英语高级视听_听力原文_Unit 6 The Coal Cowboy

America's dependence on foreign oil - President Bush called it "an addiction" in his State of the Union address国情咨文- has become a threat to the country's economy and security.

While the president spent much of last week promoting energy alternatives可替代能源of the future, like hybrid杂种，混血儿；混合物cars(使用电池、汽油的)双动力汽车and fuels made from wood chips木片，木屑, the governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, says there's something we can have up把某人请来作客；起诉and running in the next five years.

What he has in mind is using the coal, billions of tons of it, under the high plains高地平原；高平原of his home state家乡州. The governor tells correspondent Lesley Stahl he wants to use an existing process to turn that coal into a synthetic综合的；合成的，人造的liquid fuel液体燃料；液态燃料, or synfuel合成燃料.

The plan is controversial, but Gov. Schweitzer - half Renaissance man文艺复兴人；多才多艺的人, half rodeo竞技表演；竞技者cowboy牛仔；牧童；莽撞的人- seems ready for the challenge. In fact, he sounds like he's ready to take on承担；呈现；具有；流行；接纳；雇用；穿上the world.

"Why wouldn't we create an economic engine经济引擎经济发动机that will take us into the next century, and let those sheiks酋长，族长（阿拉伯人的）and dictators and rats and crooks from all over the world boil in their own oil?" Schweitzer said at a press conference记者招待会，新闻发布会.

Schweitzer has called them rats and crooks and hasn't held back on抑制bit. "Hugo Chavez 乌戈·查韦斯（委内瑞拉总统）, the Saudi沙乌地阿拉伯（人或语）的royal family王室；皇族, the leaders of Iran," he said. "How about the countries that end with 'stan'? Nigeria尼日利亚（位于非洲）? You tell me. Sheiks, rats, crooks, dictators, sure."

He's a governor with his own foreign policy and no one is calling Brian Schweitzer a wuss胆小鬼，软弱无用的人. He says flat平直地；断然地out竭尽全力；用全速；疲惫that his plan will change the world, and that the key to the country's energy future is buried in the grassy长满草的；草绿色的plains of eastern Montana.

"Probably about half of eastern Montana has coal underneath it," Schweitzer explains.

Montana is already mining 矿业；采矿a small fraction of its coal.

But unlike the deep shaft 拍杆；轴；箭杆；杆状物(电梯等的) 垂直通道利用mining done in West Virginia, Montana coal is surface mined and there hasn't been a fatal致命的；重大的；毁灭性的；命中注定的accident in 15 years. The governor took 60 Minutes down into one of those huge pits矿井；深坑；陷阱；（物体或人体表面上的）凹陷；（英国剧场的）正厅后排；正厅后排的观众.

"We are surrounded by energy," Schweitzer said. "There's no going down into a mine. It's a road. They drive right out of here."

"But, let me ask you something. Coal has such a bad reputation" Stahl said. "It's dirty. I can feel it. I'm gonna be filthy肮脏的；污秽的；猥亵的. I can smell it. It's awful, awful, awful. How many of these would you have to dig out to produce enough of what you're talking about to make it make sense?"

"If we got to 20 of these kinds of pits, we could produce a serious amount of energy for the future of this country," the governor said.

It's not enough to completely break our addiction to foreign oil过分依赖外国石油, but a start. Most coal today is used for electricity but the governor's plan is to turn Montana's billions of tons of untapped coal into a liquid diesel fuel柴油；柴油机燃料for our cars.

Schweitzer wants to take coal that's been pressurized into a gas, and then use something called the Fischer-Tropsch process 费歇尔—特罗普希法，费—托法to convert that gas into a clean diesel fuel, similar to what is made at a demonstration plant示范装置；样板厂in Oklahoma美国俄克拉荷马州.

The governor handed Stahl a jar罐；广口瓶；震动；刺耳声of this synthetic fuel合成燃料；人造燃料, which looked and smelled clean. "Chanel No. 37," Schweitzer said, laughing. "It is diesel. You can pour that in your diesel car柴油汽车，柴油机动车or truck right now."

The Fischer-Tropsch process does have a track record径赛成绩记录；过去的成绩或成就, along with a sinister history. It was first put into wide-scale大规模的；广泛的use in the Nazi era, when Hitler had few oil-rich石油藏量丰富的allies. Ninety percent of his Luftwaffe （二战时期的）纳粹德国空军planes ran on coal-based fuels

Later on, South Africa, also isolated because of Apartheid种族隔离used the process.

"So, here you have these horrible regimes政权，政体；社会制度；管理体制, and now we want to take their technology. There's something kind of …spooky幽灵般的；有鬼般的；令人毛骨悚然的," Stahl said.

"Science is neutral," said Schweitzer. "They were pushed against the wall被逼到墙根了，走投无路了, because they couldn't get oil. We're pushed against the wall because the oil is so expensive."

The price tag价格标签；标价to get his plan rolling - $1.5 billion - is a bargain, the governor says, now that crude is trading around $60 a barrel.

Dr. Robert Williams, a senior energy scientist at Princeton, agrees.