Last year, I returned to Fuling, a river town near the Yangtze River. I visited the White Crane Ridge Underwater Museum. It’s a very strange museum    1     is under 40 meters of water, I knew its director even before the museum and the Three Gorges Dam     2    .

I taught English at the local college in the town of Fuling     3     1996 to 1998. Fuling was then quiet. Foreigners were very rare(稀小). When I ate my lunch in the town centre, often a crowd came to watch me. There weren’t any traffic     4     I couldn’t find a car.

During my visit, I     5     some of my old students. They told me about their old classmates, many of whom had left Fuling. I also visited Huang Zongming and his brother.    6     I lived here, they were fishermen. When the first stage of the dam was     7    ,they left their home. I was sure that their lives were     8     changed. But now l discover that everything is almost the same for    9    .They are still fishermen and go     10     every day. The fishing on the river is still good.The dam has not changed some things in Fuling.

4 . Do flying cars only exist in dreams of a far-off future? Well, the future may be closer than you think. Let’s take a look at some modes of transport that we could be using in the future.

Flying taxi

Slovakian engineering company AeroMobil has designed the world’s first 4-seater flying taxi. AeroMobil’s AM Next is a hybrid(混合物) —half supercar, half lightweight aircraft. It’s able to transform between the two modes of transport in fewer than 3 minutes as its wings move into the appropriate positions. It is expected to be released in 2027 and will be able to fly a distance of up to 500 miles (about 800 kilometers) between major cities.

Gyroscopic transport

Gyroscopic transport is a revolutionary new mode of transport that is being planned. It is the use of large pods supported by flexible legs that transport passengers over existing roads. These legs can adjust their length according to traffic demands and to allow passengers to board. One of the best elements of this mode of transport is that it can operate over existing infrastructure(基础设施) .

Hyperloop

Hyperloop has created a lot of excitement recently and received backing from many influential people in the tech world. Elon Musk, CEO of Space X, is one of the main advocates of the hyperloop. He has argued it could ease traffic in Los Angeles, US. The hyperloop is a high-speed public transportation system in which passengers travel in autonomous electric pods at about 965 kilometers per hour. Virgin Hyperloop, a US transport technology company, conducted its first human trials of a hyperloop system in November 2020.

What will your future life look like? Let’s have     1     look.

In 3000, medical technology will be     2    (good) than ever. When you get up in the morning and look into the mirror, your face will be beautiful and young-looking. Many people at your age could live to be 120, and your parents will just have an anti-aging (抗衰老的)     3    (treat). All of you will look the same age!

Besides, “smart clothes” will contain special particles (粒子),     4     will be much smaller than the cells in your body. They can     5    (design) to change your clothes’ color or pattern. When you say to your shirt, “Turn red”, it will change from blue     6     red.

There will also be a great change in your house. If you get into the kitchen, you     7    (find) a special food machine that will tell you what your body needs and help you eat     8    (healthy).

In 3000, cars will drive     9    (they). You can just tell your “smart car” where to go. On the way, it will be possible     10    (change) the color of cars at the flick of a switch.

Such “smart technology” will be all around you, and let’s look forward to it.

What will our cities be like in 2050? How much will artificial intelligence advance? Some scientists    1     (make) different predictions recently.

Joel E.Cohen from the The Rockfeller University says    2    is likely that by 2050 the majority of the people in the world will live in urban areas, and will have a    3    (significant) higher average age than people today. Cities will be    4    only realistic solution to housing a population that is expected to expand    5    9.7 billion by 2050.

And the technology will keep    6    (advance) rapidly. According to Bill Michell, the late director of MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities research group, cities of the future won’t look like “some sort of science-fiction fantasy” or “Star Trek” ,but virtual reality will change    7    we live. Self-driving cars will make the roads    8    (secure), driving more efficient, and provide faster transport.

Charles Ebinger at the Brookings Institution thinks that by 2050 we will also have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our    9     (appliance) are linked directly to energy distribution(分布) systems,    10    (allow) for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a technology would greatly benefit most people and reduced the consumption(消耗) of fossil fuel energy.

9 . “Human activity has wiped out two-thirds of the world’s wildlife since 1970,” CNN reported on September 10, 2020. Later that month, the Guardian reported that “40 percent of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction”. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich and his colleagues argued that “the ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization”. Around the same time, the Daily Mail warned that “human civilization stands a 90 percent chance of collapse within decades due to deforestation”.

These horrible calculations and projections come from authoritative-sounding reports issued by international agencies, conservation groups, and peer-reviewed scientific journals. But is the future of wild nature and human civilization really so poor?

Data from uncontroversial mainstream sources strongly indicate that both humanity and the natural world are likely to be flourishing rather than collapsing at the end of this century. Humanity is becoming an urban species, and that’s good for the environment, since urban dwellers generally use less electricity, produce less globe-warming carbon dioxide, and have smaller land footprints than people living in the countryside. By 2100, it is estimated that 85 percent of people will be city dwellers, which would leave only 1.2 billion still living in the countryside. That means more space for the wildlife and less pollution from the agriculture.

The global tree-covering area increased by 865,000 square miles between 1982 and 2016. The researchers found that gains in forest area in the mild, subtropical and northern climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics. The Maryland researchers owe much of that increase to “natural afforestation on abandoned agricultural land”. “Furthermore, forests in mountainous regions are expanding as climate warming enables trees to grow at higher altitudes,” they added.

Humanity does face big environmental challenges in the coming century. But the scientific and economic evidence shows that most of the trends are positive or can be turned in positive direction by human wisdom. Rather than an age of extinction, the 21st century promises to be an era of environmental renewal.