1 . As climate change becomes severe summer after summer, millions of people are finding themselves covered in wildfire smoke, including those in North America just this past month. It is bad for our health. It is also really disturbing, but we don’t talk about that as much.
We often use the terms “atmosphere” or climate” to refer to the mood of a situation. We use metaphors (比喻) to describe affective states, such as “feeling under the weather” or “on cloud nine”. Such language suggests that we understand that human emotions are intimately related to the atmospheric phenomena. Yet rarely do we pay attention to the ways we feel climate change.
But wildfire smoke shows how affective climate change can be. For example, wildfire smoke is often referred to using emotional phrases such as “air of dread”. Through living with the smoke and the panic it generates, we can think more carefully about the ways we experience climate change, and crucially, why and how we need to respond to it.
We often think of climate change impacts as far away, separate from our bodies, because science typically uses global representations and statistical information. But wildfire smoke spreads and pollutes our bodies, and indeed, crosses many other boundaries; it drifts from rural areas into big cities; and it crosses state and national borders with ease. Of course, some borders are more permeable (渗透的), and some bodies more sensitive to the smoke.
Through its ability to pass through and become part of our very being, wildfire smoke is closer in nature to the air pollution we normally think of as one of the causes of climate change. Wildfire smoke is both an impact and a cause of climate change. It explains the nature of climate change impacts and the self-reinforcing (自我强化) feedback circles that can, and may, lead to the planet warming itself independent of human actions.
1. What can we learn about people’s reaction to climate change?| A．They are curious about it. |
| B．They take it very seriously. |
| C．They feel powerless about it. |
| D．They pay little attention to it. |
| A．Closely. | B．Naturally. |
| C．Certainly. | D．Unexpectedly. |
| A．It allows people to sense climate change. |
| B．It does great harm to people’s health. |
| C．It influences people’s mood. |
| D．It attracts scientists’ deep concerns worldwide. |
| A．Why Smoke from Wildfires Harms Us |
| B．How We Can Observe Climate Change |
| C．What Smoke from Wildfires Can Teach Us |
| D．What We Can Do to Avoid Smoke from Wildfires |
2 . New Zealand’s government recently announced it will help pay for poorer families to replace their old cars with cleaner hybrid or electric vehicles.
The government plans to spend $357 million on the test program. The move is part of a wider plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases are believed to cause warming temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere. New Zealand plans to provide aid for businesses to reduce emissions and have buses that run on environmentally safe fuel by 2035. The government also plans to provide food-waste collection for most homes by 2030.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement, “We’ve all seen the recent reports on sea level rise and its impact right here in New Zealand. We cannot leave the issue of climate change until it’s too late to fix.”
The plan is a step toward New Zealand’s stated goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Reaching net-zero emissions means not creating more carbon in the atmosphere than oceans and forests can remove. Ardern said that reducing dependence on fossil fuels would help protect families from extreme price increases. The plan also sets a goal of reducing total car travel by 20 percent over the next 13 years. The programs will be paid for from a $ 2.8 billion climate emergency response fund. Officials said that over time, money collected from polluters would pay for the programs rather than taxes from families.
Some critics of the plan say it continued to be less restrictive on New Zealand’s huge agriculture industry. Agriculture creates about half of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions. But the industry is also important to the economy as the nation’s biggest export earner.
David Seymour is the leader of New Zealand’s ACT political party. He said that some of the announced programs are proven to be ineffective and have been tried and failed overseas. People should be able to choose how they reduce emissions through the market-based emissions trading plan.
1. What does the author intend to convey in Paragraph 2?| A．The urgency of investment. | B．The measures to be taken. |
| C．The popular test program. | D．The harm of emissions. |
| A．It’s urgent to take steps on climate change. |
| B．Sea level rise has little effect on New Zealand. |
| C．He laid stress on the importance to tackle pollution. |
| D．It draws public attention to solve environmental problems. |
| A．Families. | B．Polluters. | C．Car makers. | D．The government. |
| A．Dynamic emission reduction scheme. | B．The impact of exports on the economy. |
| C．Specific standards for emission reduction. | D．The nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions. |
While many people stay up to celebrate the Double Eleven shopping festival, Elsa Tang in Beijing avoids online shopping. Whenever she
In fact, Tang is not the only person
Yu Yuan, 29, is a zero-waster. Five years ago, Yu
The idea of a zero-waste life was first put forward by French author Bea Johnson. Her idea was: Live a life while hardly
4 . China is betting on its successful hybrid rice varieties to fight food shortage in Africa.
“We’re no longer suffering from hunger,” 55-year-old Georges Ranaivomanana, a Madagascan farmer who took the lead in planting Chinese hybrid rice in his town of Mahitsy. Georges told Xinhua that he hoped that all Madagascan farmers would use the seeds to raise their living standards.
China has been helping African countries develop productive rice farming for years with its hybrid rice. For farmers on the continent like Ranaivomanana, they are “very grateful” to the Chinese as the hybrid rice is the key to better food security and higher incomes.
In May, the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Centre opened a research centre in Madagascar to select hybrid rice varieties based on the island nation’s diverse ecological environment, in an effort to find more productive crops for a continent long troubled by insufficient grain output.
In the northwestern Nigerian state of Kebbi, Chinese expert Wang Xuemin stood in a rice field, surrounded by green rice plants. “This year, we are using a new technology,” he said, adding that “it can significantly reduce labor and other costs. “The land, climate and rice farming methods in Nigeria are very different from those in China. We had a lot of problems at the beginning,” said the 51-year-old who has been in Nigeria for 16 years.
In 2006, after Wang and his colleagues had sown the seeds, their field management techniques and large-scale farming equipment could not adapt to the operating environment, and hundreds of hectares of rice fields were almost completely taken over by weeds. “We came to realize that blindly copying the Chinese model is not feasible (可行的). It is necessary to constantly innovate our techniques to fit the local situation in Africa,” he said.
After more than ten years of research and innovation, the Nigerian farm now becomes a major training and mechanized production centre in the country, training more than 1,000 farmers and agricultural machinery management staff.
1. What’s the attitude of African farmers about Chinese hybrid rice?| A．A little skeptical. | B．Full of gratitude. |
| C．Much disappointed. | D．Extremely curious. |
| A．51 years old. | B．55 years old. |
| C．67 years old. | D．35 years old. |
| A．Different technologies should be applied to different areas. |
| B．Chinese technology of hybrid rice can’t be applied in Africa. |
| C．Chinese technology of hybrid rice wastes more labor and costs. |
| D．Chinese experts contributes to raising African living standards. |
| A．China’s Hybrid Rice Sows Hope for Africa |
| B．Africans Fight Food Shortage with Chinese |
| C．The Sowing of Hybrid Rice Should Vary from Country |
| D．Chinese Hybrid Rice Research Has Not Been Open in Africa |
Dolphins are social and
Janet Mann researches dolphins at Georgetown University. She and other
Jacob Negrey who is
1. Where does the conversation take place?
| A．In the street. | B．In an office. | C．On a bus. |
| A．There is something wrong with her car. | B．She is determined to protect environment. | C．She wants to save money. |
增加：在漏字符号（/\）下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在划横线的词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；2. 不得改变原文意思。
Yesterday I visit the Hong'en Temple Park with my friends. The park was full of beauty flowers. When I were enjoying the wonderful scenery, something unpleasant caught my eye. A young couple on the grass were eating, talking and laughing loud as if they were the only people in the world. What's worse, they even threw rubbish onto the grass, without see the sign "No littering” nearby. What a shame!
Such behavior left me in thought. If all visitors do as the young couples did, the park will be severely polluting and soon turned into a huge dustbin. I think both of us should mind our behavior in the public places. Only in this way can we live more comfortable and beautiful surroundings.
8 . Cities are diverse ecosystems. In addition to visitors from the wild, such as coyotes (丛林狼) in Los Angeles or boars (野猪) in Berlin, a large number of species share our urban areas. As our cities spread, we need to think about what it is like for other species to have human neighbors.
Because cities are built for humans, they do not always provide suitable habitats for wildlife. For example, most city parks are kept neat and tidy so that humans will find them beautiful. But when we cut grass or plant flowers, we destroy natural habitats.
Our actions sometimes help other species. When a bridge in Austin, Texas was repaired, engineers added small gaps running along the length of its bottom. This made a good home for bats, and soon the bridge was the home of thousands of bats. At first, people were afraid of the bats and tried to get rid of them. Now, they have come to value their winged neighbors. The bats are a tourist attraction, and they eat lots of bugs every night.
There are also structures built with the aim of bringing wildlife into the city. The Beijing Olympic Forest Park is a good example. The park used native plants and created open, natural spaces for wildlife. The result is a zone in Beijing with over 160 species of birds. In many ways, the park is the opposite of a zoo. Instead of being kept in cages, wildlife can move about freely.
Another example is a 2011 proposal for a tall “Birdscraper” building in New York. The building is intended to protect birds and fight pollution at the same time. It would be in the middle of a lake, birds would sit on it, and their droppings would fall into the water. The droppings would help water plants grow well and then create oxygen through photosynthesis (光合作用). If we learn to share our space, we can become better neighbors to the wildlife around us. If we do not, more species will become extinct and our own future will be endangered.
1. What can we infer from the first paragraph?| A．Other species like to have human neighbors. |
| B．There are many kinds of wildlife living in city areas. |
| C．Coyotes or boars always attack cities like Los Angeles or Berlin. |
| D．People should think about their neighbors when having visitors. |
| A．To get rid of the bats. |
| B．To make it an attraction. |
| C．To help other species to live conveniently. |
| D．To make it convenient for bugs to go through. |
| A．The structure of wildlife zoo in Beijing. |
| B．The parks built to grow native plants. |
| C．The wildlife of Beijing Olympic Forest Park, |
| D．The structures built to attract wildlife into city. |
| A．waste | B．voice |
| C．rubbish | D．appearance |
9 . The origins of this website, tasmanian-tiger. com, go back to 1978 when we, Buck and Joan Emberg, saw two Tasmanian tigers. We called the Department of Parks and Wildlife people and were told not to tell anyone. They said everyone would then be going through the bush tiger-hunting (猎虎). We accepted what they said. Then we found what we thought might be tiger droppings near our house. Excitedly we took them to Hobart, our capital city, and presented our “prize” to an official. He took the droppings and threw it carelessly into a drawer. The result of that action, of course, was the destruction (破坏) of any scientific evidence. This is where we began to feel that something was wrong. Did they really care about saving the animal... If it existed? In short, we and people like us were told to keep it quiet.
Later, we thought we found some tiger prints.The local newspaper published the story and, like most people who admitted they saw a tiger in the wild,we received no respect. That’s why we began to set up the website. Now we can use new technologies and are hopeful in proving the animal’s existence before the animal’s home is threatened.
1. Who set up the tasmanian-tiger. com website?| A．The city of Hobart. | B．The local newspaper. |
| C．The Department of Parks and Wildlife. | D．Buck and Joan Emberg. |
| A．Two living tigers. | B．Tiger footprints. |
| C．Tiger droppings. | D．Tiger hunters. |
| A．Excited. | B．Unhappy. | C．Satisfied. | D．Afraid. |
| A．To persuade the government to drive away tigers. |
| B．To prove the existence of Tasmanian tigers. |
| C．To stop people from hunting Tasmanian tigers. |
| D．To find a new place for Tasmanian tigers. |
10 . Do you know how blueberries (蓝莓) grow？They grow on bushes. Each blueberry is small and round. Many blueberries can grow on one bush. At first, the blueberries are green. The green berries are not ready to eat yet. They need a lot of sun and rain to help them become fat and sweet. When the berries turn blue, they are ripe and ready to be picked.
Farmers grow blueberries in big fields. The people who live nearby can earn money by helping to pick the blueberries. Each one takes a pail (桶) out to the field and fills it with blueberries. They work fast so that they can fill many pails. They want to earn as much money as they can. When they are done picking, their fingers are blue from the juice of the berries.
After the blueberries are picked, they are put into boxes and sent to stores. People buy the blueberries and take them home to eat. Some people like to wash the berries and eat them one by one. Other people like to cook with blueberries. They make blueberry cakes.
No matter how you eat them, blueberries taste great!
1. What color are the blueberries before they are ripe to be picked?| A．Green. | B．Blue. | C．Red. | D．Black. |
| A．In the mountains. | B．In a greenhouse. |
| C．In the forest. | D．In the field. |
| A．To the food shop. | B．To the farm house. |
| C．To the kitchen. | D．To the kitchen. |
| A．Cooking with Blueberries | B．Things about Blueberries |
| C．The Taste of Blueberries | D．Growing Blueberries |
