Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (保护区) (ANWR) to help secure America’s energy future President Bush certainly thinks so. He has argued that tapping ANWR’s oil would help ease California’s electricity crisis and provide a major boost to the country’s energy independence. But no one knows for sure how much crude oil lies buried beneath the frozen earth, with the last government survey, conducted in 1998, projecting output anywhere from 3 billion to 16 billion barrels.
The oil industry goes with the high end of the range, which could equal as much as 10% of U. S. consumption for as long as six years. By pumping more than 1 million barrels a day from the reserve for the next two to three decades, lobbyists claim, the nation could cut back on imports equivalent to all shipments to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. Sounds good. An oil boom would also mean a multibillion-dollar windfall (意外之财) in tax revenues, royalties (开采权使用权费) and leasing fees for Alaska and the Federal Government. Best of all, advocates of drilling say, damage to the environment would be insignificant. "We’ve never had a documented case of an oil rig chasing deer out onto the pack ice," says Alaska State Representative Scott Ogan.
Not so fast, say environmentalists. Sticking to the low end of government estimates, the National Resources Defense Council says there may be no more than 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the coastal plain of ANWR, a drop in the bucket that would do virtually nothing to ease America’s energy problems. And consumers would wait up to a decade to gain any benefits, because drilling could begin only after much bargaining over leases, environmental permits and regulatory review. As for ANWR’s impact on the California power crisis, environmentalists point out that oil is responsible for only 1% of the Golden State’s electricity output--and just 3 % of the nation’s.
What does President Bush think of tapping oil in ANWR

A．The more money we earn, the happier we would be.
B．The more money we have, the diminished returns we have.
C．With the economy goes up, our happiness decreases.
D．In the 10ng run, money cannot guarantee happiness.

Americans generate trash at an astonishing rate of four pounds per day per person, which translates to 600.000 tons per day or 210 million tons per year! This is almost twice as much trash per person as most other major countries. What happens to this trash Some gets recycled (回收利用) or recovered and some is burned, but the majority is buried in landfills.
How Much Trash Is Generated
Of the 210 million tons of trash, or solid waste, generated in the United States annually, about 56 million tons, or 27 percent, is either recycled (glass, paper products, plastic, metals) or composted (做成堆肥) (yard waste). The remaining trash, which is mostly unrecyclable, is discarded.
How Is Trash Disposed of
The trash production in the United States has almost tripled since 1960. This trash is handled in various ways. About 27 percent of the trash is recycled or composted, 16 percent is burned and 57 percent is buried in landfills. The amount of trash buried in landfills has doubled since 1960. The United States ranks somewhere in the middle of the major countries (United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France and Japan) in landfill disposal. The United Kingdom ranks highest, burying about 90 percent of its solid waste in landfills.
What Is a Landfill
There are two ways to bury trash:
· Dump--an open hole in the ground where trash is buried and that is full of various animals (rats, mice, birds). (This is most people’s idea of a landfill!)
· Landfill--carefully designed structure built into or on top of the ground in which trash is isolated from the surrounding environment (groundwater, air, rain). This isolation is accomplished with a bottom liner and daily covering of soil.
° Sanitary landfill--landfill that uses a clay liner to isolate the trash from the environment
° Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill—landfill that uses a synthetic (plastic) liner to isolate the trash from the environment.
The purpose of a landfill is to bury the trash in such a way that it will be isolated from groundwater, will be kept dry and will not be in contact with air. Under these conditions, trash will not decompose (腐烂) much. A landfill is not like a compost pile, where the purpose is to bury trash in such a way that it will decompose quickly.
Proposing the Landfill
For a landfill to be built, the operators have to make sure that they follow certain steps. In most parts of the world, there are regulations that govern where a landfill can be placed and how it can operate. The whole process begins with someone proposing the landfill.
In the United States, taking care of trash and building landfills are local government responsibilities. Before a city or other authority can build a landfill, an environmental impact study must be done on the proposed site to determine:
· the area of land necessary for the landfill
· the composition of the underlying soil and bedrock
· the flow of surface water over the site
· the impact of the proposed landfill on the local environment and wildlife
· the historical value of the proposed site
Building the Landfill
Once the environmental impact study is complete, the permits are granted and the funds have been raised, then construction begins. First, access roads to the landfill site must be built if they do not already exist. These roads will be used by construction equipment, sanitation (环卫) services and the general public. After roads have been built, digging can begin. In the North Wake County Landfill, the landfill began 10 feet below the road surface.
What Happens to Trash in a Landfill
Trash put in a landfill will stay there for a very long time. Inside a landfill, there is little oxygen and little moisture. Under these conditions, trash does not break down very rapidly. In fact, when old landfills have been dug up or sampled, 40-year-old newspapers have been found with easily readable print. Landfills are not designed to break down trash, merely to bury it. When a landfill closes, the site, especially the groundwater, must be monitored and maintained for up to 30 years!
How Is a Landfill Operated
A landfill, such as the North Wake County Landfill, must be open and available every day. Customers are typically municipalities and construction companies, although residents may also use the landfill.
Near the entrance of the landfill is a recycling center where residents can drop off recyclable materials (aluminum cans, glass bottles, newspapers and paper products). This helps to reduce the amount of material in the landfill. Some of these materials are banned from landfills by law because they can be recycled.As customers enter the site, their trucks are weighed at the scale house. Customers are charged tipping fees for using the site. The tipping fees vary from ＄10 to ＄40 per ton. These fees are used to pay for operation costs. The North Wake County Landfill has an operating budget of approximately ＄4. 5 million, and part of that comes from tipping fees.Along the site, there are drop-off stations for materials that are not wanted or legally banned by the landfill. A multi-material drop-off stations used for tires, motor oil, lead-acid batteries. Some of these materials can be recycled.
In addition, there is a household hazardous waste drop-off station for chemicals (paints, pesticides, other chemicals) that are banned from the landfill. These chemicals are disposed of by private companies. Some paints can be recycled and some organic chemicals can be burned in furnaces or power plants.
Other structures alongside the landfill are the borrowed area that supplies the soil for the landfill, the runoff collection pond and methane (甲烷) station.
Landfills are complicated structures that, when properly designed and managed, serve an important purpose. In the future, new technologies called bioreactors will be used to speed the breakdown of trash in landfills and produce more methane.