2020 has been an extreme year for hurricanes , wildfires and heat waves around the world. New reports from United Nations agencies list this year's record-breaking weather and the burning of fossil fuels as causes of     1    global warming.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently    2     world leaders to make 2021 the year when humanity ends what he calls its “war on nature ”.He asked them to    3     to a future free of planet-warming carbon pollution.

The secretary-general's comments come as the U.N. prepares for a Dec. 12 online climate meeting in France on the 5th     4    of the 2015 Paris climate agreement .A main goal of that agreement is to keep     5     in the Earth's temperature during this century to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.

In a speech given at New York’s Columbia University , Guterres said, “The state of the planet is broken ,Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal Destructive fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are increasingly the new     6    .”

In a report ,the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said this year is set to     7     about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the last half of the 1800s.Scientists use that time period as a starting point for warming caused by heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Most     8     heat goes into the world’s seas. Ocean temperatures are now at     9    levels. It also means 2020 will be one of the three hottest years on record.

Guterres saw hope that more than 100 countries have promised that by 2050 they will not be adding more heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere than trees and technology can    10    .China and U.S. President-elect Joe Biden have promised net zero carbon emissions.

When an endangered seabird hits a power line, it makes a sound “very much like the laser sound from Star Wars,” says conservation biologist Marc Travers. He should know, as his team from the Endangered Seabird Recovery Project     1     thousands of hours of audio to determine if power lines affected local seabirds. Travers was trying to help establish how frequently birds are killed by power lines on the island of Kauai in Hawaii in 2011.

His team recorded 600 hours of audio and sent the recordings to Conservation Metrics, a company that assists conservation efforts with AI     2    . Conservation Metrics used a program to “listen” to the recordings and count the sounds that     3     bird electrocutions(电击). The result was     4    , as the number of bird electrocutions was in the thousands. Armed with proof that power lines were killing a significant number of birds, the team worked with the local utility (公共事业) service to reduce bird deaths.

In science fiction stories such as The Matrix, AI-powered     5     take over the world and end life on the planet as we know it. But in reality, programs that use AI to sort through mountains of data might just save some species from disappearing     6    .

By many measures, humans have been poor managers of the planet. Humans have     7     as much as 97 percent of land ecosystems. Key populations of monitored animals have declined as much as 68 percent since 1970. The decline in biodiversity around the world has created a hopeless situation. Conservation efforts lack key resources they need to be     8    .

Fortunately, humans now have AI-based tools that can help. AI can quickly and     9     sort through large amounts of data created by observations in the field. Then other programs such as PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security) can help analyze the data and suggest the most effective ways to focus conservation efforts.

In large national parks and wildlife reserves, illegal hunters are a danger for animals both big and small. Some animals are worth a lot of money on the black market. Park rangers are left with a(n)     10     task because there is too much land to cover. But the PAWS program allows rangers to focus their efforts. PAWS has even predicted the existence of trap lines in areas not yet checked by rangers!

We still face many challenges to change the loss of wildlife, but AI-powered programs promise to be a powerful conservation tool.

5 . Now elsewhere in the world, Iceland may be spoken of, somewhat breathlessly, as western Europe's last pristine wilderness. But the truth is, once you're off the ______ track of the low-lying coastal areas where everyone lives, the roads are few, and they're all bad, ______ Iceland's natural wonders have been out of reach and unknown even to its own ________For them the land has always just been there, something that had to be dealt with and, if possible, _______—the mind-set being one of land as commodity rather than land as, well, priceless art on the scale of the " Mona Lisa".

When the opportunity arose in 2003 for the national power company to enter into a 40-year ______ with the American aluminum company Alcoa to supply hydroelectric power for a new smelter （冶炼厂）, those who had been dreaming of something like this for decades ______ the opportunity. For a long time, life here had meant little more than a hut, dark all winter, cold, no hope, children dying left and right, plagues, starvation, volcanoes erupting and destroying all vegetation and livestock, all spirit— a world ______ almost entirely around the welfare of one's sheep and, later, on how good the cod catch was. In the outlying regions, it still largely does.

Ostensibly, the Alcoa project was intended to save one of these dying regions— the remote and sparsely populated east— where the way of life had steadily ______ to a point of desperation and gloom. After fishing quotas (定额) were ______ in the early 1980s to protect fish stocks, many individual boat owners sold their allotments or gave them away, fishing rights ended up mostly in the hands of a few companies and small fishermen were virtually ______. Technological advances drained away even more jobs previously done by human hands, and the people were seeing everything they had worked for all their lives turn out to be ______ and their children move away. With the old way of life doomed, aluminum projects like this one had come to be perceived, wisely or not, as a last chance. "Smelter or death."

The contract with Alcoa would infuse the region with foreign ______, an estimated 400 jobs, and spin-off service industries. It also was a way for Iceland to develop expertise that ______ could be sold to the rest of the world and ______ an economy historically dependent on fish. “We have to live,” Halldor Asgrimsson said. Halldor, a former prime minister and longtime member of parliament from the region, was a driving ______ behind the project. “We have a right to live.”

6 . The beauty, majesty, and timelessness of a primary rainforest are indescribable. It is impossible to ______ on film, to describe in words, or to explain to those who have never had the awe-inspiring experience of standing in the heart of a primary rainforest.

Rainforests have ______ over millions of years to turn into the incredibly complex environments they are today. Rainforests represent a store of living and ______ renewable natural resources that for eons, by virtue of their richness in both animal and plant species, have ______ a wealth of resources for the survival and well-being of humankind. These resources have included basic food supplies, clothing, shelter, fuel, spices, industrial raw materials, and medicine for all those who have lived in the majesty of the forest. ______, the inner dynamics of a tropical rainforest is an intricate and fragile system. Everything is so ______ that upsetting one part can lead to unknown damage or even destruction of the whole. Sadly, it has taken only a century of human intervention to destroy what nature designed to ______ forever.

The scale of human _____ on ecosystems everywhere has increased enormously in the last few decades. Since 1980 the global economy has tripled in size and the world population has increased by 30 percent. Consumption of everything on the planet has risen——at a cost to our ______. In 2001, The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; ______, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.

In 1950, about 15 percent of the Earth's land surface was covered by rainforest. Today, more than half has already gone up in ______. In fewer than fifty years, more than half of the world's tropical rainforests have fallen ______ to fire and the chain saw, and the rate of destruction is still accelerating. Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year! More than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb this ______, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.

Massive ______ brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the ______ of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.

8 . Two hours from the tall buildings of Philadelphia live some of the world’s largest bears. They are in northern Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, a home they share with an abundance (丰富) of other wildlife.

The streams, lakes, grasslands, mountain and forests that make the Poconos an ideal place for black bears have also attracted more people to the region. Open spaces are threatened by plans for housing estates and important habitats are endangered by highway construction. To protect the Pocono’s natural beauty from irresponsible development, the Nature Conservancy named the area one of America’s “Last Great Places”.

Operating out of a century-old schoolhouse in the village of Long Pond, Bud Cook, the president of the Conservancy, is working with local people and business leaders to balance economic growth with environmental protection. By forming partnerships with people like Francis Altemose, the Conservancy has been able to protect more than 14,000 acres of environmentally important land in the area.

Altemose’s family has farmed in the Pocono area for generations. Two years ago, Francis worked with the local branch of the Nature Conservancy to include his farm in a county farmland protection program. As a result, his family’s land can be protected from development and the Altemoses will be better able to provide a secure financial future for their 7-year-old grandson.

Cook attributes the Conservancy’s success in the Poconos to having a local presence and a commitment to working with local residents.

“The key to protecting these remarkable lands is connecting with the local community,” Cook said. “The people who live here respect the land. They value quiet forests, clear streams and abundant wildlife. They are eager to help with conservation efforts.”

For more information on how you can help the Nature Conservancy protect the Poconos and the world’s other “Last Great Places,” please call 1-888-564 6864 or visit us on the World Wide Web at www.tnc.org.