2018年考研《英语二》真题（完整版）_第3页

　　The question“what happens when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine?”has provided a quick put-down for skeptics.But a boost in the storage capacity of batteries is making their ability to keep power flowing around the clock more likely.

　　The advance is driven in part by vehicle manufacturers，who are placing big bets on battery-powered electric vehicles.Although electric cars are still a rarity on roads now,this massive investment could change the picture rapidly in coming years.

　　While there’s a long way to go，the trend lines for renewables are spiking.The pace of change in energy sources appears to be speeding up—perhaps just in time to have a meaningful effect in slowing climate change.What Washington does—or doesn’t do—to promote alternative energy may mean less and less at a time of a global shift in thought.

　　26.The word“plummeting”(Line 3，Para.2)is closest in meaning to.

　　A.stabilizing

　　B.changing

　　C.falling

　　D.rising

　　27.According to Paragraph 3，the use of renewable energy in America.

　　A.is progressing notably

　　B.is as extensive as in Europe

　　C.faces many challenges

　　D.has proved to be impractical

　　28.It can be learned that in Iowa, .

　　A.wind is a widely used energy source

　　B.wind energy has replaced fossil fuels

　　C.tech giants are investing in clean energy

　　D.there is a shortage of clean energy supply

　　29.Which ofthe following is true about clean energy according to Paragraphs 5&6?

　　A.Its application has boosted battery storage.

　　B.It is commonly used in car manufacturing.

　　C.Its continuous supply is becoming a reality.

　　D.Its sustainable exploitation will remain difficult.

　　30.It can be inferred from the last paragraph that renewable energy.

　　A.will bring the US closer to other countries

　　B.will accelerate global environmental change

　　C.is not really encouraged by the US government

　　D.is not competitive enough with regard to its cost

　　Text 3

　　The power and ambition of the giants of the digital economy is astonishing—Amazon has just announced the purchase of the upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods for$13.5bn，but two years ago Facebook paid even more than that to acquire the WhatsApp messaging service，which doesn’t have any physical product at all. What WhatsApp offered Facebook was an intricate and finely detailed web of its users’friendships and social lives.

　　Facebook promised the European commission then that it would not link phone numbers to Facebook identities，but it broke the promise almost as soon as the deal went through.Even without knowing what was in the messages，the knowledge of who sent them and to whom was enormously revealing and still could be.What political journalist，what party whip，would not want to know the makeup of the WhatsApp groups in which Theresa May’s enemies are currentlyplotting?It may be that the value of Whole Foods to Amazon is not so much the 460 shops it owns, but the records of which customers have purchased what.

　　Competition law appears to be the only way to address these imbalances of power.But it is clumsy. For one thing, it is very slow compared to the pace of change within the digital economy. By the time a problem has been addressed and remedied it may have vanished in the marketplace, to be replaced by new abuses of power.But there is a deeper conceptual problem, too. Competition law as presently interpreted deals with financial disadvantage to consumers and this is not obvious when the users of these services don’t pay for them.The users of their services are not their customers.That would be the people who buy advertising from them—and Facebook and Google，the two virtual giants，dominate digital advertising to the disadvantage of all other media and entertainment companies.

　　The product they’re selling is data，and we，the users，convert our lives to data for the benefit of the digital giants. Just as some ants farm the bugs called aphidsfor the honeydew they produce when they feed, so Google farms us for the data that our digital lives yield.Ants keep predatory insects away from where their aphids feed; Gmail keeps the spammers out of our inboxes.It doesn’t feel like a human or democratic relationship，even if both sides benefit.