1 . Raising livestock (牲畜) is a big part of the carbon emission from agriculture. But it is hard to change people’s habits and get them to give up their hamburgers, especially since more than one-third of Americans eat fast food every day. We previously called for carbon labels on everything from buildings to burgers. Now, a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that labels on fast food affected people's choices.

The study said shifting current dietary patterns to more sustainable diets with less red meat could reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 55% and have health benefits.

The 5,000 participants in the study were shown fake menus. One group got menus with high climate impact labels on red meat items and another had low climate impact labels on fish or plant-based burgers. Both menus were effective in reducing the orders for red meat. But interestingly, the high-impact labels were far more effective, with 23% of the participants choosing a more environmentally sustainable selection, while menus listing low-impact choices encouraged only 10% participants to change.

“We found that labeling red meat items with high-climate impact labels was more effective in increasing sustainable selections than labeling non-red meat items with low-climate impact labels,” wrote the authors of the study.

Lead author, Julia Wolfson, said, “These results suggest that menu labeling, particularly labels warning that an item has high climate impact, can be an effective strategy for encouraging more sustainable food choices in a fast food setting.”

The study points out negative labels might be unpopular: “It is unlikely that the industry would voluntarily adopt a negative label approach; such an approach needs to be carried out via law.   However, high climate impact labels may easily be adopted in settings like universities and hospitals.”

They have a point that this label is aggressively negative, more like a cigarette warning than a food label. In the study, the authors note that future research should test more label designs using qualitative and quantitative research on how people understand different climate impact labels.

2 . The area in front of Janet and Jeffrey Crouch’s house in Columbia, Maryland, does not look usual for their neighbourhood. That is because the Crouches do not have a grass lawn(草坪). Instead, they have some small trees and many native plants.

In recent years, support for replacing lawns with native plants has been increasing in the US. It can be costly to keep a lawn looking good and green. But the Crouches had to spend much more money for the right not to have one.

People living in a house next to them complained to their homeowner’s association, or HOA. HOAs can make rules about the plants that homeowners in a neighbourhood are permitted to grow. Many HOAs require grass lawns. The HOA ordered the Crouches to pull out their native plants and put in grass. However, they refused. “We knew we were doing things that were beneficial for the environment, ” said Janet Crouch.

Lawns are called environmental dead zones in part because they provide no food or shelter for wildlife. They also do not support pollinators like birds, bees, and butterflies. Bee populations have been getting smaller in North America and may be getting smaller around the world.

There are other reasons that lawns are bad for the environment. They require a lot of water and chemicals. Large amounts of water can remove nutrients from the soil. After the water removes the nutrients, people buy even more chemicals to put on their lawns. Scientists say some of these chemicals might cause cancer and other health problems. There are over 16million hectares of grass lawns in the US. That means lawns use more water than any other irrigated(灌溉)crop in the country.

The Crouches’ battle against their HOA took three years. They say they spent $60, 000 fighting to keep their natural garden. They won. Because of their efforts, the state of Maryland passed a law that lets people grow native plants instead of grass, no matter what their HOA wants.

3 . The world is being alerted to the possibility of a severe drought crisis caused by the recent heatwave that has affected much of Asia and the arrival of El Niño, which can cause intense drought for 2 − 3 years, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Varawut Silpa-archa has warned.

Thailand is susceptible (易受影响的) to the effects of El Niño, which is forecast to start in June. The world is expected to face an intense drought due to the occurrence of El Niño, leading to reduced rainfall during the rainy season, or possibly no rain at all.

In addition to the ongoing drought, Thailand is also facing another unprecedented (前所未有的) phenomenon, the so-called “Monster Asian heatwave”. This extreme heatwave underlined growing global warming concerns and has made it even more important to recognise the need to reduce plastic wastes and industrial air pollutants. There is no quick fix, however. Because we have been worsening the environment for many decades, it will take many years of intensive efforts to tackle the global warming problem.

“Preparing to deal with the severe drought crisis for the next 2 − 3 years is urgent,” Varawut stressed. In the past, Bangkok has experienced flooding and a rising sea level due to the melting of the polar ice caps. If the situation worsens beyond the current level, the El Niño issue will become even more severe in the next 2 − 3 years.

Solutions to this problem include building more reservoirs (水库) and expanding the waterways to accommodate rainfall during this rainy season. Although this year’s dry season is a concern, there are still adequate water reserves in the dams. However, the situation is expected to worsen next year and in 2025. Therefore, sufficient water storage facilities and efficient farmland irrigation system are vital preparations.

“Whether the issue of climate change will lead to the collapse of our world, or not, is still up in the air. We may not have reached that stage yet but if we do not speed up efforts to tackle this issue seriously, we may face a loss of biodiversity,” Varawut said.

7 . For hundreds of years, America’s wilderness has been reduced due to growing cities, leaving outdoors lovers like hunters with fewer chances. By around 1900, too much hunting drove America’s deer nearly into extinction (灭绝), less than a half-million deer, from 45 million in 1450.

Law-makers began to make rules to protect deer and keep ecological balance (生态平衡). And it did make a big difference. By 2000, the deer population had come up to 38 million. Those days, millions of deer lived side by side with humans and could freely find enough food resources.

Gradually, the number of deer was increasing too rapidly, which was not good for both the animals and people. City hunting plays an important role in keeping ecological balance, particularly in places where the animals sometimes cause major problems.

“City deer hunting is a management practice used in many cities and suburban areas across the United States,” says Jason Andrews, program manager of the Urban Deer Hunt in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In the early 2000s, a high number of car accidents were caused by deer. And there was also significant vegetation degradation (植被退化) in many cities. Many possible solutions were researched by the city government. Some suggested hunting deer and other wild animals, but others were against that practice.

In the end, researchers determined that the most effective and sustainable (可持续的) population management solution would be hunting with bows. “City deer hunting is popular in cities that have too many wild deer as well as wooded areas,” says Andrews. “In Cedar Rapids, all parts of the city have right habitats to keep deer population, thus hunting is allowed. I must note that hunting is only allowed on private lands. No parks or any other public grounds can be hunted.”

On August 24, Japan started releasing wastewater from its Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (福岛第一核电站) into the Pacific Ocean. This has caused anger and fear across the world.

In March 2011, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its     1     (record) history. The earthquake caused a tsunami (海啸),     2     greatly damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. Ever since then, the plant has been producing a large amount of radioactive wastewater. So far, it     3     (collect) more than 1.3 million tons of it. The first round of release will last 17 days. The whole process will take about 30 years.

The plant was operated by TEPCO (东京电力公司). According to the company, the wastewater is diluted (稀释) before     4     (it) release. However, there’s still a problem. Some of the most dangerous substances are very likely     5     (remain) in it.

“They’ll pollute the ocean, the animals within it, and     6     (final), the earth,” said Tacko Fujimura, an official at Japan’s Zen-Noh (日本农业合作社联合会).

On the same day, China announced     7     immediate ban on all seafood products from Japan. This     8     (decide) was made to “protect the lives and health of the people.” In a statement, the country’s Foreign Ministry (外交部) called Japan’s move “    9     (self) and irresponsible.”

China was the biggest buyer of Japanese seafood. More than 255,000 users took a poll (民意调查) on Weibo. Up to 97% of them said that they would no longer eat seafood from Japan. “We’re on the same planet,” said one of them. “Nobody can be free from harm. It’s just a matter     10     time.”