1 . 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 |
2 . 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. |
4 . 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 |
5 . 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 |
6 . 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. |
7 . 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? |
8 . Armed with bowls and spoons, the youngsters at Berridale Public School headed into the school’s kitchen to bake biscuits. These treats were for endangered mountain pygmy possums (山袋貂). This small-sized animal lives only in the Australian regions of Victoria and New South Wales, and being active at night, is rarely seen in the wild. Up until the 1960s, when a small population of the possum was found in Victoria, the species was thought to be extinct.
Pygmy possums live on a diet of bogong moths (布冈夜蛾) and seeds. Yet in recent years, the once vast number of bogong moths that migrate each spring to the Snowy Mountains has severely fallen. Dr Linda Broome heads a team that has been tracking the region’s community of mountain pygmy possums for more than 30 years. “An estimated 330 adults were counted in the Cabramurra region in 2016, with 200 counted in 2018-19,” says Broome. The animals are also affected by extreme weather.
That’s when Broome started baking “bogong” biscuits, using a specially developed recipe that replicates (仿制) the nutritional value of the moths. But with vast quantities of the nutritional biscuits needed weekly to feed all the hungry mouths, she needed help.
The children at Berridale Public School wanted to know how they could help the region recover. The school, under the leadership of current principal Tracey Southam, contacted Broome. The kids were more than happy to put down their pencils and pick up spoons instead. It wasn’t long before all the primary school students across the Snowy Mountains region were busy baking the treats. Each bake-off took around 4.5 hours to produce sixty 200-gram bags of biscuits. Altogether, this resulted in an impressive 660 bags of bogong biscuits.
“While it is difficult to estimate the number of babies that have survived with the help of the biscuits, a field count in March resulted in 32 babies, which is a number similar to good seasons,” Broome says. Although the figures are still small, the results are pleasing and everyone is hopeful that their numbers can recover.
1. What is a feature of mountain pygmy possums?| A．They are globally distributed. |
| B．They like to hang out after dark. |
| C．They prefer biscuits to bogong moths. |
| D．They are frequent visitors to Australian kitchens. |
| A．The disastrous effect of climate change. |
| B．The worrying condition of pygmy possums. |
| C．The disappointing recovery of bogong moths. |
| D．The changing habitat requirement of pygmy possums. |
| A．They were environmentally aware. |
| B．They led the feeding programme. |
| C．They dragged their feet over baking biscuits. |
| D．They created the unique recipe for pygmy possums. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Tolerant. | C．Optimistic. | D．Confused. |
9 . Picking up litter is a fun, simple, and free activity that can have instant results for your child and your community.
What you’ll needPlastic bag to collect trash (垃圾)
Gloves—especially important as we practice COVID-19 safety measures
Optional: pick-up stick, a separate bag for recyclables
Instructions1. Assign gloves and a trash bag to each family member.
2. Clear out litter from an area of a park, beach or your own neighborhood. Take all necessary precautions (防范措施), including wearing sturdy (结实的) gloves, being careful on river banks or near roads, having adults handle dangerous items, and supervising children closely.
3. Properly dispose of all litter.
ReflectionsWhy is it important to pick up litter?
How can you inspire others to help keep the neighborhood clean?
ResourcesColonel Trash Truck by Kathleen Crawley
The colonel is on a mission to protect the beauty of the earth by cleaning up litter-and convincing others to do the same.
Here Comes the Garbage Barge ! by Jonah Winter
This story is sure to inspire your whole family to be mindful of your environmental impact.
Take it furtherTake a few digital photos of what you’ve picked up. Then send an essay about your experience along with your favorite photos, your name and address to mail@ wildernessproject.org. Your essay will be published on the Nicodemus Wilderness Project website, and you’ll get an official certificate. For tips on conducting the clean-up and writing the story, as well as essays and photos from other people, visit the website.
1. What are a must for the event?| A．Pick-up sticks and cameras |
| B．Books about cleaning up. |
| C．Plastic bags and gloves. |
| D．Bags for recyclables. |
| A．Keep an eye on children. |
| B．Leave dangerous items alone. |
| C．Keep away from the riverside |
| D．Stay in your own neighborhood. |
| A．By inviting others to clean up their neighborhood. |
| B．By sharing a list of environmental books on the website. |
| C．By writing a review of other participants’ stories online. |
| D．By emailing an essay with photos about their clean up experiences. |
10 . A report from Greenpeace USA shows only a small amount of the plastic we think we’re recycling is actually getting recycled. The rest of it is transported to landfills(废弃物填埋场).
“It was surprising, even to us,” says John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA’s Oceans Campaign Director. “There are billions of us going through trillions and trillions of throwaway plastic items a year. Almost none of that is recycled.”
According to the report, only 8.4% of the total post-consumer plastic waste created in the USA is recycled. That’s out of nearly 35 million tons of materials.
Ian Monahan from I Love a Clean San Diego says they’ve been working for years to educate people around the county about what should and should not be put in the blue recycling bins(回收箱).
The county has a website, waste freesd.org, which includes a full database of recyclable items and also runs a customer service hotline for people to ask questions. Monahan says people in San Diego can feel confident in putting #1 PET (common water and soda bottles) and #2 HDPE (plastic jugs and household bottles) plastics in their bins, as well as most other kinds of rigid(具刚性的) plastic.
But the long-term future of recycling is up in the air. In 2018, China, which had been the largest importer of recyclable materials, stopped buying recyclable plastic from the USA. What’s more, the cost of making new plastic is now cheaper than recycling old items. Therefore, Monahan says people need to focus more on “reduce” and “reuse”, and less on “recycle”.
Monahan suggests people who want to do better should pick one plastic item to eliminate(消除) a month, like straws(吸管). As they get used to that, they can eliminate another, and eventually, he says, they can reduce the need for plastic altogether.
To help, Greenpeace USA is putting pressure on companies to stop using plastic packaging, and also fighting for tougher standards to make sure items marked as recyclable can actually be recycled.
1. What can we learn about San Diego?| A．It has put much effort into recycling. |
| B．Its people want more recycling bins. |
| C．It has no market for recycled products. |
| D．Its people are able to recycle all kinds of plastic. |
| A．Recycled plastic has little value. |
| B．Recycling is very hard to achieve. |
| C．There will be less recyclable plastic. |
| D．The USA hasn’t made strict recycling rules. |
| A．Refuse to use throwaway plastic. |
| B．Throw one plastic item at a time. |
| C．Use less and less plastic gradually. |
| D．Force companies to produce less plastic. |
| A．Recyclable plastic just a small part of the problem |
| B．Recycled plastic cheaper than foreign plastic |
| C．Recycled plastic not always exported |
| D．Recyclable plastic not always recycled |
