联合环保类：

"Our declining environment may bring the people of the world together as no politician, philosopher, or war ever could. Environmental problems are global in scope and respect no nation's boundaries. Therefore, people are faced with the choice of unity and cooperation on the one hand or disunity and a common tragedy on the other."

Cooperation---or Tragedy?

The solution to the world's growing environmental problems may have to wait awhile. It has been said that "environmental problems are global and respect no nation's boundaries." Unfortunately, pollution and its consequences still fall to large measure on those least likely to do anything about it: poor countries willing to sacrifice anything in order to sit at the table with the world's wealthy.

As far as the industrialized nations of the world are concerned, the world is a big place. Environmental destruction taking place outside their borders may sometimes be fodder for government pronouncements of concern, but few concrete actions. Deforestation of the Amazon, for instance, is of vital concern to all those who wish to continue breathing. But the only effective deterrent to this activity, the restriction of international aid money to those countries showing net deforestation, has been stalled in the United Nations by those unwilling to "interfere" in the internal politics of other nations.

Because of the differential impact of polluting activities around the world, and even in different regions of a single country, many governments will undoubtedly continue to promulgate only modest environmental regulations. Costs to polluting companies will continue to carry as much weight as the benefit of a pollution-free environment. Particularly in the current political climate of the United States, the well-documented expense of today's pollution-control measures will be stacked against the unknown long-term effects of polluting actitivities. "Why should I spend millions of dollars a year, which causes me to have to raise the cost of my goods or eliminate jobs, if no one really knows if air pollution is all that harmful? Show me the proof, " an air polluting company may demand.

Realistically, it won't be until critical mass is achieved that the hoped for "choice of unity and cooperation" will be a viable one. Only when the earth as a whole is so polluted that life itself becomes increasingly difficult for a majority of the world's people will there likely be the political will to force global environmental laws on governments worldwide. But the optimists (read: environmental activists) among us continue to believe that the world can be shown the error of its ways. They continue to point out that the sky is probably falling--or at least developing a big hole. The world, as a whole, ignores them.

One would hope, however, that governments, perhaps through a strengthened U.N., could somehow be forced to realize that when the Earth reaches the critical mass of pollution, it may be too late to do anything about it. That would be a "common tragedy" indeed.

第二篇：GREissue满分作文之六——伟大来源于平凡原文

伟大来源于平凡类：

Topic: Best Ideas

"The best ideas arise from a passionate interest in commonplace things."

Even the most brilliant thinkers, from Socrates to Satre, live lives in time. A childhood, an adolescence, an adulthood; these are common to me and you as well as the greatest writers. Furthermore, many of the great thinkers we esteem in our Western culture lived somewhat uneventful lives. What distinguished their life from say a common laborer was their work. Therefore, what provided the grist for their work? One might say that they were brilliant and this alone was sufficient to distinguish their lives from the masses. Intellect alone can not devise situations or thoughts from no where; there must be a basis and that basis is most common, if not always, observation of the common, of the quotidian. Critics of this idea may argue that these thinkers were products of fine educations and were well schooled in the classics. This, they may point to, is the real basis for their knowledge. I would argue that although it may be a benefit to study classics and be well schooled in diverse disciplines, these pursuits merely refine and hone an ability each and every person has, the ability to study human nature. Where best to study human nature than in the day to day routine each one of us can witness in him or herself or those around us.

I propose that the two best disciplines to understand this power of the commonplace and its ability to cause a groundswell of thought are philosophy and literature. Every school of philosophy, from the Greeks to our day, share a common mission or intent and that is to understand and explain human existence, with all of its concomitant features. Generally speaking, the Greek philosophers, epitomized in Aristotle, attempted to set down rules for human behavior founded on logic. These rules applied not only to the rare forms of human behavior but largely focused on the more mundane motions of daily life. Many of Aristotle's rules were based on his observations of others as well as himself. Contrast this venture with the existentialists of our century who attempted to look behind the real motivations of human behavior as well understand man's relation to the Universe. To do this, what did these philosophers do? They studied those around them; they submerged themselves in the commonplace, in cities with hordes of anonymous people. While the existentialists, as well those philosophers before, exploited their uncommon education and intellect, the basis for their movement was ordinary human behavior and existence.

Finally, literature is similar to philosophy in that it seeks to explain and understand human behavior and therefore rooted in the commonplace. Nevertheless, its relative strength over philosophy is literature's ability to emotionally and spiritually move the reader through the use of contrived situations and fictional characters. It can do this when even the central theme of a piece maybe love between a man and a woman (e.g. commonplace). Literature also distinguishes itself from philosophy in that the breadth of the fiction may be huge. The plot and the detail can be quite ordinary or fanatastic. However, this does not mean that the central themes of all literature, whether ordinary or fantastic, deal with human beings and the problems they find in the world, something which we all share.

In conclusion, I hope it has been shown that a passionate desire to understand and explain human behavior, the significance of our existence and deal constructively with the challenges of life are the centerpieces of at least in two of the most influential areas in human thought. What is more commonplace than the existence of man.