2023届高三英语外刊语篇精读Day2 讲义

Day 2 Birds vs. Energy By Molly Michelson How do birds fare against wind power? What about other sources of energy? Birds face many threats in this human-overrun world. Their high-flying lifestyle has something to do with it. Collisions with buildings, automobiles, and communication towers kill over a billion birds per year in the United States. But that's not even our avian friends' biggest threat: domestic cats kill somewhere between 2.5 and 4.0 billion birds in the U.S. each year. And wind energy? “The American Bird Conservancy estimates that there are about 400,000–600,000 birds that die each year from wind turbines,” says Stanford's Mark Jacobson. It's a significant amount, to be sure, but when critics use it to deride this clean form of energy, it's not really the full picture. “When we compare it to other energy sources, a study that was done a few years ago found that wind turbines kill about one-tenth the number of birds per unit of energy generated compared with gas or coal-fired power plants,” Jacobson continues. “Those power plants, they not only destroy habitats during the mining of gas or coal, but also, they produce air pollution that causes premature deaths of birds. In fact, compared with nuclear power, wind turbines kill about half the number of birds per unit of energy than nuclear power partly due to the mining of uranium.” Perhaps with this big picture in mind, the publication The Condor has a special section out today with several studies looking at energy production's influence on bird death and bird populations in the United States and Canada. One paper compares threats to birds from all angles and urges future studies to go beyond simple bird mortality and consider population size, species, locations, and more. Another study looks at power transmission lines as threats to raptors, demonstrating that well-marked lines with thicker wires can prevent bird collisions. Three studies look specifically at wind power and its effects on birds. A st