American authorities arrested Masphal Kry, an official in Cambodia’s forestry administration, last November when he was heading to an international meeting about trade regulations for endangered species in Panama. Prosecutors accused him of conspiring with a smuggling ring. The contraband (违禁品): monkeys,     1     long-tailed macaques. His     2     allegedly grabbed wild macaques in Cambodia’s national parks and bribed officials to label them as captive-bred. Fake papers allowed Vanny Bio Research, a Cambodian pharma company, to ship these unfortunate primates (灵长类动物) to America for use in research. Mr Kry is facing trial in Florida’s Southern District Court. The federal government funds seven National Primate Research Centres (NPRCs), which     3     in total around 20,000 primates, not only macaques but also baboons and marmosets. These centres then     4     primates to labs across America. NPRCs have fulfilled only a third of requests for untested-on macaques in 2021 and prices have soared. Before the covid-19 pandemic a rhesus macaque cost $8,000; by 2022 they had     5     $24,000. Another species, long-tail macaques, is probably per pound currently the most expensive     6     wildlife, says Lisa Jones-Engel, a science adviser at PETA, an animal-rights group.

Getting lab monkeys from abroad became harder during the pandemic. Chinese authorities banned the export of all primates in early 2020. The Chinese government wanted to     7     the country’s wildlife trade, which is thought to encourage the     8     of pathogens—like sars-cov-2—from animals to humans.

That forced American companies to rely on less     9     South-East Asian suppliers. Many scientists believe poaching is prevalent across Cambodia. In February, the Department of Justice subpoenaed Charles River over 1,000 juvenile macaques the pharmaceutical company had bought from Cambodia; the DoJ suspected they were     10     in the wild then exported. These primates are now in Texas and Maryland but also in dilemma: they cannot be tested on, nor can they be flown back to Cambodia.

Parental Instincts

Last year in early summer, I was walking up the hill to my house in suburban Brisbane when I saw two birds, each about 6 centimeters tall, standing in my driveway. They didn’t seem to notice me     1     I was right in front of them and then they immediately scattered into the nearby bushes.

I was quite excited by the idea of two special birds     2    (make) a nest in my front yard, although I didn’t really expect them to as wild birds don’t usually nest so close.

A few weeks later, the birds reappeared. I found them crouching beside a tree off to the side of my driveway. As I approached them, I imagined that they’d run away like they did last time, but instead they     3    (stick) out their heads and made a threatening croaking sound     4     came from deep inside their throats.

I did some research and found that the birds are burhinus grallarius(长尾石鸻). I still didn’t know    5    they were croaking at me until a short time later I made an amazing discovery: they     6    (lay) two eggs which hatched into two small birds racing around now.

As I crept towards the birds, careful not to make any sudden movement, they started their croaking again,     7    (stretch) their necks forwards so they seemed longer and more threatening.

I was watching them in awe when I suddenly tripped and fell to the ground. The birds took this     8     a threat and the father raced towards me, spreading his wings to shield the mother and the chicks while making     9     appear larger.

I was sorry     10    (scare) them and left quickly.

I am amazed by their bold actions. Their parental instincts kicked in and made them so courageous. It is hard not to be awed by nature.

6 . Building good transportation is a good idea. To have environmental value, new transportation has to sufficiently replace or eliminate driving to cut energy consumption overall. That means that a new traffic system has to be supported by reduction in car use. Traffic lanes should be eliminated or converted into bike or bus lanes. Ideally, these should be combined with higher fuel taxes, and parking fees. Needless to say, I have to struggle to make myself extensively understood. But they’re necessary, because you can’t make people drive less, in the long run, by taking steps that make driving more pleasant, economical, and productive.

Lengthy commuting (通勤) time is a forceful factor which can slow the growth of suburbs. The farther people live away from cities, the longer commuting time they need, which means more pollution their cars produce. If, in a misguided effort to do something of environmental value, governments take steps that make long-distance car commuting faster or more convenient—by adding lanes, building bypass, employing traffic-control measures that make it possible for existing roads to accommodate more cars with fewer delays—we are actually encouraging people to live still farther from their jobs, stores, and schools. As a result, governments are forced to further extend road networks, water lines, and other facilities. If you cut commuting time by 10 percent, people who now drive fifty miles each way to work can find reason to move five miles farther out, because their travel time won’t change.

Traffic congestion (拥堵) isn’t an environmental problem; traffic is. Relieving congestion without doing anything to reduce the total volume of cars can only make the real problem worse. Highway engineers have known for a long time that building new car lanes only temporarily reduces congestion, because the new lanes add additional driving. Widening roads makes traffic move faster in the short term, but the improved conditions eventually attract additional drivers, and congestion reappears. With more car on the roads, people think about widening roads again. Moving drivers out of cars and into other forms of transportation can have the same effect, if existing traffic lanes are kept in service: road space stimulates road use.

One of the arguments that cities inevitably make in promoting transportation plans is that the new system, by relieving automobile congestion, will improve the lives of those who continue to drive. No one ever promotes a transportation system by arguing that it would make travelling less convenient—even though, from an environmental perspective, inconvenient travel is a worthy goal.

Throughout the world, only 15% of the material that are used to make clothing is properly recycled, according to the Alle SacUrthur Club, an organization in Liverpool, UK, that boosts the circular economy. Most clothing waste—an     1    (estimate) 82 million tonnes from the fashion industry alone-produced every year ends up buried or burnt.

    2    (handle) all that waste, methods to recover and reuse the material are intended as an active response to the future risks by researchers and start-up companies. Much of their focus is on chemical recycling,     3     the material is broken down into its building blocks and applied to create new materials, including fibres that     4     (weave) into new clothes. The challenges lie in     5     (develop) the processes for such treatment. They have to be practical, but they also have to be at least as cost-effective as simply making new fibres.

    6     the natural cellulose fibres from cotton, some other materials include human-made cellulosic fibres. They are derived from wood-pulp cellulose and may be used to produce materials such as viscose (rayon) and a similar material called lyocell.

A change in the manufacturing process is being applied to the textile-waste problem by Essen, a start-up in Seattle, Washington.     7     the company has fundamentally devoted to the process is that it uses discarded textiles, instead of wood, as the source of its cellulose. It has also adjusted the process to produce a fibre that the firm’s co-founder and president Christo Stan says is superior to     8     other cellulosics and cotton, and that can be recycled more times.

Although there are abundant technical challenges, the main barrier     9     widespread textile recycling could be economic, says materials engineer Lijiang Jiang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Most of the materials are not that invaluable,” Jiang says. So cheap it is to produce polyester, cotton and other fabrics     10     there’s little profit margin unless the recycling processes themselves are very inexpensive.

Sky Kurtz farms in the desert. The co-fbunder and CEO of Pure Harvest Smart Farms—    1    (locate) outside Abu Dhabi, where temperatures regularly top 113°F—and his team use the challenging environs to trial new crops and technologies that have the potential to change farming in climate-challenged areas. Pure Harvest also provides produce to supermarkets and restaurants in Dubai and across the region     2    (use) less water, which is important in one of the most arid regions of the world.

Kurtz founded Pure Harvest Smart Fanns in 2017 with his co-founders Mahmoud Adi and Robert Kupstas. Passionate about food insecurity, they spent the first year studying high-tech food-production systems around the world,     3     searching for the optimal site for their first farm.

Kurtz’s farms in the UAE started out with “    4     but a PowerPoint, a pile of dirt, and the promise of what we would do,” says Kurtz. But Pure Harvest quickly proved it was built on more than a promise. The founders’ research and technological innovation led to the development of a proprietary (专利的)Controlled-Environment Agriculture (CEA) system—a combination of high-tech greenhouses and vertical farms that     5     (provide) a stable year-round climate.   The first crop of tomatoes was planted in August 2018 and harvested in October. The company’s original farm is now its R&D facility, and Pure Harvest has expanded its facilities in the UAE to 16 hectares of growing area. It also operates a 6-hectare farm in Saudi Arabia, and is developing a 6-hectare farm in Kuwait.

It now produces 14 types of leafy greens; two varieties of strawberries, with seven more     6    (develop); and almost 30 varieties of tomatoes, the product that started it all. With limited availability of local, seasonal produce, the UAE has typically imported much of its food, often air-freighted,     7    comes at a high cost, both economically and environmentally. And while they are more expensive compared with locally grown seasonal produce, the company says its fruit and vegetables are typically up to 60% cheaper than air-freighted imports of comparable quality. “I think we’ve fundamentally changed a belief system that said local is     8    (bad).” says Kurtz.

Their vision fits in with a larger objective for Dubai to become more self-sufficient. The focus is not just on growing for premium markets but also developing affordable solutions    9    (help) democratize access to fresh food.

Kurtz hopes the company’s data-driven technology can become a model for other regions that are experiencing climate stress. “We believe that we can develop a local-for-local solution     10     it’s needed most, and we’ve battle-tested that capability in one of the harshest environments in the world." he says.