3 . Don’t call Madison Stewart an environmentalist. She sees herself simply as an individual taking action in defense of something she loves that’s in need of protection.

Despite her youth, the 24-year-old is an undersea veteran (老手). She grew up sailing around the Great Barrier Reef on her parents’ boat and spent her early life free diving while patiently waiting for the day when she could get her scuba diving (水肺潜水) certification, aged 12. Already impressed by sharks, Madison was now pleased to be able to observe them in their own world. “I got to know the sharks...I could recognize them by sight,” Madison says. “Other people had dogs around them growing up. I had sharks.”

But within a couple of years, she saw a great reduction in shark numbers on the reef. “One day I went in the water and couldn’t find my sharks anywhere, sharks I’d spent my childhood with,” she says. “They’d been caught and killed.” It was a great moment for Madison.

She left school at 14 to be homeschooled so she could spend more time in the ocean. She taught herself to shoot underwater video to document sharks in their own world and share her sense of wonder with others. She launched a YouTube channel and built a huge following for her documentaries where she focuses on issues like inadequate protection for some shark species and the global shark fin (鳍) industry.

In 2014 Madison was the subject of the encouraging documentary Shark Girl, which introduced her to a global audience. In 2017 she appeared as an “Ocean Guardian” in the documentary Blue that explored a lot of threats to the world’s marine environments, including the damaging effect of the global shark fishery. The film encourages viewers to get involved and includes practical steps to guide them to do so. It shows Madison’s philosophy that the power of the individual to make a difference by their own direct action should never be underestimated.

4 . It was raining like nothing before when Ehdaa Bujeldain, an English teacher living with her family in the mountains of Derna in eastern Libya , heard a loud noise that sounded like an explosion (爆炸). Later they learned that a dam (大坝) in Derna had broken down under the pressure of running water. For the next four days, they had no power or internet, and it was only recently that they started to fully understand of the damage caused by the floods.

“Half of the city has been destroyed. My mom’s relatives, my friends, my coworkers ——they are all gone. Now we, the survivors, are just ghost s in shells,” says Bujeldain, whose sadness can be easily told from her blank expression.

Five days have passed since the terrible flooding in Derna, Libya’s Red Crescent organization estimated that 11,300 people have died, while the city’s mayor believes the number of deaths could be as high as 20,000.

Derna is a coastal city with a seasonal river called the Wadi Derna. Despite the abnormally heavy rain, people living near the river had little warning before the floodwaters came rushing in on that terrible morning. United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths described the scale of the flood as “appalling” (令人惊骇的) and blamed the flood partly on sudden climate change.

Now international aid teams are arriving in Derna, but they face challenges due to damaged roads, lack of access to power, water, and fuel. Tarhoni, doctor of the rescue team, warns that the most difficult weeks lie ahead. “One disaster is done and there is another to come,” he says. “The thousands and thousands of people who lost everything these people now need comfort, they need company, they need psychological support.”

Mount Tai, a typical representative of the Chinese famous mountains, is a mountain with     1    long history and a special historic status. In 1982, Mount Tai was designated as the National Park of China and it     2    (list) formally in the directory of the World Natural and Cultural Heritage in 1987. It becomes a precious heritage of human beings.

Mount Tai,     3    (locate) in the east of North China Plain and the middle of Shandong Province, is known to the world for its splendid scenery. Standing out among the Shandong Hills, it is of     4    (significant) around other hills. The south of Mount Tai is     5    (high)than the north. In Mount Tai, the transportation is convenient with the Jinghu railway     6     (pass) by in the west. The distance     7     Mount Tai and Qufu City is 83.1 kilometers. Many roads and railways meet in Tai’an City,     8     just lies in the south of Mount Tai.

As a mountainous     9     (scene) spot, Mount Tai has a high value in terms of aesthetics( 美学) and science, especially the aesthetic value, which     10    (be) the foundation for Mount Tai to become a famous mountain in the history and an unparalleled heritage today.

7 . 10-year-old Sasha Olsen went on a trip in the summer of 2021 with her family to Vietnam and Japan. She was shocked at the ocean’s pollution levels and dying sea animals.

“We went on this trip and I was so_________,” said Sasha. “But when I saw the way the oceans had become, I got upset. I wanted to know why things were this way but couldn’t find an_________.”

When she returned home to Bal Harbour, Florida, she grew even more_________. She learned some of the_________in South Florida had been closed by the health department because the_________had too much bacteria (细菌)in it.

Sasha sought the_________of her cousin, Narmina Aliyev. Together, they_________ a nonprofit Organization—Iwantmyoceanback._________ the group started small, with friends joining together on weekends to_________the beaches in Bal Harbour. Recently, however, she has__________events to raise funds for beach cleanups and to __________to protection groups.

“It’s__________to bring awareness not just through doing cleanups and meetings, but to show people they can come together through their hobbies and__________together to a common goal,” said Sasha.

Sasha hopes to__________their work to neighboring cities. “We really want to make ourselves visible and__________to all,” said Sasha. “After all, in Miami the ocean is everyone’s backyard. This is the best place to start.”

8 . What is the most shocking about the heatwave affecting the Pacific Northwest is not that it has hit a usually mild area, nor that so many long-standing temperature records are being broken. It is that those records are being broken by such large margins (幅度). In Portland, Oregon, temperature reached 46.6℃(116°F) — making it one of several cities in the region where former records have been beaten by a full 5℃(9°F). At the same time, heatwaves are also hitting central Europe and even Siberia.

Heatwaves may become headlines, but less attention is paid to them. In 2018 about 300,000 people over the age of 65 died as a result of extreme heat, mainly in India, a 54% increase since 2000, according to a report in the Lancet, a medical journal. The report also shows that, unlike storms and floods, heat does not lead to dramatic before-and-after pictures or widespread damage to belongings. It is a silent killer. As many as 70,000 people died due to a heatwave in Europe in 2003.

Heat also kills by worsening health conditions such as heart problems, so not all the deaths it causes may be directly attributed (归因) to it. Climate change will make heatwaves more common and more extreme. Even if greenhouse-gas emissions (排放) are cut to zero by the middle of this century, temperatures will go on rising for decades. So other measures are needed to protect people against extreme heat.

Governments can set up early warning systems to alarm health workers, shut down schools and stop outdoor activities. They can provide the public with forecasts of coming heatwaves, explanations of the dangers and detailed advice on what to do. Improved facilities can also help. This includes providing shaded areas, water parks and “misting stations” to help people cool down, and get to airconditioned “cooling centers” where they can find shelter and sleep if necessary.

The world is, undoubtedly, facing a big health challenge right now. There is no excuse for ignoring heatwaves and their effects.

10 . British sculptor Jason Taylor has made it his mission to use his talent to conserve our ecosystems by creating underwater museums. Over the years, the environmentalist has put over 850 massive artworks underwater worldwide. On February 1, 2021, Taylor launched his latest work---The Underwater Museum of Cannes.

“The main goal was to bring attention to the fact that our oceans need our help,” Taylor told Dezeen. “Ocean ecologies have been destroyed by human activity in the Mediterranean over the past few decades, and it is not obvious what is taking place when observing the sea from afar.”

The Underwater Museum of Cannes contains 6 sculptures featuring local residents of various ages. They range from Maurice, an 80-year-old fisherman, to Anouk, a 9-year-old student. Towering over 6-feet-tall and weighing 10 tons, the faces are sectioned into two parts, with the outer part like a mask. The mask indicates that the world’s oceans appear powerful and unbeatable from the surface but house an ecosystem that is extremely fragile to careless human activities.

Though the waters surrounding the sculptures now appear a pristine blue, the seabed was filled with old boat engines, pipes, and other human-made trash when the project began about four years ago. Besides removing the trash, Taylor also restored the area’s seagrass. Just one square meter of the seagrass can generate up to 10 liters of oxygen daily. The seagrass also helps prevent coastal erosion and provides habitats for many ocean creatures.

“The idea of creating an underwater museum was to draw more people underwater and develop a sense of care and protection,” Taylor told Dezeen. “If we threw unwanted waste near a forest, there would be a public outcry. But this is happening every day in our surrounding waters and it largely goes unnoticed.”