GMAT考试写作指导：Issue写作范文四七

　　47. The responsibility for preventing environmental damage should be shared by

　　government, private industry and individuals alike. The primary obligation, however,

　　belongs to individuals. Moreover, within organizations like the government or a

　　corporation, responsibility should be increasingly distributed to individuals according to

　　level of authority.

　　The primary obligation to preserve the environment belongs to individuals for the

　　reason that assigning responsibility to a government or corporation is problematic. This

　　is because abstract entities like these do not fulfill the usual criteria for being

　　responsible. An entity can shoulder responsibility only if it can be held accountable for

　　its actions. Furthermore, being held accountable for an action requires that the entity act

　　willingly and on the basis of conscious intentions. But governments and businesses are

　　abstractions, having neither will nor consciousness beyond that of the individuals within

　　them.

　　Still, we can make some sense of treating corporations and governments as if they

　　were individuals. They are individuals under the law, and therefore subject to laws,

　　penalties, and lawsuits. They can even be identified as beneficiaries in wills.

　　Nevertheless, when responsibility is vaguely allocated to abstract entities like

　　governments or corporations, it becomes easy for those within such organizations to

　　cover individual actions that result in devastation to the environment. Consider the

　　famous case of the Exxon Valdez accident and oil spill off the Alaskan coast. While it

　　was easy to single out Captain Hazelwood and determine his blameworthiness the night

　　of the mishap, it was not so easy to identify those responsible at higher levels. Someone

　　was responsible for hiring Hazelwood; others should have known about his drinking or

　　other job-related problems. Thus when we do assign responsibility to governments or

　　business organizations, it must be clearly distributed to individuals in relevant lines of

　　authority within the organization.

　　In conclusion, individuals are mainly responsible for protecting the environment.

　　And while it makes some sense in a vague way to talk about the similar responsibilities

　　of government and industry, in the end such obligations will belong to individuals

　　within them. Therefore, some individuals will assume greater shares of responsibility

　　for the environment, since they act in positions of authority on behalf of government or