central Bank seems poised to cut interest rates for the second time this autumn on November 6th. The Munich Ifo Institute’s index, which measures the mood of German businesses, sank to its lowest level for more than five years in October. Volvo wins the prize for statistic of the crunch to date. The Swedish firm said it had received a mere 115 orders for heavy trucks in Europe in the third quarter, down by 99.7% on the 41,970 order bookings during the same period of 2007.
America and Europe cannot count on exports to make up for faltering domestic demand, because the crisis has spread to emerging markets. Airbus and Boeing, for example, had counted on orders of 300 aircraft from India in the next five years to help offset slower demand in Europe and America. Some of those are in jeopardy. Jet Airways, India’s largest domestic carrier, announced its biggest quarterly loss in more than three years on October 25th.
Economists disagree about how bad it will get. Dean Maki of Barclays Capital says that falling wealth tends to affect consumer spending over many years rather than right away. It is just the opposite with changes in real income because of petrol prices. Consumer spending could conceivably be lifted by the sharp drop in oil prices that has unfolded since July, which Macroeconomic Advisers estimates to be worth more than $100 billion on an annualised basis. Mr Maki notes that consumer confidence plunged after the September 11th terrorist attacks but that Fed rate cuts enabled interest-free loans which dramatically boosted car sales. Another small positive sign is that home sales rose slightly in September and that house prices have actually risen in a few cities.
These glimmers may be snuffed out by the unprecedented tightening in credit now under way. According to Ed McKelvey of Goldman Sachs, the only comparable modern precedent is the federal government’s short-lived imposition of credit controls in early 1980, which produced a dramatic downturn in American consumer spending. That episode ended when controls were removed. Today, credit restraint chiefly depends on how long it takes the private sector to respond to policy actions such as the Fed’s commercial-paper purchases and the widespread recapitalisation of weakened banks. “Government is working as hard as it can, but in the end it’s the private sector that does the lending,” he says.
就在一個月前，人們還盼望著歐美各國能夠從衰退的絕境中起死回生；而今，希望已完全破滅。各富裕國家的經(jīng)濟情況均搖搖欲墜，現(xiàn)在的問題只是將會摔得多慘。
各國央行紛紛推出舉措減緩衰退。十月二十九日美聯(lián)儲將聯(lián)邦基金利率下降至1%，再次采取和2003年一樣的措施。利率還可能繼續(xù)下調(diào)。以這種速度降下去，人們擔(dān)心目前還在5%左右的通貨膨脹將有可能轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)榫o縮。但是美聯(lián)儲官方認(rèn)為，即使悲觀預(yù)測不行成真，通脹率仍不會降至零。但據(jù)宏觀經(jīng)濟咨詢公司估算，到2010年核心通貨膨脹率有可能降至1.3%，這已與美聯(lián)儲零的底線太過接近了。該公司預(yù)測，12月份美聯(lián)儲有可能將基金利率下調(diào)至0.5%；12月之后，由于下調(diào)空間不足，美聯(lián)儲可能將采取向銀行和其他公司外借設(shè)備等非常規(guī)手段以保持經(jīng)濟的增長。
降低利率是必要的。自九月中旬雷曼兄弟公司破產(chǎn)以來，美國經(jīng)濟數(shù)據(jù)已明顯呈現(xiàn)劣勢。10月30日公布的最新GDP數(shù)據(jù)顯示，第三季度產(chǎn)量按年率計算負增長0.3%。制造業(yè)活動調(diào)查急跌，每周初次申請失業(yè)救濟人數(shù)激增。美國經(jīng)濟咨商局公布十月份消費者信心指數(shù)較九月的61.4點下降了整整38點。
消費者信心指數(shù)對消費支出的預(yù)測雖不可靠，但股票市場暴跌帶來的財產(chǎn)損失和變差的信用狀況確確實實造成了影響。在經(jīng)季節(jié)性調(diào)整制度背景下，據(jù)汽車數(shù)據(jù)公司調(diào)查顯示，輕型汽車銷售量已于九月份跌至1992年以來的最低點。10月28日電器廠家惠而浦提出警示稱國內(nèi)銷售下降必將減少財政收入。同日，皇家加勒比海游輪公司稱由于“一項新訂單中的重大損失”下調(diào)了利潤估算。
歐洲也正面臨著類似的下降局面。歐洲央行準(zhǔn)備好于11月6日進行秋季第二次利率下調(diào)。德國慕尼黑IFO研究機構(gòu)編制的經(jīng)濟景氣指數(shù)在五年多來于10月降低至最低。沃爾沃集團在此危機中受影響最為嚴(yán)重。這家瑞典企業(yè)第三季度僅僅接到歐洲115份重型汽車訂單，較2007年同期的41970份下降了99.7%。
美國和歐洲不能靠出口來彌補岌岌可危的內(nèi)需，因為危機已波及至新興市場?？罩锌蛙嚬竞筒ㄒ艄驹谖磥砦迥陜?nèi)要靠印度的300個訂單來抵消歐美市場減緩的需求。然而這筆訂單也很危險。印度最大的航空公司捷特航空在10月25日剛剛公布了三年多以來季度最大損失報告。
經(jīng)濟學(xué)者對衰敗前景觀點不一。巴克萊資本的迪安·馬基認(rèn)為財富流失不會立即產(chǎn)生效應(yīng)，而是會在未來數(shù)年內(nèi)對消費支出造成持續(xù)影響。這于油價變化造成實際收入變化對消費支出的影響不同。自七月油價大幅跳水后居民消費如預(yù)料之中有所抬頭，宏觀經(jīng)濟咨詢公司估計年增長約1000億美元。迪安·馬基指出，“九一一”后消費信心急降，而后利率下調(diào)貸款免息使得卻增加了汽車銷量。九月，部分城市房價上揚，而國內(nèi)消費卻小幅度有所增長，這也在一定程度上驗證了這一預(yù)測。
然而，這一絲曙光也有可能被目前空前惡劣的信用狀況扼殺。高盛經(jīng)濟學(xué)家麥凱維提出，現(xiàn)代史上唯一一次可以與目前狀況媲美的是上個世紀(jì)八十年代初期聯(lián)邦政府短命的信貸稅收管制政策，那一次造成了美國居民消費支出的顯著下降。管制結(jié)束后，下降局面立即結(jié)束。而今，信用約束的作用主要取決于個人能夠多快對比如商業(yè)票據(jù)購買、蕭條銀行的廣泛資產(chǎn)重整等政府決策做出反應(yīng)?！罢M一切努力調(diào)整，但貸款終究是個人決策?！彼f道。
笑聲工廠
If a new American comedy starts out with curses that would have made your great-grandmother blush and an obsession with poop and penises just this side of X-rated, you can be sure that it will end as warm and fuzzy as an old Andy Hardy movie. Raunch, scatology and four-letter words are nothing new in Hollywood comedies. They may have begun as underground outrages ("Pink Flamingos"), but by the time of "Porky's," "American Pie" and the Farrelly brothers they were as mainstream as, well, apple pie. What is new is the shotgun wedding of obscenity and sentimentality. If the bad boy-man hero (it's always a guy) seems stuck in the eternal pigpen of adolescence, you can be sure that by the end he'll have learned his lessons, shouldered responsibility and earned the love of the gorgeous, competent woman he pines for.
How did this formula become the new comic orthodoxy? We can all thank Judd Apatow, whose "40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and "Step Brothers" ushered in the new Hollywood math: scrotums + swear words + third-act saccharin = success. The spirit of Apatow looms heavily over two new comedies, though he had nothing to do with either. Kevin Smith's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" and David Wain's "Role Models" are both cast with Apatow rep company players, and both share the striking but suddenly ubiquitous conjunction of lowdown raunch and huggable humanism. If this combo came as a sweet surprise in a movie like "Superbad," it's now threatening to become a cliché.
This must all seem very strange to a veteran outré filmmaker like Smith. When his low-budget, trash-talking "Clerks" came out in 1994, it seemed shaggily revolutionary. Its verbose, scruffy store clerks, who could wax eloquent on the fine points of oral sex, paved the way for the slob-prince heroes Seth Rogen now plays. And now Rogen is starring, alongside Elizabeth Banks, in Smith's own "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," a sex-obsessed love story that looks a lot more conventional than its creator may have imagined. The title characters (Rogen and Banks), friends since childhood, platonically share a run-down Pittsburgh apartment made worse when their water and electricity are shut off. Unable to pay the bills, Zack turns to porno for financial rescue. This means convincing his old pal, Miri, to have on-camera sex with him. Guess what? Their coupling is an earth-shaking event that leads each to realize How They Truly Feel About Each Other. As good as Rogen and Banks are, their love story feels born of design, not desire. Despite some scabrously funny dialogue, "Zack and Miri" can't compete with the best of the Apatow comedies, which have wrung finer variations on the moves Smith pioneered. Which puts him in the odd position of looking like a shadow of his shadow.
?"Role Models" is even more formulaic, but also a whole lot funnier. The cynical, burnt-out Danny (Paul Rudd) and the swaggering horndog Wheeler (Seann William Scott), energy-drink salesmen, are arrested after a property-destroying freakout and given an option: jail or 150 hours of service as big brothers to troubled kids in the Sturdy Wings program. The sour Danny, who's just been dumped by his lawyer girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks again), is saddled with the superdork Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a.k.a. "McLovin"), who's totally obsessed with acting out his medieval sword-and-sorcery fantasies. Wheeler gets the incorrigible Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thompson), a foulmouthed fifth grader who has scared off all previous mentors.
Predictable? Yes, yet within the all-too-familiar uplifting arc of "Role Models" there's real wit and lots of opportunities for the beguiling cast to show off its comic chops. The fun is in the details: Rudd's snarky rant in a coffee shop where the large is called "vente" will resonate with anybody who's ever wondered why Starbucks calls a small a "tall." Scott, who's gone from being a hormone-revved adolescent to a hormone-revved overaged adolescent, gets better at it with every attempt: he and Rudd, at each other's throats, create delightful comic friction. Wain ("Wet Hot American Summer") does his best not to bog down in the puddles of redemption that accumulate in the final reel. Comedies by definition have happy endings, but "Role Models" would have left a deeper mark had it found a way to leave us smiling and surprised. This new comic formula needs shaking up; when the rules get this entrenched, it's time for a new rule book.
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神經(jīng)營銷學(xué)
Buyology: Truth and Lies
About Why We Buy
By Martin Lindstrom
Doubleday; 240 pp.;
It's a familiar scene if you've ever watched a hospital show. The strapped-down patient is pushed into the narrow tube of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and within minutes doctors scan the inner workings of the brain as they search for tumors or lesions. But could the brain scan perhaps also reveal whether the patient likes a new Nokia? phone or thrills to the vroom of a Harley-Davidson? That's the premise of neuromarketing. It's a hot trend and the subject of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Danish consultant Martin Lindstrom.
Lindstrom tells us early on that his neuromarketing research took three years, spanned much of the globe, and cost millions of dollars. (Eight unnamed corporations picked up the tab.) But the research takes up only a fraction of this uneven and sometimes frustrating book. For many more of its pages, we accompany Lindstrom on a broad tour of marketing. He discusses the sexual appeal of Abercrombie & Fitch's pitch, the history of subliminal ads, and the origins of the lime slice in a bottle of Mexican beer. Lindstrom entices us with the research, which seems to explain much about human behavior, but delivers it too sparingly. "Before we get to our fMRI test and its startling results," he writes at one point, "let's do a little mind experiment of our own."
Yet another detour. Still, the research in Buyology points to a vital trend: Marketers are feasting on new streams of customer data. They can track our wanderings on the Internet and our purchases at the supermarket, and they can start to predict an individual's behavior. The brain scans—both an advanced version of the electroencephalograph, which employs wired skullcaps, and the more expensive fMRI—provide rich new data streams. But drawing definitive conclusions from them is not easy.
Scientists have mapped out the regions of the brain that dominate lust, anger, attention, our protective instincts, and much more. But when those regions light up with activity, it's not clear what behavior will follow—or how it may vary from one person to the next. Scientists' understanding of such brain activity is like the early In one of his most interesting chapters, Lindstrom delves into the value of product placement—the branded phones, laptops, and liquors that share the screen for a precious second or two with movie or TV stars. Such positioning is especially important now that viewers have tools to zap traditional 30-second ads. But does product placement work? Lindstrom's researchers place brain-monitoring caps on viewers watching American Idol and then study their responses to the Cokes the judges sip, the Fords the contestants pile into between acts, and Cingular, the cell-phone service that lets the public vote. As it turns out, the viewers emerge with far stronger memories of Coke than of Cingular. Ford scores worst of all. Lindstrom theorizes that Coke fares better because it insinuates itself into the action. The judges interact with it while they deliberate. Cingular, by contrast, is just a tool for the TV viewers, and Ford is a mere advertisement. In the end, the carmaker doesn't just lose: Its message is annihilated. Viewers seem to remember less about the company after seeing the commercials than before. Lindstrom goes so far as to suggest that the Coke placements push Ford out of people's memories: The automaker spent $26 million in yearly sponsorship only to lose mindshare. Like much of Buyology, this conclusion is open to debate. Perhaps good feelings about Ford reside deep in viewers' subconscious and will surface months later. Who's to say? Even with the latest technology, much of the activity in the brain remains invisible, or indecipherable, to us. Take my brain. As I read the last two chapters of Buyology on a train, a chatty couple sits next to me. They talk. Try as I might, I can't help but listen. If I were wearing a wired skullcap, the patterns might suggest that the duo has captured my attention. Does it mean I'm a fan of theirs? Not by any stretch. Is another region in my brain signaling anger or frustration? Is it shining bright? It's tough to translate these brain patterns. But neuromarketers, including Lindstrom, are busy working at it. ? 時間就是金錢 6 Cents Is 6 Cents, but Time? That’s Something affluent a. 富裕的,富足的,豐富的 句子：（滬友firebow分享） 1. they thought we were living somewhere vaguely akin to a suburb of Binghamton. ? 石油供應(yīng)危機 After the credit crunch, the oil crunch: watchdog warns over falling supplies The International Energy Agency is to call today for an energy revolution and a "major de-carbonisation" of global fuel sources as the world confronts tighter oil supplies caused by shrinking investment. The energy watchdog is warning for the first time that oil output could pass its peak as power shifts from "super-majors" to national companies controlled by producer states. It highlights a potential oil-supply crunch. The unprecedented wake-up call comes as the European commission says in a report due out tomorrow that while oilfields decline, the balance of supply and demand will become "increasingly tight, possibly critically so". It adds: "The need to address climate change will require a massive switch to high-efficiency, low-carbon energy technologies." The commission report warns that oil supplies are limited, with reserves and spare output capacity concentrated in a few hands. "Recent severe price rises and volatility on oil and gas markets reflect these changing trends", it says. Both bodies express heightened anxieties that the west's energy requirements could be squeezed as emerging economies such as China consume more oil and conclude long-term deals with oil-rich states. This could be exacerbated by a restriction on investment by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) - possibly joined by Russia - to boost revenues. Opec will control 51% of output by 2030 compared with 44% in 2007. Rising demand The IEA's latest World Energy Outlook predicts that global energy demand will increase 45% between now and 2030 and oil prices will rise to $200 a barrel by then - or $120 at 2007 prices. It says the recent surge in prices to just shy of $150 this summer has highlighted the "ultimately finite" nature of oil and gas reserves. "The immediate risk to supply is not one of a lack of global resources, but rather a lack of investment," the report says. "Upstream investment has been rising rapidly in nominal terms but much of the increase is due to surging costs and the need to combat rising decline rates - especially in higher-cost provinces." "Expanding production in the lowest-cost countries will be central to meeting the world's needs at reasonable cost." The IEA was founded during the oil crisis of 1973-74 and acts as energy policy adviser to 28 countries including Britain. Global oil demand and supply is projected to rise from 84m barrels a day to 106m in 2030, with all of this increase driven by emerging economies, but the IEA sees conventional oil output peaking before then. Most of the increased production will come from natural gas liquids and non-conventional technologies such as Canadian oil sands. Adequate investment The agency says there is enough oil to support rising demand and output, with proven reserves of up to 1.3tn barrels - or enough for 40 years - and potential reserves of as much as 3.5tn barrels. But it says the increased output "hinges on adequate and timely investment". Up to 64m barrels a day of extra gross capacity - the equivalent to almost six times that of Saudi Arabia today - needs to come on stream between 2007 and 2030. Almost half of that is required by 2015, with an extra 7m barrels a day over current plans approved within the next two years "to avoid a fall in spare capacity towards the middle of the next decade". The IEA warns bluntly: "There remains a real risk that under-investment will cause an oil-supply crunch in that timeframe." It says a detailed analysis of 800 fields owned by 54 "super-giants" shows that the decline in production is likely to accelerate as oilfields become depleted. This means that the global decline rate of 6.7% for fields past their peak will increase to 8.6% in 2030 and may fall even faster, at 10.5%, without adequate investment. The 50 largest oil companies, the IEA says, plan to invest $600bn (?380bn) in upstream oil and gas by 2012. But such companies often do not have access to the regions with the largest reserves. The national companies in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela will account for 80% of increased output by 2030. "The dominance of national companies may make it less certain that the investment projected in this outlook will actually be made," it says, pointing to the lack of financial firepower and technical expertise of such firms. Claude Turmes, a Green MEP and rapporteur on renewables for the European parliament, said: "IEA is talking about a huge disruption to the market between now and 2015 and in the long-run - without a huge investment in Saudi, Iraq and Iran which may not be in their interest." Like the commission, the IEA calls for a dramatic shift towards "greener" energy to prevent global warming, saying that, on unchanged policies, the average temperature will rise 6°C by the end of the century. That is triple the maximum increase sought by the EU in its climate change policies. It says that, on current trends, greenhouse gas emissions will rise by 45% to 41 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2030, with three-quarters of the increase coming from China, India and the Middle East as urbanisation there grows exponentially. In its most ambitious scenario for cutting emissions and limiting the global temperature rise to 2°C, it says hundreds of millions of homes and businesses will have to change the way they use energy. OECD countries will have to cut emissions by 40% from 2006 levels by 2030 while emerging economies will have to limit emissions growth to 20%. 1 crunch?????????????????? vt. vi. 嘎扎嘎扎的咬嚼,壓碎,扎扎地踏過 ? ?
I once lived in rural France for half a year, in a region of southern Burgundy known to epicures for its fine cattle and wine. It was also known for being the French boondocks — we got the feeling from Parisian friends that they thought we were living somewhere vaguely akin to a suburb of Binghamton. Indeed, driving to the closest supermarket took close to half an hour, sometimes longer on the occasions when my husband and I realized, 10 minutes into the drive, that we’d forgotten our plastic bags and had to turn right around to get them.
My husband and I weren’t particularly green at the time, which was seven years ago. Nor was anyone else in that rural part of France, as far as we could tell. What they were was frugal. “Everyone has porcupines in their pockets,” a neighbor there once told me — in other words, it really hurt to reach for their wallets. That mattered when it came to plastic bags, because you had to pay for them at the store.
The store, E.Leclerc, was a sprawling emporium that sold household goods along with groceries — think Kmart, only with an entire aisle devoted to 23 varieties of yogurt. The store bags were plastic, but a thickish plastic, with sturdy handles. We always intended to put the empty ones back in the car for the next trip, but every once in a while, they were left behind in the pantry, and then we’d find ourselves in a bind.
The bags were maybe 30 cents each, but it wasn’t just the financial hit that made us waste all that time turning around to go home. It was shame.
You’d start loading your groceries onto the conveyor belt, and then would have to explain to the clerk that you’d forgotten your bags. She would grimace. For some reason, the bags had to be paid for in a separate transaction. This was slightly more laborious for her, and checkout time at E.Leclerc was a precise, even tense, exercise in speed.
Our neighbors timed their grocery shops to the minute: By 11:45, the store was empty, with everyone at home cooking up whatever they’d just bought for lunch. So not only was the store clerk irritated, but the people in back of us were too. Tell the clerk you need to buy bags, and you would get the same reaction that people in New York do when they announce, in some grocery store express line, that they have to pay by check. Groaning, shifting of feet, loud, deliberate sighing.
But it was not just the extra time it took that made those sighs so loaded, those groans so embarrassing. It was the knowledge that most likely, in that entire store, we were the only ones foolish enough to be shelling out $3 for bags that we had sitting around at home, empty, in some pile in the pantry. These were a frugal people, respectful of the porcupine. And we — well, we were Americans.
None of the tsk-tsking was about the landfill. It was about common sense, and the absurdity of the uselessly new. Our neighbors had 100-year-old armoires in their homes, not because they were exquisite antiques, but because someone in their family had bought them around then and they still worked just fine. One neighbor used to come by our house with what we’d call roadpear: pears, some a bit rotting, that he noticed by the side of the road on his way over. He would peel them and sauté them in butter, and we’d all be in roadpear heaven.
Critics of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s recently announced plan to charge a 6-cent fee for plastic bags have argued that the charge could not come at a worse time, now that people are counting every penny with care. But from a green point of view, it could not have come at a better time — even the city’s more affluent shoppers, who once might have considered 6 cents per bag a bargain for the convenience, might quickly change their habits.
So much of the green movement seems to be one big push to upgrade responsibly — in other words, to shop: for green makeup, green clothing, green carpeting. Charging for plastic bags may seem to be adding one more item to the shopping list, but with useless spending going far out of fashion, the opposite might be true.
If the mayor really wants to stop people from using plastic bags, he might consider requiring that the transaction take a few minutes longer. New Yorkers have gotten used to wasting money, but they’ll never put up with wasting time. Especially if you’re standing in front of them, wasting theirs.
副 詞：af'flu·ent·ly
? ?His circumstances are more affluent than ever.
? ?He was affluent in worldly goods.
antique n. 古董,古物a. 舊式的,過時的??
exquisite a. 精致的,細膩的,敏銳
名 詞：ex'qui·site·ness
副 詞：ex'qui·site·ly
? ?This is an exquisite photo album.
? ?The hostess had exquisite taste in clothes.
armoires n. 大型衣櫥??
absurdity n. 荒謬,悖理,荒謬的事 ?
名 詞：ab·surd'i·ty, ab·surd'ness
副 詞：ab·surd'ly
? ?The fallacy has been exposed in its naked absurdity.
? ?He smiled at the manifest absurdity.
? ?Your explanation involves a gross absurdity.
landfill 廢碴填埋填埋場垃圾填埋場
tsk int.[表示不贊成、同情、不耐煩等]嘖嘖????
Groan n. 呻吟,嘆息vi. 呻吟,渴望,受壓迫vt. 呻吟地說?
?
irritate vt. 激怒,使發(fā)怒,使不舒服,使發(fā)炎vi. 引起不快
時 態(tài)：ir·ri·tat·ed, ir·ri·tat·ing, ir·ri·tates
名 詞：ir'ri·ta'tor
副 詞：ir'ri·tat'ing·ly
?She was adept at the fine art of irritating people.
?His little affectations irritated her.
grimace n. 面部的歪扭,鬼臉,痛苦的表情vi. 扮鬼臉,作苦相??
pantry n. 餐具室,食品室??
aisle n. 走廊,通道,過道??
emporium n. 商場,大百貨商店??
sprawling 無計劃地占用山林農(nóng)田建造廠房(的)??
porcupines n. 豪豬??
frugal a. 節(jié)儉的,樸素的??
akin a. 同族的,同類的,類似的 ?
例句：The cat is akin to the tiger.
? ? ? ? Pity is akin to love.
? ? ? ? He felt something akin to pity.
? ? ? ? The two families are akin.
boondocks n. 森林地帶;偏僻地區(qū)
epicures ?美食家,老饕??
通過虛擬語氣來說明法國居住地位置比較偏僻。
2. My husband and I weren’t particularly green at the time, which was seven years ago.
Green 表示環(huán)保，從環(huán)保的角度出發(fā)。后文提到，自帶購物袋在法國的使用是從節(jié)約的角度出發(fā)的（金錢和時間?。?br />
3. but it wasn’t just the financial hit that made us waste all that time turning around to go home.
指出返回家取購物袋并不僅是金錢的原因，這只是次要原因。
4. Everyone has porcupines in their pocket. 用于形容節(jié)儉。
5. It was the knowledge that most likely…… 委婉指出嘆息聲的根本原因，強調(diào)自己的羞愧感。
6. These were a frugal people, respectful of the porcupine. And we – well, we were Americans. 強調(diào)了法國人節(jié)儉的特點（注意手法！—— respectful of the porcupine）對比兩國差異。
7. count every penny with care. 開始節(jié)約
8. New Yorkers have gotten used to wasting money, but they’ll never put up with wasting time. Especially if you’re standing in front of them, wasting theirs.
句子結(jié)構(gòu)簡單，起了對比的作用，突出了美國人對時間的重視！
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?n. 咬碎,咬碎聲,扎扎地踏
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 危機，緊要關(guān)頭
2 volatility???????????????? n. 揮發(fā)性,揮發(fā)度,輕快,易變,短暫
3 exacerbate????????????vt. 惡化,增劇,激怒,使加劇
4 finite??????????????????????a. 有限的,有窮的,限定的 n. 有限物
5 nominal??????????????????a. 名義上的,名字的,有名無實的,稍許的
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?n. 名詞性詞 ? ?公稱、額定 ?
6 hinge???????????????????? n. 鉸鏈,關(guān)鍵,樞紐
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?vt. 裝鉸鏈
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?vi. 靠鉸鏈移動,依…而轉(zhuǎn)移
7 depleted????????????????廢棄的
8 rapporteur???????????? n. 大會報告起草人
9 gigaton??????????????????n. 十億噸
10 exponentially?????? ad. 以指數(shù)方式
11 scenario????????????????n. 情節(jié),劇本;?
