1 . Climate change causes tens of billions of dollars in economic damage in the United States every year. Climate change is expensive, deadly but preventable, according to the new National Climate Assessment, the most sweeping, sophisticated federal analysis of climate change compiled to date.

“Climate change affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us all equally,” says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, one of the authors of the assessment.

“The research indicates that people with lower income have more trouble adapting to climate change, because adaptation comes at a cost,” says Solomon Hsiang, a climate economist at the University of California.

For example, one of the simplest ways to adapt to severe heat waves is to run your air conditioner more. But “if people can’t pay for it, then they can’t protect themselves,” explains Hsiang.

Weather-related disasters in the U. S. cause about $150 billion each year in direct losses, according to the report. That’s a lot of money and it’s only expected to go up as the Earth gets hotter. And the hotter it gets, the more profound the economic harm. Twice as much planetary warming leads to more than twice as much economic harm, the assessment warns.

But it also points out many successful efforts underway to adapt to the new reality and to prevent worse outcomes. “It’s not the message that if we don’t hit 1.5 degrees, we’re all going to die,” says Hayhoe. “It’s the message that everything we do matters. Every 10th of a degree of warming we avoid, there’s a benefit to that.”

There’s been a slight shift in the report’s perspective since the last one, says Candis Callison, a sociologist and author of the report. There’s now a clear acknowledgement, development, developed through years of rigorous research, that the fossil fuel-powered society the U. S. built over generations was profoundly unjust. “Climate change actually provides us with an opportunity to address some of those inequities (不公平) and injustices — and to respond to these impacts,” Callison says. “That’s really a powerful thing.”

2 . Do you believe that most people are greedy or generous? It is easy to come up with examples of stories that could support either conclusion if we are relying on our memories or on our guts (直觉).

Recently, a team of researchers sought to investigate this question in partnership with the TED organization. TED generously gave away $10,000 each to 200 lucky individuals (yes, you read that correctly), which essentially means these participants won a lottery. Besides, they were asked to spend all the money in three months rather than save it). These participants were from three low-income countries (Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya) and four high-income countries (Australia, Canada, UK, USA). Over the next three months, participants were asked to track their spending to examine how generously or selfishly this money was spent. They reported their spending to the researchers a few months later.

Of the $10,000 participants received, they spent $6,431 on other people. To be clear, this also included certain behaviors in which the participants themselves benefited personally (such as taking their friends out to dinner or paying for a family vacation). But still, people are very generous. Participants gave away $1,697 strictly to charity or nonprofit organizations.

The researchers expected that if people publicly shared how they spent their money, they would be more generous. To check if this was correct, they asked half of the participants to post on Twitter about how they spent the money. The other half were asked to keep their spending “private”.

Surprisingly, the researchers saw that “generous spending was similar” between Twitter and private groups. The mini lottery winners were no more or less generous depending on whether they posted their spending on Twitter or kept it to themselves. The authors admitted they expected the Twitter group to spend more generously, but this prediction was not supported by the data. People did not need to have their spending shown publicly to behave generously.

3 . I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for my annual check-up. The doctor threw in a(n) ________ that took me off guard.

“So Robin, what are you going to do after high school? Why don’t you go to college to become a(n) ________ like me?” he asked while writing on the file.

Go to college to become a doctor? Who was this man kidding? I thought he was ________ for even suggesting it. My grades were ________ and I wasn’t college material. Embarrassed by his question, I ________ to the doctor, “I’m not ________ enough to be a doctor.”

The doctor immediately looked at me straight in the eyes when he said very ________, “You don’t have to be clever to be a doctor. You just have to be persistent (坚持不懈的).”

Even though I wasn’t college material, what the doctor said ________ me. Three years later, I ________ to a college close to my home and soon found myself walking the campus as a new student.

I began ________ anything that seemed frightening. I put all my energy toward passing the assignments one by one. I ________ that when I was persistent, I could ________ things I never believed possible.

I graduated with a master’s degree in September 2023, two decades after that ________ with my doctor. I ________ I could shake his hand and tell him “thank you”. Sometimes even the smallest moments in time can have a life-changing ________.

4 . This year, it was harder than ever to get into Harvard University. The prestigious college announced their lowest acceptance rate ever, welcoming only 1,968 of 57,435 first-year applicants into their hallowed halls. Thanks to Abigail Mack’s moving, insightful essay, she will be one of the lucky students to matriculate this fall.

The Massachusetts high school senior used TikTok to share a part of the essay that made her one of the 4 percent of applicants who made the cut. Her essay focused on an unusual theme: the letter “S.”

“I hate the letter ‘S’,” she read aloud on TikTok. “Of the 164,777 words with ‘S’, I only struggle with one. To condemn an entire letter because of its use 0.0006 percent of the time sounds statistically unreasonable, but that one case changed 100 percent of my life. I used to have two parents, but now I have one, and the ‘S’ in ‘parents’ isn’t going anywhere.”

“‘S’ follows me,” she continued. “I can’t get through a day without being reminded that while my friends went out to dinner with their parents, I ate with my parent. As I write this essay, there is a blue line under the word ‘parent’ telling me to check my grammar; even Grammarly assumes that I should have parents, but cancer doesn’t listen to edit suggestions.”

She went on to explain that she fled that dreaded letter by throwing herself into school activities. She joined clubs, sports, and performed in theatrical productions, all in an effort to lessen the pain of losing her mom. Eventually, she realized she was hiding from her pain and decided to face it head-on. She took over the “S” for her own purposes. Now, instead of thinking about the “S” in parents, she concentrates on the double “S” in passion.

Abigail’s essay earned her a spot at several top colleges and she has officially been accepted into the class of 2025 in Harvard. In the meantime, her essay has gone viral (走红) with over 16 million views!

5 . I grew up in such a family: My father was Italian, and my mother was Greek. This family _______ allowed me to learn to speak both languages with _______ . Besides speaking their native tongues, my parents often _______ in French at our dinner table; therefore, I also learned a third language. In order to further explore my gift for languages, I started to _______ French at university.

There’re many benefits of _______ different languages: It raises my cultural awareness, and broadens my horizons. Being a multicultural _______ also helps me understand and _______ with people from different parts of the world.

One day, a Middle Eastern man served me when I visited a shop. To be frank, he was _______ ignorant about responding to my questions and solving my problem. I walked away from the shop feeling _______ because he kept avoiding eye contact for 20 minutes. Later, when I recounted the ________ to my friend, he reminded me of a(n) ________ cultural truth of some Middle Eastern countries that I had ________. The cultural insight is that males and females in the Middle East are taught to ________ their eyes or avoid long eye contact with each other. This practice is a sign of propriety (得体), which can be ________ as rudeness by anyone unfamiliar with the culture.

My multiculturalism ________ me to realize that something as simple as the lack of eye contact can be a potential source of misunderstanding.

7 . I am Amy Chew. I graduated from this school in 2014. I’m glad to be here today to speak to you about the importance of accepting your body. I used to be anorexic (厌食的); I was extremely thin: my head, which looked abnormally huge, was barely supported by my backbone.

It would take an hour for me to eat a spoon of food. Should I attempt to eat to comfort my parents or teachers, I would lock myself in the toilet and throw up the food. I looked pale and weak all the time because of the lack of food. My family members were annoyed. They cried a lot.

It all started when a boy in my class called me “fat”. It was painful. I adopted an extremely strict diet and exercise method. I lost 10 kg within three months and continued to lose more weight. I was absolutely addicted to losing even more weight. One day, my heart rate dropped and I was breathless! I almost lost my life. That was when I decided to turn my life around.

Looking good is extremely important to a teenager. We want to look a certain way so we can be popular and accepted. We are attracted by good shapes. Now, with social media, we have access to a pool of photographs of people, whose bodies and appearances we admire.Those images make us envious. We long to be like them.

We’re in danger when we start to look down upon the way we look and take extreme measures to attain the body we dream of having. These measures can lead to eating disorders,unrealistic and unhealthy exercise habits, low self-respect and depression. Besides affecting the physical health, teenagers who are body conscious can also suffer from mental instability. They may fall into despair, guilt and hopelessness. If you are currently experiencing these feelings, seek help before it is too late.

10 . By now, we all know that the planet is facing more environmental disasters, with quick-to-disintegrate (快速瓦解的) fast fashion clothing and the industry that creates it a major reason. Need proof? Just look at the 60,000 tonne-mountain of poisonous and thrown-away clothing that is visible from space.

Now, France is taking steps to resist the supercharged way we consume clothes, with the country recently announcing it will pay all citizens a “repair bonus” for taking their clothes in to get fixed rather than throwing them in the bin.

Beginning in October, citizens who bring their clothes in for repairs will be able to claim back a € 6 to € 25 bonus, with the total payment depending on the complexity of the repair. All bonuses will be paid from a € 154 million sustainability fund the government has set aside for the next five years.

By calling on people to take their items to get fixed, the government hopes to cut fast fashion waste throughout the country and encourage customers to purchase more “virtuous” products. In other words: the government is begging you to fix your clothes, rather than continuously over-consuming the products of fast fashion sites like Shein or Boohoo.

“It could encourage exactly the people who have bought, for example, shoes from a brand that makes good-quality shoes or likewise good-quality ready-to-wear clothes to want to have them fixed instead of getting rid of them,” explained France’s junior ecology minister Bérangère Couillard, who announced the programme in Paris. “That is exactly the objective, to create a recycling economy for shoes and clothes so that products last longer, because in government we believe in the second life of a product.”

She also shared hopes that the programme will increase employment for French tailors and shoemakers. “The goal is to support those who carry out repairs,” she explained, while inviting all repair shops to join in the campaign for free.