The population of the earth is increasing very fast. Humans must make the earth support the increasing population. This has made it necessary for agriculture and industry     1     (develop) rapidly.

Such a rapid development produces more and more waste,     2     goes into water, soil or air. When there     3     (be) too much waste, it will do great harm to the environment and people.

When farmers add fertilizer (肥料)     4     the soil to make plants grow better, or use pesticide (杀虫剂) to kill pests, they will go into the soil or the surrounding air. Even     5     (bad), they may go into the grain (谷物). When     6     (bird), fish or people eat the grain, drink the water or breath the air, harm will be done to their health.

The air in some cities     7     (pollute) because of the pollution from the cars and factories. Millions of tons of poisonous gases are sent into the air with smoke. In some places, little is done to make the smoke clean     8     it goes into the air.

    9     (fortunate), people are beginning to realize just how serious the whole situation is. In many countries, laws have been made to prevent factories     10     (send) out poisonous gases. More and more people are taking action to protect the environment.

Planting trees is a great way to reduce carbon emissions, but protecting our oceans and coastal ecosystems can do the same?

“Blue carbon” refers to organic carbon which     1     (store) by the oceans and coastal ecosystems. Mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrasses are the three main coastal ecosystems that can store large     2     (quantity) of blue carbon. They play a major role in reducing carbon dioxide in the air.

    3     (compare) with ecosystems on the land, coastal ecosystems can store carbon     4     (constant) in the long term. When plants on the coast die, the organic deposits that they become will slowly disappear thanks to the flowing seawater above,     5     means the carbon will not escape easily but remain stored for hundreds and thousands of years.

China is one of the few blessed     6     all three coastal ecosystems. Tidal marshes are the largest coastal ecosystem in China,     7     (occupy) an area of 5,448 square kilometers. In comparison, mangroves have a     8     (small) size. According to the latest data, the total area of China’s mangrove forests in 2020     9     (be) 289 square kilometers, and over 70 square kilometers of mangroves are newly planted and restored now.

By protecting and restoring these coastal ecosystems, we can avoid enormous amounts of stored blue carbon going back into     10     atmosphere, and safeguard wildlife living in these ecosystems.

Humans    1    (make) about 9 billion tons of plastic since the 1950s, only 9% of    2    has been recycled and 12% has been burnt. The remaining 79% has accumulated (积累) in the    3    (nature) environment.

    4    (help) lighten nature’s load, researchers are now looking at alternative methods for plastic reduction. One such    5    (solve) comes in the form of a certain mushroom species with the ability to consume polyurethane, one of the main ingredients in plastic products. Scientists have discovered a few mushrooms that eat plastic over the years and while some are rare, others can    6    (find) in our local market.

Recently, students on    7    class research trip from Yale discovered a rare mushroom in the Amazon rainforest. According to the Yale research team, the plain-looking light brown mushroom can live in environments with or without oxygen, breaking down polyurethane before turning it    8    organic matter. The idea of    9    (use) mushrooms to break down plastic isn’t without its limitations. Releasing new organisms into new environments can be tricky business. One approach would be to collect the plastic debris (碎片) first and let the mushroom work its magic in a    10    (control) environment.

Giant Amazonian lily pads(睡莲叶) are the world’s largest and strongest floating plants and the giant Amazonian water lily has long fascinated scientists, architects and artists for    1    (it) beauty and sheer size. Yet how the lily’s leaves are able to grow as large as 10 feet across, strong enough to support the    2    (weigh) of a small child,    3    (remain) a mystery—till now. “    4    we showed through our experiments and modeling was that these leaves are uniquely strong and have great opportunities    5    (enable) them to grow really big,” says Thorogood, from a team of British and French scientists. In fact, the giant lily    6    (discover) by British explorers in South America in 1801 and symbolized the British Empire. But it became more than    7    symbol as botanists repeatedly attempted to grow it at home. The British gardener and architect Joseph Paxton was the first to    8     (success) grow the giant water lily. It inspired his design of the Crystal Palace, a London landmark of cast iron and glass that was built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. “Nature was the engineer,” Paxton said. “Nature has provided the leaf    9    special structures and supports that I,    10    (borrow) from it, have adopted in this building.”

The plum tree (梅树) is native to China, mainly growing in Suzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou, with the biggest plum garden in Wuxi. The plum tree     1     (normal) flowers in late winter during January and February when the land is pale in color. It is regarded as one of the Three Friends of Winter along     2     the bamboo and the pine tree (松树). Because its flowers emerge before its leaves and     3     takes a long time to come into flower, the tree, often shown with a crane (仙鹤),     4     (link) with long life. The plum tree can grow to 4-10 meters tall and its flowers in bright colors of red, pink and yellow have a refreshing smell. The plum flower has long been recommended as one of China’s     5     (nation) flowers, the symbol of strength and humbleness with the courage     6     (stand) against the undesirable trends. And above all, it is a messenger (报信者) for spring and     7     (bring) hope for a better season ahead.

The Daoist philosopher Laozi is said to have been born beneath a plum tree,     8    has been a popular subject for poetry for     9     (century). The Song poet Lin Bu is said to have spent his spare time     10     (feed) cranes and planting plum trees near West Lake in Hangzhou.

Over and over at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, world leaders have stressed the need     1     (limit) global warming to 1. 5 degrees Celsius. Experts have said crossing the 1. 5 ℃threshold(界限）risks     2     （release) far more severe climate change effects on people, wildlife and ecosystems. Preventing it     3     (require) almost halving global CO₂ emissions(排放) by 2030 from 2010 levels and cutting them to net-zero by 2050.

Already, the world has heated to around 1. 1℃ above pre-industrial levels. Each of the last four decades was     4     (hot) than any decade since 1850. “We never had such a global warming in only a few decades,” said climate     5     (science) Daniela Jacob at the Climate Service Center Germany.

More warming to 1. 5 ℃ and beyond will     6     (worse) such impacts. For example, heatwaves would become both more frequent and more severe. A warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture(水分), resulting in more extreme rainfall     7     raises flood risks. It also increases evaporation, leading to more intense droughts.

“At 1. 5 ℃, there’s     8     good chance that we can keep most of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheet     9     collapsing,” said climate expert Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University. That would help limit sea level rise to a few     10     (foot) by the end of the century.

Our cat is dead. My daughter,     1     is just two years old, knows this. But she keeps asking where it’s gone and what has happened to it.

My parents     2    (be) straightforward m admitting they didn’t know what happened after our death when I asked them in my childhood. But I want to give my daughter a slightly     3    (good) answer to her question about the topic than     4    (they).

One day when she asked the same question, I told my daughter that the cat was out in the field, I told her that when animals, including people, died, they were usually put into the ground and that their bodies became     5    (variety) pretty flowers, grasses and trees. I passed my hand over her blonde hair, gently touched her rosy cheeks and checked her     6    (react). She didn’t appear     7    (trouble). Instead, she seemed excited by the thought of one day becoming a flower.

Then, I reached     8     my daughter’s hand and asked her     9    (take) a walk in the field. Together, we saw new leaves growing in the sun and pretty flowers waving in the gentle wind. Suddenly, I realized that although we were bound to become plant fertilizer, we were not the lonely humans aimlessly wandering in the world. We were a part of the earth. We were connected by the beautiful plants in     10     field.

Cotton bags have become a means for brands，retailers and supermarkets to indicate a planet-friendly mindset-or, at least, to show that the companies are aware of     1     overuse of plastic in packaging.

So far, so Earth-friendly? Not     2     (exact). It turns out the wholehearted acceptance of cotton bags may actually have created a new problem.

An organic cotton bag needs to be used 20,000 times to reduce     3     (it) overall impact of production, according to a 2018 study. That equals daily use for 54 years-for just one bag.

Cotton is water-intensive, and figuring out ways of     4     (deal) with a bag in an environmentally low-impact way is not nearly as simple     5     people think, according to an environmental science professor at the University of Maine.

You can’t, for example, just put a bag in a bin. Even when a bag does make it to a treatment plant, most materials used to print logos onto them are PVC-based and thus not     6     (recycle); they’re “extremely difficult     7     (break) down chemically,” said Christopher Stanev, the co-founder of Evmu, a Seattle-based textile recycling firm. Printed     8     (pattern) have to be cut out of the cloth; Mr. Stanev estimates 10 to 15 percent of the cotton Evrnu receives     9    (waste) this way.

That’s not to say cotton is worse than plastic. In the end, the     10    (simple) solution may be the most obvious. “Not every product needs a bag,” Comey says.