【推荐3】According to official government figures, there are more than twice as many kangaroos as people in Australia, and many Australians consider them pests(有害动物). Landholding farmers say that the country’s estimated 50 million kangaroos damage their crops and compete with livestock for scarce resources. Australia’s insurance industry says that kangaroos are involved in more than 80 percent of the 20,000-plus vehicle-animal collisions reported each year. In the country’s underpopulated region, the common belief is that kangaroo numbers have swollen to “plague proportions.”

In the absence of traditional hunters, the thinking goes, killing kangaroos is critical to balancing the ecology and boosting the rural economy. A government-sanctioned(政府认可的) industry, based on the commercial harvest of kangaroo meat and hides, exported $29 million in products in 2017 and supports about 4,000 jobs. Today meat, hides, and leather from kangaroos have been exported to 56 countries. Global brands such as Nike, Puma, and Adidas buy strong, supple “k-leather” to make athletic gear. And kangaroo meat is finding its way into more and more grocery stores.

Advocates point out that low-fat, high-protein kangaroo meat comes from an animal more environmentally friendly than greenhouse gas-emitting sheep and cattle. John Kelly, former executive director of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, says, “Harvesting our food and fibers from animals adapted to Australia’s fragile rangelands is extremely wise and sustainable. Many ecologists will tell you that there is no more humane way of producing red meat.”

Opponents(反对者) of the industry call the killing inhumane, unsustainable, and unnecessary. Population estimates are highly debatable, they say, but “plague proportions” are biologically implausible. Little kangaroos grow slowly, and many die, so kangaroo populations can expand by only 10 to 15 percent a year, and then only under the best of circumstances. Dwayne Bannon-Harrison, a member of the Yuin people of New South Wales, says the idea that kangaroos are destroying the country is laughable. “They’ve been walking this land a lot longer than people have,” he says. “How could something that’s been here for thousands of years be ‘destroying’ the country? I don’t understand the logic in that.”

Can Australians’ conflicting attitudes toward kangaroos be reconciled(和解)? George Wilson says that if kangaroos were privately owned, then graziers(放牧人)—working independently or through wildlife conservancies—would protect the animals, treating them as possessions. They could feed them, lease them, breed them and charge hunter a fee for access. “If you want to conserve something,” Wilson says, “you have to give it a value. Animals that are considered pests don’t have value.”

Privatization could also help reduce grazing pressures. If kangaroos were more valuable than cattle or sheep, farmers would keep less live-stock, which could be good for the environment. Under this scheme, landholders would work with the kangaroo industry on branding, marketing and quality control. The government’s role would be oversight and regulation.

【推荐1】Mountain regions are not just playgrounds for the richer citizens on the planet, however. The disappearing snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are a worrying sign that nowhere is safe from the adverse effects of human actions. The United Nations has identified three main areas that need to be addressed to ensure the future safety of the world’s mountains. These are: the protection of mountain ecosystems, the encouragement of peace and stability in mountain regions, and assistance for mountain people to maintain their ways of life.

From the busy cities of India to the farmlands of California, more than half the world’s population is dependent on mountains for their fresh water supply. Global warming, deforestation, mining and heavy farming seriously damage breakable mountain ecosystems and put vital fresh water sources at risk.

Mountain regions host a large proportion of the world’s wars. From Afghanistan to the Balkans and the Andes to many parts of Africa, territorial(领土的) and drug related conflicts have damaging effects on the local environment and the lives of the local people. Fighting makes essential tasks such as farming impossible. Land mines make large areas of potential farming ground unusable. Also schools, roads, bridges and other important infrastructure(基础设施) are left in ruins.

Mountain people are among the poorest, least represented groups on the earth. They face many hardships and each day can be, “a test of survival”. Damage to mountain ecosystems worsens their situation and leaves them even more unprotected to disease and ‘natural’ disasters such as floods and landslides. It’s been recommended that forest profit should be reinvested in mountain communities and the people living there should be given a stronger political voice. Their fate is in many ways directly connected with that of people living at sea level.

There is an old motto for visitors to the countryside which advises them to leave nothing but footprints. It is still as relevant today as it always was. Unfortunately, the size of our footprints seems to be getting larger.

【推荐2】In the 1950s, Liu Wenbin, an official with the Ulansuhai Nur administration, said his father travelled more than 800 kilometers from his famine (饥荒)-stricken hometown in Hebei province and settled near Ulansuhai Nur, a famous lake in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, attracted by the area’s reputation as a land of fish and rice.

He described the lake as a consistent source of joy for him. “After school, I seldom stayed at home. I frequently went to swim in the lake,” he said. For years, the fishing industry was a reliable source of income for Liu’s family. “We always came back from fishing with the boat full of our catch, accompanied by flocks of birds,” he recalled. However, as urbanization and industrialization accelerated around the lake in the 1990s, Liu witnessed the body of water, widely known as the “Pearl beyond the Great Wall”, turn into a black and smelly mass that local people avoided as much as possible.

Now, with a treatment campaign that adheres to the philosophy of “mountains, rivers, forests, farmland, lakes, grassland and deserts are a life community”, the local government has made marked progress in just a few years, making the lake a paradise (天堂) for birds and raising Liu’s hopes of seeing the return of the Ulansuhai Nur of his childhood.

Located in Bayannuur in the west of the region, Ulansuhai Nur is home to the largest wetland in the Yellow River Basin and a rare large grassland lake in the desert and semidesert area. As such, it is a natural environmental screen that controls the sources of sandstorms that affect North China, where Beijing is located. It is also an important place on the world’s eight major bird migration (迁徙) routes, and is one of the world’s few birds’ transit and reproduction grounds in the desert and semidesert areas.

“Thanks to the measures taken by the local governments, hopefully, we could swim in the lake and directly use water from it for drinking and cooking soon,” Liu said.

【推荐3】The Lifecycle of a T-shirt

We all probably have a lot of T-shirts, but do you ever stop and think about the influence of a T-shirt on the planet? You'd probably be surprised to learn what's involved in the lifecycle of just one T-shirt.

There are 5 major stages：material, production, shipping, use and disposal (处理). The material stage involves farming, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting and ginning. While cotton is a natural fiber (纤维) and not as harmful to the environment as man-made fibers, it still takes a toll in the material and production stages. Commercial cotton farming uses a large amount of water, and the use of pesticides (杀虫剂) is widespread across the globe, especially in cotton farming. Studies have shown that farmers spend around $4. 1 billion on pesticides annually, of which 25% was spent on cotton crops in the US.

Once the cotton is grown and harvested, so begins the production stage: spinning, knitting, bleaching, dyeing, cutting, sewing, etc. —these processes also use a great deal of water and energy. Commercial dyes and bleaches are harmful pollutants, and can eventually pollute groundwater.

After the T-shirt is produced, it enters the transportation stag. This often involves overseas shipping. Take a look in your closet. Chances are that most of your cotton garments (衣服) are made in China or India. Garments can be shipped via plane, ship or truck, all of which spill CO₂ into the atmosphere. Calculations show that CO₂ emissions from light trucks alone amount to 1. 15 pounds per mile.

Once T-shirt reaches the retail market, it is purchased. This stage may seem like the least environmentally damaging part. But consider the number of times you've washed and dried your favorite T-shirt. Washing machines are certainly becoming more efficient. However, the average American household does 400 loads of laundry per year, using about 40 gallons of water per load. Such excessive water use is combined with the large amount of energy used by dryers.

The final stage of life is disposal. This release harmful emissions, or involves a landfill where cotton takes years to break down. Current US records show that an estimated 15% of clothes and shoes are recycled, which means that consumers send a shocking 85% of these materials to landfills.

We all need new clothes every once in a while, but let's all try to keep in mind what goes into the production of clothing. It has a real impact on the planet.

There are a lot of things and you can do to help reduce your impact. Reuse and recycled clothes. If they're too worn out to wear, cut them up and use them as cleaning rags. Donate them to charity or another organization that recycles textiles. When possible, make an effort to buy organic cotton. Turn down the thermostat (恒温器) on your washer, and line dry your clothes when the weather will allow it.

【推荐3】Happy, angry, amazed — these are some of the emotions we like to express these days when we’re sending a message on our smartphones! That’s why many of us now add little pictures to our texts to brighten up someone’s mobile screen and we’re also using them as a quick way of telling someone how we’re feeling. Yes, emojis have become a vital tool for communication.

Let’s clear one thing up first — there are emojis and emoticons. The latter are little images made using normal keys on a keyboard. For example, a colon, two dots, followed by a closing bracket (括号) is a “smiley face”. But as technology has become more advanced, pre-made images have been created that can be simply added to your messages, which is great!

The emoji was first invented in Japan in the late 1990s and the word “emoji” comes from the Japanese words for “picture” and “character”. The number of different images has dramatically increased since then and now we have a picture for every mood or situation.

So now we have the option to give this new creation the visual “thumbs-up” but have you thought why we’ve become so addicted to using emojis? Professor Vyv Evans has written a book called “The Emoji Code” — he says, “Increasingly, what we’re finding is that digital communication is taking over from certain aspects of face-to-face interaction… one of the reasons emojis are so interesting is that they really do enable us to express our emotional selves much more effectively.” So emojis are a sort of substitute (代替物) for the visual signals or non-verbal cues we normally give when we speak to someone face-to-face.

Another advantage of emojis is that they are an international language — they don’t use words but tell a message in pictorial form so they can be easily interpreted whatever your native language.

【推荐2】The Spring Festival is the biggest festival for Chinese people all around the world. The celebration usually lasts for 15 days. There is a lot to do.

On the eve of the Spring Festival, family members get together and have big meals. Their favorite dish on this day is dumplings. Days before the Spring Festival, families will clean their homes. People think cleaning sweeps away bad luck. It makes the house ready for good luck.

The color red is everywhere during the Spring Festival. People think red is a happy color and will bring them a bright future. People wear red, too. They decorate their homes with pieces of red paper. Kids get a lot of “hong bao”. It is a red paper bag with money in it. Usually, older people give younger ones hong bao. They think it brings good luck.

The Spring Festival is the time to make everybody happy. So don’t say any bad words or do anything that will bring unhappiness to other people. For instance, you'd better not say any bad words like “death”. Don’t break anything. People think that it means your luck is running out.

Also, don’t borrow or lend money on these days. If you have borrowed money, return it before the Spring Festival.

【推荐3】People do better when more is expected of them. In education circles, this is called the Pygmalion Effect.

The Pygmalion effect got its name from the story of Pygmalion, a mythica（虚构的）Greek sculptor. Pygmalion carved a statue of a woman and then fell in love with it. He appealed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who brought the statue to life and helped the couple get married. Just as Pygmalion’s fixation on the statue brought it to life, our focus on a student can do the same in schools. Research by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson examined the influence of teachers’ expectations on students’ performance. They began by testing the IQ of elementary school students. Teachers were told that the IQ test showed around one-fifth of their students to be unusually intelligent. But unknown to the teachers, the “gifted” students were chosen at random. Actually they had no big statistical advantage over the other kids. As the study period ended, all students had their IQs retested. Both groups showed an improvement. Yet those who were described as intelligent experienced much greater gains in their IQ points. Rosenthal and Jacobson owed this result to the Pygmalion effect. Teachers paid more attention to “gifted” students, offering more support and encouragement than they would otherwise.

In general, teachers have the power to influence how the students behave by holding high expectations. If a teacher thinks a student is brilliant, they will treat them as such. The student then gets more opportunities to develop their ability, and their performance improves. This works both ways. When a student expects a teacher to be excellent or successful, they tend to be attentive and supportive. In the process, they improve their performance, too. Students who act interested in lectures create interesting lecturers.