Leo and Matt, both aged 16, are best friends who shared a passion for environmental sustainability. They were both students at a bustling high school in the heart of the city, a school that was infamous for its morning and afternoon traffic jams. The narrow streets leading to the school were always clogged (堵塞) with cars, buses, and bicycles, causing a great deal of inconvenience and pollution.
“Look what we are suffering every day!” complained Leo. “Isn’t there a solution to the problem?” Matt sighed.
They decided to take matters into their own hands and find a solution to the sticky problem. Initially, they made some speeches, distributed leaflets and volunteered to relieve the traffic congestion (拥堵), trying to persuade some parents to park their cars a little farther away the school and not to use cars too often. But two weeks passed, there was nothing better. Then they realized it was no easy work to deal with the trouble. They needed more hands for help and a well-thought-out plan for it.
They first gathered ten schoolmates who shared the same ambition. Then they started to conduct a thorough survey to understand the root causes of the traffic congestion. They interviewed students, teachers, and parents, as well as observed the traffic patterns during different times of the day. They learned that the majority of the congestion was caused by parents dropping off and picking up their children, as well as the lack of sufficient parking spaces.
Armed with this information, the team designed a detailed plan. They proposed the creation of a carpool system for students, encouraging them to share rides to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. They also suggested dedicated drop-off and pick-up zones, clearly marked with signage, to help streamline the process.
To further reduce congestion, they advocated for the construction of bike racks (架子) and encourage students to cycle to school. They even proposed a rewards system for those who chose sustainable modes of transportation.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
With their plan in hand, Leo and Matt presented it to the school authorities.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A few months passing by, the school traffic congestion had significantly improved.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . More than 30 years ago, Jadav Payeng started planting trees on a barren sandbar (贫瘠的沙洲) near his birthplace in India’s Assam region. That day, the then-16-year-old noticed many snakes washed up on the sandbar after a flood. They were dying due to heat exposure at a rapid rate. “How can I help them?” Then he had an idea: Trees can provide shade for them!
Jadav lives on an island, Majuli, which is in the middle of the Brahmaputra River. It begins at the base of the Himalayas, at the meeting of a fan of rivers that drain (流走) snowmelt. At one time, villages upstream had redirected the river, creating more forceful currents around the island and carrying away the soil, thus damaging the natural habitats of its wildlife. As a consequence, much of the island became barren sand, and an entire community was at risk of being displaced.
Jadav also noticed that nobody was doing anything about it besides watching their part of the world disappear. So, he started to put his idea into action — every day, one or two or three at a time. He took notes of how they grew, harvested their seeds, grew saplings (树苗) in his hut and planted before going off to work.
Now that once-barren sandbar is a 1,360-acre forest, home to many animals: deer, Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceros and even a group of 100 elephants that visit every year. There are now native grasses that have taken root in the shade and varieties of native trees grown from seeds that have washed ashore. But most importantly, the island that is also home to a few hundred people is holding its own against the bad weather. Standing beside one of the first trees he planted 30 years ago, Jadav tells us: “It’s a little thing, something anyone can do.”
1. What was Jadav’s original aim to plant trees?| A．To save the snakes from heat exposure. | B．To protect the snakes from extinction. |
| C．To produce materials to stop flooding. | D．To use the leaves to create more shades. |
| A．Villagers’ ignorance of ecology. | B．Villagers’ redirecting the river. |
| C．The extreme weather conditions. | D．Loss of wildlife’s natural habitats. |
| A．Frank and learned. | B．Subjective yet reliable. |
| C．Determined and careful. | D．Smart but hot-tempered. |
| A．What the forest means to the wildlife. | B．How ecology benefits the human kind. |
| C．How Jadav feels about his simple deeds. | D．What difference Jadav’s efforts have made. |
From pocket parks to forest parks, China is bringing nature closer to urban life. From 2021 to 2022, Shanghai has transformed 62 woodlands into leisure spaces,
Parks can do good for the environment too. Take Beijing’s Central Green Forest Park as an example. The park
As cities in China become
4 . Health officials in Canada are very busy these days. They are placing chickens at fixed points all along their border with the United States of America. That’s an enormous distance of 2,500 km.
It’s not a practical joke, nor have the Canadians gone mad. They are using these chickens to see if the deadly West Nile virus is lurking around. The virus infects birds, so they think that the chickens have a good chance of catching the virus. Or the virus will catch the chickens.
Countries around the world are realizing something important. That it may just be possible to stop certain kinds of people from entering their land, but it is very difficult to try and stop viruses that travel from one end of the earth to another. When they travel to new places, they adjust very easily to those climates and sometimes start destroying the local plant and animal life. These biological polluters are called smart polluters.
These smart polluters can be carried across borders of countries unknowingly. Just as we humans are travelling across the globe more often than earlier, these biological polluters have also started journeying much more. They slide into aircraft through their wheels. They bore their way into objects that air travelers may be carrying from one country to another.
Suddenly, a lot of things become clearer. Like why the customs officials in many foreign countries prevent you from bringing in a small plant, or a decorative item made of wood that is in its natural form… They tell you that it’s in the rules.
They have these rules because they know that these varieties of plants that are special to specific places have the power to spread new diseases among native plants and animals. They are called biological polluters and they always create problems in places where they do not belong. They could be special varieties of plants, bugs or even animals.
1. Why did the author talk about what Canadian officials’ are doing?| A．To introduce a successful case | B．To arouse readers’ curiosity |
| C．To describe a phenomenon | D．To introduce the topic |
| A．Tiger mosquitoes from Asia are busy biting Americans. |
| B．Pandas from China are wining millions of American’s hearts. |
| C．The small lobsters from Mexico are taking over most of lakes in America. |
| D．Tree snakes from New Guinea are busy eating up bird varieties in the country of Guam. |
| A．A lot of profit can be made from introducing foreign species. |
| B．People want to add more species to their surroundings. |
| C．People nowadays travel overseas more frequently. |
| D．There are more domestic flights than before. |
| A．To convince | B．To warn | C．To inform | D．To entertain |
5 . Every year the start of the Atlantic hurricane season is another reminder for Margarite August that she still doesn’t have a roof.
The 70-year-old retired teacher’s home on the small Caribbean island nation of Dominica was mostly wiped out by hurricane Maria six years ago.
Six years after hurricane Maria, Dominicans like Margarite August still haven’t been able to rehabilitate their homes.
August is not alone. Since Maria, the government of Dominica has built 7,000 new homes—about a quarter of its housing stock-with materials to fight another Category 5 hurricane. They’ve also relocated two communities. But an untold number of the island’s 70,000 or so residents are like August, rebuilding their homes in any way they can afford.
Hurricane Maria is often referred to as a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. Scientists put much of the blame on warming ocean temperatures that could make frequent (频繁的) storms like it.
Maria damaged a terrible 95% of Dominica’s housing stock and 226% of the nation’s GDP. Before the storm, the country’s economy had long struggled since its independence from Great Britain in 1978. Unlike its more famous touristy neighbors along the chain of eastern Caribbean islands it lies on, Dominica is more known for its rugged mountains and jungles (丛林) than white sandy beaches.
The jungle mountains that crash down to the coast are beautiful but disasters visit easily. “I don’t think anybody ever got over Maria,” says Christine John of the Dominica Red Cross. “There are a lot of persons today—if it just starts to rain outside, they get anxious.”
1. What does the underlined word “rehabilitate” in paragraph 3 mean?| A．Rebuild. | B．Leave. | C．Decorate. | D．Buy. |
| A．Over-farming. | B．Loss of the land. |
| C．The disappearance of the forests. | D．Climate change. |
| A．Its good economy. | B．Its architecture. |
| C．Its mountains and jungles. | D．Its sandy beaches. |
| A．They have to stay bored at home. | B．Their houses are easy to take in water. |
| C．They don’t know how to make umbrellas. | D．They are afraid of another disaster like Maria. |
| A．In the kitchen. | B．In the bathroom. | C．In the living room. |
7 . Every day as the sun rises, Ma Hongyi, a 66-year-old farmer, can be seen patrolling (巡逻) Yuncheng Salt Lake with his dog in Yuncheng city, North China’s Shanxi province.
Ma still remembers the day when he first saw two big pink birds wandering through the water. “I had never seen such pretty birds. They were even taller than me, with long wings,” Ma recalls. He was later informed that those birds were flamingos, a rare sight in China, which were listed on the International Union for Protection of Nature’s red list of endangered species in 2013. From that day on, Ma started his second career as a volunteer to prevent human beings from doing harm to the wildlife. “The birds are attracted by the good environment,” Ma says. “I will do my best to protect the lake so that birds can come here every year.”
Yuncheng Salt Lake covers an area of 132 square kilometers and used to serve as a salt production base. As the country began attaching greater importance to environmental protection, an ecological (生态的) protection and development center was set up in 2012 to carry out regular ecological protection and restoration of the lake. “The greatest value of the Salt Lake lies in its ecology, which should be properly protected,” says Chu Xianghao, head of the city. The lake area hosts 292 types of wild animals, along with 782 plant varieties, some of which are newly recorded species in the country.
After patrolling the lake as a volunteer for over four years, Ma was employed by the local government to help with wildlife protection in 2019. “The lake’s ecology is getting better,” Ma says, adding that he looks forward to the arrival of the flamingos every year. “Some of them are my old friends,” he says.
1. What event makes Mr Ma to start his second career?| A．Seeing a rare scenery in his field. |
| B．Finding a list of endangered species. |
| C．Coming across a certain bird unexpectedly. |
| D．Knowing the way to increase the number of species. |
| A．Repair. | B．Examination. | C．Competition. | D．Defence. |
| A．Salt lake is environmentally friendly. |
| B．The past base still makes lots of salt now. |
| C．Mr Ma used to have a walk around lakes every morning. |
| D．The environment of Salt lake is suitable for flamingos all year round now. |
| A．Mr Ma -- from a Farmer to a Volunteer |
| B．Mr Ma -- a Loyal Guardian of Flamingos |
| C．Mr Ma -- an Expert on Endangered Species |
| D．Mr Ma -- the First Finder of Flamingos in China |
8 . 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.
1. What is paragraph 1 mainly about?| A．The impact of carbon emission. |
| B．The background of the new study. |
| C．The request of giving up carbon labels. |
| D．The difficulty in changing people's habits. |
| A．They liked them very much. |
| B．They stuck to their preferences. |
| C．Some of them stopped eating fast food. |
| D．Some of them changed their food choices. |
| A．It will be banned by law. |
| B．It will face some resistance. |
| C．It will produce bad results. |
| D．It will be accepted by all industries. |
| A．Raising livestock causes carbon emission |
| B．Fast food has a negative effect on climate |
| C．Researchers are focusing on climate impact |
| D．Labels on fast food help protect the environment |
9 . A worldwide shift from fossil fuel-powered cars to electric vehicles could significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that humans emit to the atmosphere. But current strategies for vehicle electrification (电气化) can also shift some pollution to communities already suffering under higher economic, health and environmental burdens, researchers warn.
California, which leads the United States by a mile when it comes to EV adoption, offers a window into this evolving problem. The state is aggressively seeking to reduce its carbon footprint and has made substantial increases in wind and solar power generation as well as in the promotion of electric vehicle purchases. One tool the state has used is the California Clean Vehicle Rebate Project, or CVRP, which kicked off in 2010 and offers consumers money back for the purchase of new EVs.
Now, an analysis of the CVRP’s impact on the state’s air quality from 2010 to 2021 reveals both good and bad news, researchers report May 3 in PLOS Climate.
The good news is that the CVRP is responsible for making a dent in the state’s overall CO2 emissions, reducing them by about 280,000 metric tons per year on average. The bad news is that the most disadvantaged communities in the state didn’t see the same overall improvement in air quality. Those communities in fact saw an increase in one type of air pollution, tiny particulates known as PM2.5. That increase may be indirectly related to putting more EVs on the road. Although electric vehicles themselves don’t produce PM2.5 from their tailpipes, increased electricity generation, if it’s not fossil fuel-free, can. Renewable resources, including rooftop solar cells, supplied about half of California’s electricity in 2022. But natural gas-fired power plants still provide a large part of the state’s power.
“Electric vehicles are often incorrectly referred to as ‘zero-emission vehicles’, but they’re only as clean as the underlying electric grid (电网) from which the energy is sourced,” Mejía-Duwan says. The most disadvantaged 25 percent of the state’s communities also contain 50 percent of the power plants, the team found.
1. What do we know from paragraph 2?| A．California takes the lead in environmental protection. |
| B．Wind and solar power generation has dominated California. |
| C．California’s carbon footprint has been reduced as planned. |
| D．The launch of CVRP is intended to promote electric vehicle purchases. |
| A．adjustment. | B．shift. | C．reduction. | D．increase |
| A．Putting more EVs on the road. | B．Increased electricity generation. |
| C．Warming climate. | D．Increased rooftop solar cells. |
| A．Zero emission for EVs can’t be ensured nowadays. |
| B．‘Zero emission’ isn’t good enough to describe EVs. |
| C．EVs, with no zero emission, shouldn’t be advocated. |
| D．EVs have a promising future as zero emission vehicles. |
10 . Most paper receipts (收据) are not recyclable, This is because they’re printed on thermal paper (热敏纸), which contains a chemical called BPA or BPS that cannot be easily removed from the paper during the recycling process. To avoid polluting other paper products in the recycling stream, the safest method is to throw receipts in the trash.
There are two kinds of paper receipts. One is the old-fashioned paper that’s printed with pale ink. The other is the shiny, soft thermal paper that comes out of newer cash registers. Scratch (划) the paper, and you’ll see a dark line appear if it contains BPA or BPS. Ordinary paper receipts are rarely seen these days, but they can be recycled if you happen to get some. Thermal paper is now ubiquitous and found in most retail locations, but it cannot be recycled because of the chemicals that are used to create it.
Thermal paper uses heat from a printer head to make letters and numbers appear; no ink is used. This process requires the addition of BPA or BPS in their “free form”, which means that the chemicals are not bound to the paper. According to Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, “The chemicals can easily transfer (转移) to anything a receipt touches-your hand, or the groceries in your shopping bag.
BPA or BPS can affect brain development, and heart and lung health. They can be transferred from fingers to the mouth via food, or absorbed directly through the skin when held. If thermal paper were to be recycled, it would pollute other products in the recycling stream with BPA or BPS. Burning and composting (使成堆肥) are not a choice either, as they would release BPA or BPS into the atmosphere or soil.
The only safe place to throw thermal paper receipts is in the trash, followed by immediate hand washing. It’s not ideal, but it is the most effective way to separate BPA or BPS from the environment. The best solution is to ask for receipts to be emailed, rather than printed. Always refuse before you reduce, reuse and recycle.
1. What does the underlined word “ubiquitous” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Unwanted. | B．Informal. | C．Effective. | D．Common. |
| A．How BPA or BPS is removed. |
| B．How a printer works without ink |
| C．How thermal paper receipts form. |
| D．How BPA and BPS coexist with thermal paper. |
| A．By exposing them to the sun. |
| B．By burning them in the open air. |
| C．By putting them in the shopping bag. |
| D．By throwing them into the dustbin in time. |
| A．The development of receipts. |
| B．Is it possible to get rid of paper receipts? |
| C．The right way to handle paper receipts. |
| D．Do all paper receipts contain BPA or BPS? |
