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TOEFL Directory > TOEFL writing > GMAT Issue Writing Sample 2
GMAT Issue Writing Sample 2
"It is unrealistic to expect individual nations to make, independently, the sacrifices necessary to conserve energy. International leadership and worldwide cooperation are essential if we expect to protect the world's energy resources for future generations.?
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
2. The speaker asserts that an international effort is needed to preserve the world's
energy resources for future generations. While individual nations, like people, are at
times willing to make voluntary sacrifices for the benefit of others, my view is that
international coordination is nevertheless necessary in light of the strong propensity of
nations to act selfishly, and because the problem is international in scope.
The main reason why an international effort is necessary is that, left to their own
devices, individual nations, like people, will act according to their short-term motives
and self-interest. The mere existence of military weapons indicates that self-interest and
national survival are every nation's prime drivers. And excessive consumption by
industrialized nations of natural resources they know to be finite, when alternatives are
at hand demonstrates that self-interest and short-sightedness extend to the use of energy
resources as well. Furthermore, nations, like people, tend to rationalize their own self-
serving policies and actions. Emerging nations might argue, for example, that they
should be exempt from energy conservation because it is the industrialized nations who
can better afford to make sacrifices and who use more resources in the first place.
Another reason why an international effort is required is that other problems of an
international nature have also required global cooperation. For example, has each nation
independently recognized the folly of nuclear weapons proliferation and voluntarily
disarmed? No: only by way of an international effort, based largely on coercion of
strong leaders against detractors, along with an appeal to self-interest, have we made
some progress. By the same token, efforts of individual nations to thwart international
drug trafficking have proven largely futile, because efforts have not been internationally
based. Similarly, the problem of energy conservation transcends national borders in that
either all nations must cooperate, or all will ultimately suffer.
In conclusion, nations are made up of individuals who, when left unconstrained,
tend to act in their own self-interest and with short-term motives. In light of how we
have dealt, or not dealt, with other global problems, it appears that an international
effort is needed to ensure the preservation of natural resources for future generations.
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