【推荐3】More cities, states and regions are committing to comprehensive climate plans to decarbonize (减少碳排放) transportation by 2040. The need for action is now, and we need to rise to the challenge quickly. Google technology is unlocking our ability to generate climate-related insights and impact on the globe.

The transportation sector is where global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are rising the quickest. In 2018, Google launched the Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE). Using AI, the systems analyze transportation trends in a city by mode， helping local governments assess their progress in tackling GHG emissions. GHG inventory processes (温室气体排放清单) traditionally take months and multiple data sources to collect, and are now highly efficient, allowing government staff to reduce the cost and personnel burden of reporting.

In pursuit of helping more cities take action against climate change, we will make transportation insights available in EIE for over 20,000 cities and regional governments by the end of the year, making it one of the largest ever collections of high-quality, globally consistent environmental data sources.

With EIE, cities have free access to Google’s unique mapping data and insights so they can decide on cleaner transport policies. As part of Google’s most ambitious decade of climate action, we’ve committed to helping more than 500 cities and local governments reduce a total sum of 1 billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2030 and beyond.

As the window continues to narrow on carrying out policies and plans to reduce emissions, we’re collaborating with other associations, committed to addressing climate change. Our work with Cities. Climate Leadership Group(C 40) will help us better support the needs of cities. Together we can provide higher-quality transportation activity data to measure and track GHG emissions at a global scale, while also giving state and local governments resources to better understand what’s working at a local level.

【推荐1】Desertification (沙漠化) is a course that has caused much concern over the past few years — and it’s a major problem for the ancient land of Egypt, where 96% of the country’s land is desert.

So why is it that — if you drove a car 10 miles west of the Suez Canal — you would see a large number of forests outlined against the orange sand and blue sky of the Sahara?

The Serapium Forest is the richest of Egypt’s 36 areas that make up a program to fight desertification by creating sustainably managed commercial forests fed completely by wastewater. The 500-mile forest is only a short distance from the 400, 000 people living in the Egyptian city of Ismailia, who produce millions of tons of wastewater every year.

After a dozen-mile journey to the Serapium Forest, the wastewater is then stored underground where oxygen is fed in to speed up the bacterial purification process. A system of pipes then spreads the wastewater throughout the forest. And human wastewater is still rich in chemicals even after being treated.

The government’s effort, called the National Program for Safe Use of Treated Sewage Water for Afforestation is going a long way toward achieving the country’s goals voiced in the 1992 UN Rio conference on climate change.

The research was supported by ForestFinance, a German company that has already planted near-natural forests in Panama and Vietnam to help those countries with their development and wildlife protection. ForestFinance wants to increase the number of species grown in Serapium by including a forest on the site. That way, the biodiversity (生物多样性) of the commercial forest would be able to support a greater number of species, and hopefully bring in money as well. Although the Serapium Forest faces a lot of difficulties, it’s still growing — a 500-acre green wall to join the others in the world in preventing the sands of the world’s deserts from spreading.

【推荐2】In elementary school, I earned my Girl Scout Bronze Award by planting a butterfly garden. When I got a little older, I earned my Girl Scout Silver Awar by bringing an art program to struggling refugees (难民). But when it was time for me to go for my Girl Scout Gold Award, there was something even bigger affecting us all that I had to focus on.

People talk about damage to our environment and argue about who’s to blame, but the thing is, we don’t have time for all that. The earth is in danger, and that means all of us are in danger. That’s why I founded Project ReefLove, an awareness and educational campaign (活动) that teaches kids one super simple and easy way we can help protect coral reefs, which are the rainforests of the sea.

Lots of creatures, from sea turtles to sharks to starfish, depend on coral for survival, and the reefs help prevent beach erosion. Coral is really important—but the chemical sunscreens a lot of people wear are poisoning it and threatening the whole ecosystem. Saving coral can seem like a huge undertaking, but once you know how big a difference something simple like switching to a mineral sunscreen or wearing a rash guard instead of using chemical SPF makes, you’ll realize it is not so hard after all.

The first step, I knew, had to be education. So I went to the source: kids. From my own experience growing up in Girl Scouts, I know there’s nothing stronger than the passion of young people. If you get a little kid excited about saving the environment, their parents, grandparents, teachers, and others in earshot are going to hear about it, too!

So far, the Project ReefLove message has directly reached more than 11,000 people—and I’ve been excited to see lawmakers take action to do their part, too. Hawaii just outlawed sunscreens that are toxic (有毒的) to reefs, and I’m hoping other states will follow its lead.