2 . Over the last two days in December last year, nearly 30 tornadoes caused great damage across six states—from Arkansas in the south to Illinois in the midwest. More than 100 tornado warnings were issued—the most ever for a day. The tornado in Kentucky caused at least 50 people’s deaths, which was described as the worst in this state’s history.

As one of the largest countries in the world, the United States is also one of the most geographically various countries—from deserts to forests to miles of coast line. While this comes with many advantages, it unfortunately leaves the country easily damaged by all kinds of natural disasters.

Different parts of the United States face different types of natural disasters. The west coast is at risk of wildfires, earthquakes, and even volcanic eruptions. The southern part of the country is frequently hit by tornadoes, and the east coast faces the threat of serious hurricanes every year. Midwestern areas near rivers are often flooded by huge floods, and these are the worst floods in American history.

The governments reviewed the weather event in each state’ s history that caused the highest number of deaths to determine the worst natural disaster in every state, Thanks to their location and geographic research, some states made preparations ahead of time to avoid mass-casualty (重大伤亡的) weather events.

However, many other parts of the country have been less fortunate, experiencing massive storms and floods. Many such events, like the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston of Texas, killed so many people that it was impossible to get an exact number of final deaths, especially during that time.

American weather continues to become more changeable. In 2018, there were 14 weather events that caused over $ 1 billion in damage. And in many parts of the country, these weather events could become even more destructive (毁灭性的) because of global warming.

3 . Imagine a new smartphone product. It works the same as any other smartphone, but when dropped, those cracks that appear after an annoying fall slowly begin to fade away, and the phone magically repairs itself、A team of researchers led by chemistry professor Takuzo Aida have found a way to create self-repairing plastics that can be used in smartphones, cars and other products. But their new plastics won’t only be used to create unbreakable products, but also help the fight against growing wastes harming the planet.

91% of plastic is non-recyclable and filling Earth with waste. The increasing plastic in landfills is a growing concern due to its negative environmental impact. In 2019 about only9% of plastics were recycled globally, leading Japanese scientists to seek to find plastic that can start its own formation or self-repair.

The self-repairing plastics are made by adding a tiny amount of a specialized substance into ordinary plastic to hold the monomers (单体) together by hydrogen bonds (氢键). When the new plastic is broken down by heat, instead of burning to waste, the hydrogen bonds mix and allow for the formation of special shaped monomers to create a foundation for more monomers to layer on and rebuild itself. The team found that their self-healing plastic was able to automatically repair at room temperature over an hour to regain its durability.

The team’s work suggests great prospects for the future of plastic. “The technique could lead to the development of a made-to-last plastic that does not need to be recycled,” lead professor Aida said at the conference, “and can one day be in products from smartphones to cars and even buildings.”

4 . The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland has suffered several mass bleaching events due to the impacts of climate change. The Australian government turned down a proposal for a new open-cut coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef, considering environmental laws and the risk of “irreversible damage”. It was the first time the government had used its powers under environmental laws to reject a mine.

In turning down the project, Tanya Plibersek, the minister for the environment and water, cited significant potential environmental dangers to the reef, which is already heavily threatened by climate change.” The risk of pollution is real and the damage to the reef, once done, will never be repaired. “The project would have had unacceptable impacts on freshwater in the area and potentially on fragile seagrass meadows,” Plibersek said in a video posted on social media. She said that during the public consultation period, her department had received 9,000 public comments about the mine in just 10 business days.

The government has been under pressure from UNESCO to better protect the reef and in 2022, it pledged one billion Australian dollars for efforts to protect the fragile ecosystem, including climate adaptation measures and water quality programs. Last year, the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches for more than 2,300 kilometers, experienced its sixth mass bleaching event, due to warming waters caused by climate change.

The government, elected in 2022, came to power promising stronger action on the climate in a country still heavily depending on fossil fuels. But its climate policies are rated “insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker, which found Australia is not on course to meet targets to limit warming to 1. 5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The government has rejected calls from the country’s Green Party to turn down all new fossil fuel projects.

5 . The San Diego County Water Authority has an unusual plan to use the city’s scenic San Vicente Reservoir (水库) to store solar power so it’s available after sunset. The project could help unlock America’s clean energy future.

Perhaps ten years from now, if all goes smoothly, large underground pipes will connect this lake to a new reservoir, a much smaller one, built in a nearby valley about 1100 feet higher. When the sun is high in the sky, California’s abundant solar power will pump water into that upper reservoir. It’s a way to store the electricity. When the sun goes down and solar power disappears, operators would open a valve (阀门) and the force of 8 million tons of water, falling back downhill through those same pipes, would drive machines capable of producing 500 megawatts of electricity for up to eight hours. That’s enough to power 130, 000 typical homes.

“It’s a water battery!” says Neena Kuzmich, Deputy Director of Engineering for the water authority. She says energy storage facilities like these will be increasingly important as California starts to rely more on energy from wind and solar, which produce electricity on their own schedules, without considering the demands of consumers.

Californians learned this during a heat wave this past summer. “Everybody in the state of California got a text message at 5:30 in the evening to turn off their appliances,” Kuzmich says. The sun was going down, solar generation was disappearing, and the remaining power plants, many of them burning gas, couldn’t keep up with demand. The reminder worked:People stopped using so much power, and the grid (电网) survived.

Yet earlier on that same day, there was so much solar power available that the grid couldn’t take it all. Grid operators turned away more than 2000 megawatt hours of electricity that solar generators could have delivered, enough to power a small city. That electricity was wasted. There was no way to store it for later, when operators desperately needed it.

7 . 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.

10 . Young Alison Teal never rode in a pushchair or played on a swing on the playground.       1     She saw the view from atop a peak in Peru at just two months old on her mom’s back. They traveled the globe staying not at five-star hotels but in a six-foot-wide tent. From mountaintops to jungles, they immersed (沉浸) themselves in local nature and culture.

Between journeys they would return home to quiet part of the Big Island of Hawaii. Her front yard was the ocean, and her friends were dolphins.       2     Alison would dive into the water and release a sea leaf. A dolphin would catch it on its nose and throw it to the next player. Over the years, the dolphins grew to trust Alison.       3     She let them take the lead in their interactions. After studying at the University of California, Berkeley and then graduating from a film school, Alison continued her world travels. Her adventurous experience and survival skills landed her a spot on the reality show Naked and Afraid, in which she and a co-constant had to live on a deserted island for 21 days. Alison’s deep knowledge of how to live in a wildness saved the pair.       4     “After that, I couldn’t ignore our plastic problem,” says Alison. “I decided to protect our greatest resource, the ocean.”

Along with sharing her mission with her Instagram followers, the conservationist gave a TED talk on her discover.       5     Besides, she helped ban plastic bags in California. Her book, Alison’s Adventures: Your Passport to the World, is filled with travel tales and environment lessons. Alison believes all of us can make changes to protect the Earth.