【推荐1】The Alice Ferguson Foundation is a non-profit group that works to improve the environment by building relationships between people and nature. The foundation is based in the state of Maryland. It was created more than 50 years ago. It teaches people ways to protect the environment.

At the end of the year, it designs events to help children celebrate Christmas without increasing the amount of waste they create. Hanna Seligmann works for the foundation. “So let’s figure out what is in our bag of trash.” She shows adults and children how to reduce waste during the holiday gift-giving season. “You can sort it as a cardboard item or you can sort it as a plastic item.” “We encourage using things that are already in your house like newspaper, old magazines, using a gift within a gift.” Urging people to recycle is important in the Washington, D.C., area, because Potomac River, one of the most famous rivers in the country lies there.

“Over time we realized that really just doing trash cleanups was the symptom of the problem, not getting to the root cause. And so it was just a little over a decade ago that we started the initiative (倡议) itself.” says Seligman.

The Trash Free Potomac Watershed Initiative is an effort by the Alice Ferguson Foundation to support clean agricultural methods. It includes educational programs teaching children about the kinds of pollution that can enter the watershed.

One activity is called the Trash Timeline Game. It teaches children that the things they throw away do not decompose, at the same rate. For example, paper dissolves in about four weeks. An apple core may take two months to rot. A metal can take up to 100 years.

1. The Alice Ferguson Foundation ________.

A．devotes itself to keeping citizens engaged in going green

B．deals with relationship between people

C．teaches people how to form groups

D．concerns itself about children’s holidays

2. At the end of the year, the Alice Ferguson Foundation is busy ________.

A．buying plastic items

B．celebrating Christmas

C．figuring out how much waste was produced

D．educating people to reduce less waste while enjoying Christmas

3. How to get to the root cause of environmental protection, according to Seligman?

A．Environmental education.	B．Doing trash cleanups.
C．Saving water.	D．Celebrating holidays less.

4. What does the underlined word in the last paragraph mean?

A．Give off.

B．Break down.

C．Come out.

D．Pack up.

【推荐2】Climate change disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable people, particularly poor rural communities that depend on the land for their livelihoods and coastal populations throughout the tropics. We have already seen a chain of tough suffering that results from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, and more.

For remedies, advocates and politicians have tended to look toward cuts in fossil-fuel use or technologies to capture carbon before it enters the atmosphere – both of which are crucial. But this focus has overshadowed the most powerful and cost-efficient carbon capture technology in the world. Recent research confirms that forests are absolutely essential in reducing climate change, thanks to their ability to absorb and isolate carbon. In fact, natural climate solutions such as conservation and restoration of forests, along with improvements in land management, can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target of limiting warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, even though they currently receive only 2.5 percent of public climate financing.

Forests’ power to store carbon dioxide is staggering: one tree can store an average of about 48 pounds in one year. Intact (完整的) forests could take in the CO₂ emissions of some entire countries.

For this reason, policymakers and business leaders must create and enforce policies to prevent deforestation, foster reforestation of degraded land, and promote the sustainable management of standing forests in the fight against climate change. Protecting the world’s forests ensures they can keep performing essential functions such as producing oxygen, filtering water and supporting biodiversity. Not only does the world’s entire population depend on forests to provide clean air, clean water, oxygen and medicines, but l.6 billion people also rely on them directly for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, a huge amount of forest continues to be converted into agricultural land to produce a handful of resource-intensive commodities — despite zero-deforestation commitments from companies and governments. So now is the time to increase forest protection and restoration. This action will also address a number of other pressing global issues. For example, in less developed and rural areas — especially in the tropics — community-based forest-management programs can forge pathways out of poverty. In the Petén region of Guatemala, for instance, community-managed forests boasted a near-zero deforestation rate from 2000 through 2013, as compared with 12 percent in nearby protected areas and buffer (缓冲) zones. These communities have built low-impact, sustainable forest-based businesses that have stimulated the economy of the region enough to fund the creation of local schools and health services. Their success is especially noticeable in a location where, outside these community-managed zones, deforestation rates have increased 20-fold.

1. Which of the following statements about natural climate solutions is TRUE according to the passage?

A．They are the only effective strategies available to address the climate change.

B．They are not effective compared with the reduction in fossil-fuel use or technologies.

C．They can and should play a more important role in cutting carbon emissions.

D．They manage to limit warming to two degrees Celsius above preindustrial level.

2. The word “staggering” (Paragraph 3) is closest in meaning to “________”.

A．immediate

B．incredible

C．unsteady

D．modest

3. Which of the following statements is the author most likely to agree with?

A．The policies to prevent deforestation have taken effect.

B．Developed countries are hit the hardest by climate change.

C．Economic growth contributes a lot to reducing deforestation.

D．Some governments fail to keep their promises to preserve forests.

4. What does the passage mainly talk about?

A．Keeping forests undamaged can go a long way toward saving the planet.

B．A high-tech climate fix is required to dramatically lessen global warming.

C．Governments should work together with businesses to stop deforestation.

D．Sustainable management of forests is crucial in powering economic development.

【推荐3】After opening the world’s first commercial Direct Air Capture plant（直接空气捕集工厂）designed to pull CO₂ out of the air, Swiss company Climeworks is now trying to create the world’s first “negative emission（负排放）” power plant.

An international team of scientists has been working on a way to turn captured CO₂ into minerals. The project is called CarFix. Experts capture the gas, put it into water and send it to more than 700 meters underground. There the CO₂ on contact with a special kind of rock forms into a mineral.

“Our results show that between 95 and 98 percent of the CO₂, sent underground was mineralized over the period of less than two years, which is amazingly fast,” says lead author of the CarFix project, Dr. Juerg Matter. Before this discovery it was thought that this mineralization could take hundreds to thousands of years.

The DAC technology can collect CO₂ from the atmosphere and then store it underground or sell it to business needing the gas. For example, customers can use it in drinks. And the first plant in Zurich is supplying the captured CO₂ to a nearby greenhouse to “feed” vegetables. By using the company’s CO₂ the customers can reduce their carbon mission as well as lower their dependence on energy.

A 2015 study suggested that before the CarFix project, experts could collect CO₂, but they didn’t have a large-scale（大规模的）method to safely treat it.

Combining Climeworks’ DAC technology with the CarFix mineralization process they will be able to create a system. This system doesn’t put additional carbon back into the atmosphere. Actually it is carbon negative.

“The economic cost of applying this kind of carbon capture technology on a large-scale is not particularly practical now, but for the first time we are seeing a realistic and effective system,” says Christoph Gebald CEO of Climeworks.

1. What is the text mainly about?

A．A new power-producing process.

B．A team of international scientists.

C．An effective way to deal with CO2 emission.

D．A business plan to sell CO2 to customers.

2. What is the new discovery according to Paragraph 3?

A．Applying CO2 to greenhouse.

B．Collecting CO2 from the atmosphere.

C．Sending CO2 700 meters underground.

D．Mineralizing CO2 in less than two years.

3. In what way can the power plant be carbon negative?

A．It captures CO2 from the atmosphere to produce power.

B．It recycles its own CO2 emission and buys CO2 from others.

C．It treats its own CO2 emission and helps others to save energy.

D．It has a large-scale method to turn CO2 into other useful gases.

4. What is Christoph Gebald’s attitude towards the carbon capture and storage system?

A．Pleased.	B．Fascinated.
C．Worried.	D．Disappointed.