Ten-year-old Sami loved to visit his grandfather's house. The house was near the beautiful blue sea. At the seaside stood thick and tall palm trees with green coconuts hanging from them. When the coconuts fell down, Sami would break them open and drink the coconut water. Sami liked to play under the trees. It was always great fun to spend the holidays at Grandpa's place.

This winter vacation, Sami was surprised when he came to his grandfather's village. There were hardly any trees left. He saw houses built near the sea. People had cut down many palm trees and there was hardly any greenery left.

Grandpa's house was different. He never allowed his trees to be cut. He hugged each palm tree in his courtyard. He also named the two big trees near the front door--one was Petu, and the other Betu. He had planted them with his own hands and today they had become large, massive trees with thick trunks. They were tall and green and gave the sweetest, juiciest coconuts.

One night, Sami was awakened by a strange sound. He could not sleep. He tossed（辗转）and turned in bed.

Suddenly, the ground shook as if the earth was splitting. He sat up straight and then ran to Grandpa. He clung（附 着）to his grandpa tightly. Grandpa cried out, “It's an earthquake! It's an earthquake!" They ran outside the house. They thought that would be safe.

Suddenly, there was a loud sound; the earth was not splitting but the sea was roaring. People were shouting, screaming and crying, “The sea is rising! The sea is rising." The villagers started running away from the beach.

Sami watched dumbstruck（呆若木鸡）.

The waves were rising higher and higher. Sami thought, “How big the waves are!" He went into the house again and saw water coming in from all sides. He was scared.

Sami remembered his mother telling him long ago, “You must always get out of the house if the floods come too near." He ran outside the house with Grandpa. But the water came surging（汹涌） in.

Waves about twelve meters high came rushing in, drowning everything. Water was all around and everywhere.

“Sami, Sami!” Grandpa cried. “Don't be scared, little one, come to me, quickly.”

5 . A Plastic Ocean is a film to make you think. Think, and then act. We need to take action on our dependence on plastic. We’ve been producing plastic in huge quantities. Drinking bottles, shopping bags and even clothes are made with plastic.     1     What happens to all the rest? This is the question the film A Plastic Ocean answers.

The film begins as a journey to film the largest animal on the planet, the blue whale. But during the journey the filmmakers make the shocking discovery of a huge, thick layer of plastic floating in the Indian Ocean.     2     In total, they visited 20 locations around the world during the four years to make the film.

In the film there are beautiful shots of the seas and marine life.     3     We see how marine species are being killed by all the plastic we are throwing in the ocean. The message about our use of plastic is painfully obvious.

    4     In the second half, the filmmakers look at what we can do to deal with the problem. They present short-term and long-term solutions. These include avoiding plastic containers and recycle as much as you can. The filmmakers also stress the need for governments to work more on recycling programmes.

We make a shocking amount of plastic. Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year, and at least 8 million of those are thrown into the oceans. The results are very harmful, but it isn’t too late to change.     5    

8 . Climate change leads to a threat to the world’s sandy beaches, and as many as half of them could disappear by 2100, a new study has found. Even by 2050 some coastlines could be unrecognizable from what we see today, with 10% to 12% facing severe erosion (侵蚀).

Using updated sea level rise predictions, the researchers analyzed how beaches around the world would be in a future with higher seas and more damaging storms. They also considered natural processes like wave erosion, as well as human factors-like coastal building developments, all of which can affect a beach’s health. The study found that sea level rise is expected to outweigh these other factors, and that the more heat-trapping gases humans put into the atmosphere, the worse the influences on the world’s beaches are likely to be.

It’s hard to overstate just how important the world’s beaches are. They cover more than one third of the world’s coastlines, and protect coastal areas from storms. Beaches are also important economic engines, supporting relaxation, tourism and other activities. And in some areas, the beach is more than a vacation destination. In places like Australia, life near the coast revolves around the beach for much of the year.

Some of the world’s most popular beaches are already taking action. Places like Miami Beach are trucking in thousands of tons of sand to patch up (修复) badly eroded shorelines, while others have built sea walls and breakwaters in an attempt to hold precious sand in place. But the financial and environmental costs of these projects are huge, and scientists say rising seas and more powerful storms, supercharged by a warmer climate, will make this a losing battle.

However, the researchers did find that humans have some control over what happens to the world’s beaches. If the world’s governments are able to stick to modest cuts to heat-trapping gas pollution, the researchers found that 22%of projected beach losses by 2050 could be prevented, a number that grows to 40%by 2100 if greenhouse gases are limited.

9 . Working at an investment bank in New York City in the mid-2010s. Anna Sacks was living the life—just not the life she wanted. Sure, she was happy. But she wanted to do something that felt important and was fulfilling on a deeper level.

Sacks packed up her life and moved to Connecticut for three months to participate in Adamah, a Jewish farming program that focuses on sustainable living and growing sustainable food. The Adamah program opened Sacks’s eyes to the damage consumer culture is doing on a local, national, and global level, and the need to find solutions. From then on, she began what she calls “trash (垃圾) walking.”

While walking around her neighborhood, Sacks, 31, picked through rubbish to look for reusable items. Soon, her trash walks expanded to include company rubbish along with residential trash. Surprisingly, she discovered a wide range of really great stuff—like clothing, dinnerware, and food—all of which she documents on Instagram and TikTok.

Under the name The Trash Walker, Sacks quickly gained popularity for her educational, funny, and surprising videos that highlight the problems with consumerism and share information about how to live a more sustainable life. “The root issue is overproduction, which leads to overconsumption, which leads to a large amount of waste,” she says. Sacks’s videos have gone viral many times, causing shockwaves through the industries she calls out.

Trash walking has given Sacks a nearly endless supply and she shares much of her “treasure” with others. She tries giving them informally to family, friends, or individuals she knows may need a specific item. Then she takes the remaining items to free stores so other New Yorkers can benefit from her treasure-hunting.

Sacks’s main focus is simply getting people to pay attention to how many unnecessary things they buy and then throw away. “Once you become aware of the way you consume, you can see ways you improve,” she says.

10 . Scientists visiting tiny Henderson Island in the South Pacific recently made an alarming discovery.     1    They calculated there were 38 million pieces of plastic. “This is not an issue to ignore. We need to do something now to protect the sea.” said one scientist.

Plastic waste in the sea has long been known about, but only now are we discovering the true extent of the problem. Plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose, so all the plastic ever produced still exists somewhere. Around 95% of plastics made are not recycled, and large amounts enter the sea. Currents(洋流) collect this waste in large circular systems called “gyres”.     2    

The problem gets worse as plastic breaks down into very small pieces, or “micro plastic”,     3     Humans also eat these fish, and micro plastic has even been found in tap water around the world. The plastic on Henderson Island accounts for just 2 seconds’ worth of global annual plastic production. That production will be three times by 2050.

    4     While diving in Greece, young Boyan Slat noticed there was more plastic waste than fish. He decided right then to dedicate his life to solving this problem. Boyan thought, why move through the sea when the sea can move through you? So he started The Ocean Cleanup project, which places very long floating barriers in the Pacific. Currents then concentrate the waste naturally so it can be collected and recycled. He hopes to reduce the patch by 50% in just five years.

“Sea plastic is a symbol of the negative effects of our lifestyle and technology,” he says. “    5     Protecting the sea from plastic is a good place to start!”