1 . There is a kind of climate pollution that we can’t see clearly. It isn’t in our rivers, lands or skies, it is in our minds. When climate disinformation goes unchecked, it spreads like wildfire, undermining the existence of climate change and the need for urgent action.
Like the biosphere that sustains us, the health of our information ecosystems is vital to our survival. As an artist, I feel a responsibility to create new ways of seeing the disinformation that has come to define the age of fake news.
Social media sites are honed to grab our attention. Using sophisticated algorithms, the corporations behind them decide what billions of people see around the world, dictated by what keeps you hooked, but also by what the companies paying social media sites choose to put in front of you.
Powerful corporate actors deploy clever influence campaigns via ads targeted at specific users based on what social media firms know about those people. Major oil and gas companies have spent billions of dollars over the years persuading consumers about their green proofs, when only 1 per cent of their expenditure in 2019 was on renewable energy. This is known as corporate greenwashing. Still, fossil fuel firms maintain that their climate policies are “responsible” and “in line with the science”.
To expose the scale of corporate greenwashing online, I was part of a team that recently launched Eco-Bot.Net. Co-created with artist Rob “3D” Del Naja of the band Massive Attack and Dale Vince, a green entrepreneur, Eco-Bot. Net’s AI-powered website ran throughout the COP26 climate summit, exposing climate change misinformation by releasing a series of data drops for heavily polluting sectors, including energy, agribusiness and aviation.
Academic definitions of climate disinformation and greenwashing were used to unearth posts across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and visualize them on our website. Eco-Bot.Net then flagged greenwashing ads and posts on the original social media site with a public health warning.
By digging into our data, journalists have already revealed that companies are targeting specific demographics in order to influence public perceptions about climate change – and even alter government policy.
One data drop focused on the 100 biggest fossil fuel producers, companies that have been the source of 71 per cent of global carbon emissions. It found that 16 of these companies ran 1705 greenwashing and climate misinformation ads globally on Facebook and Instagram this year. In total, they spent more than £4 million creating influence campaigns that generated up to 155 million impressions.
Social media companies could end most of the harms from climate disinformation on their platforms if they wanted to. Flagging systems were swiftly introduced to warn users of posts containing disinformation about covid-19. The scientific consensus on human-caused global warming has been resolute for decades, so why can’t a similar flagging system be implemented for related disinformation?
It is true that Twitter and Facebook have both introduced climate science information hubs, but these are little more than PR exercises that fail to directly tackle climate disinformation on any kind of scale.
This epidemic of climate change disinformation on social media is eroding collective ideas of truth. In this post-truth age of disinformation, we hope that the public, the press and policy-makers will be able to use our data findings to see what is hidden by what we see online.
For the first time, we can witness the regional scale of corporate greenwashing. The era of climate denial and delay is largely over — except, as Eco-Bot.Net has revealed, on social media.
1. What does the word “undermine” in the first paragraph mean in the passage?| A．Dig holes in the ground. | B．Make sth weaker at the base. |
| C．Increase or further improve. | D．Put a stop to sth. |
| A．give the readers a precise definition of corporate greenwashing |
| B．show the dishonest claim by fossil fuel companies on their responsible climate policies |
| C．demonstrate the huge investment the corporations made to exert powerful influence on the targeted social media users based on algorithm |
| D．emphasize the tens of millions of dollars spent on renewable energy |
| A．energy | B．agribusiness | C．aviation | D．social media |
| A．They are willing to help but feel powerless to do so. |
| B．They have the ability to make a change but refuse to do so as there are controversies over climate changes. |
| C．They have the ability to make a change and have made some sincere but fruitless efforts on it. |
| D．They lose their integrity in face of the money from the big corporations. |
2 . 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. |
3 . The worst outbreak of desert locusts (蝗虫) in decades is presently underway in the Horn of Africa. It is the biggest of its kind in 25 years for Ethiopia and Somalia — and the worst Kenya has seen for 70 years.
What we are seeing in East Africa today is unlike anything we’ve seen in a very long time. Its destructive potential is enormous, and it’s taking place in a region where farmers need every gram of food to feed themselves and their families. Most of the countries hardest hit are those where millions of people are already vulnerable (脆弱的) or in serious humanitarian need, as they endure the impact of violence, drought, and floods.
We have acted quickly to respond to this outbreak. The primary method of battling locusts is the aerial spraying of pesticides (杀虫剂). FAO’s “Locust Watch” service explains that “although giant nets, flamethrowers, lasers, and huge vacuums have been proposed in the past, these are not in use for locust control. People and birds often eat locusts but usually not enough to significantly reduce population levels over large areas.”
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has released $10 million from its Central Emergency Relief Fund to fund a huge scale-up in aerial operations to manage the outbreak.
But the window to contain this crisis is closing fast. We only have until the beginning of March to bring this infestation under control as that is when the rain and planting season begins. If left unchecked — and with expected additional rains — locust numbers in East Africa could increase 500 times by June.
We must act now to avoid a full-blown catastrophe. And we will. At the same time, we need to pay attention to a bigger picture. This is not the first time the Greater Horn of Africa has seen locust outbreak approach this scale, but the current situation is the worst in decades. This is linked to climate change. Warmer seas mean more tropical storms, generating the perfect breeding conditions for locusts.
1. What is implied in paragraph 2?| A．People in East Africa are suffering drought. |
| B．People in East Africa are going through floods. |
| C．The locust outbreak will cause crop failure. |
| D．The locust outbreak is worsening locals’ life. |
| A．We need a bigger picture to study the disaster. |
| B．It is the second outbreak of locusts in East Africa. |
| C．It is the largest outbreak of locusts ever in history. |
| D．The outbreak of locusts is fueled by global warming. |
| A．To analyse and compare. | B．To inform and call for. |
| C．To argue and discuss. | D．To introduce and assess. |
| A．A guidebook. | B．A health magazine. |
| C．A news report. | D．A chemistry paper. |
4 . The world's first-known nursery for baby giant manta rays(蝠鲼) has been discovered hidden away in the Gulf of Mexico, the place of 70 miles off the coast of Texas, after studying decades of giant manta ray data from the area by the scientists.
Where the baby manta rays grow up has long troubled scientists, as they are rarely spotted in the four to five years it takes them to become adults, when they can often grow to more than 20ft wide.
In the study Mr Stewart and colleagues describe a reef (暗礁)---filled with mantas of all ages---where the sea floor runs down into deeper water. He said "We think they may be feeding on specific types of zooplankton(浮游生物) there, then migrating up toward the surface, where we saw them. They might be hanging around the banks because it could be a little safer than open water. We’ve seen them so rarely that we know very little about these baby manta rays. We don‘t know how far they move, or exactly what they feed on, or all of the habitats these access.”
Giant manta rays are listed as species dying out by protectors, although actual population numbers of the mysterious "gentle giant" are hard to calculate. Sightings of the closely-related reef manta, however, have dropped by 90 percent in regions of southeast Asia in the past decade, according to a study.
Fishing is considered the biggest threat to giant manta numbers, both intentional and accidental. Their gill plates(腮下肉)- the parts through which they filter(过滤) their food from seawater-are sold in China for medical purposes, while they often end up as something caught by mistake due to their huge wings.
1. Where do the baby manta rays probably grow up according to the study?| A．In the deep water area. |
| B．On the surface of the sea water. |
| C．Around the banks of channel. |
| D．In the reef of the Gulf of Mexico. |
| A．Manta rays can be seen on the sea surface. |
| B．Manta rays prefer the open water to the banks. |
| C．The scientists have known much about manta rays. |
| D．Manta rays are fond of eating on the sea surface. |
| A．The habitat environment becomes worse. |
| B．They are overfished by people |
| C．They are not very difficult to catch. |
| D．People can see the reef manta much less than before. |
| A．Summarize the previous paragraphs. |
| B．Warn people of their wrong behaviors. |
| C．Introduce some knowledge of the fish. |
| D．Give examples to support his point. |
5 . Cars are “boxes collecting toxic(有毒的)gases” that stunt the growth of children, a leading expert has warned. Professor Sir David King said that parents should avoid driving their little ones to school and encourage them to walk instead. Vehicles(车辆)provide hardly any protection from the deadly gases, while walking is already known to be good for health.
Sir David told The Guardian: “Children sitting in the backseat of vehicles are probably breathing in polluted air. You may be driving a cleaner vehicle but your children are sitting in a box collecting toxic gases from all the vehicles around you. The best thing for all our health is to leave our cars behind. It’s been shown that the advantages of walking and cycling far outweigh the costs of breathing in pollution.” Sir David added: “If more drivers knew the damage they could be doing to their children, I think they’d think twice about getting in the car.”
His warming comes after recent research found that children’s brains slow down when they are put in high levels of air pollution. The study found pupils who breathed in toxic gases on the way to school had difficulty in performing as well as their classmates Spanish researchers said their findings appeared to show that polluted air is harming children’s brains as well as their lungs.
Toxic air is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year in the UK---and Brussels has warned Britain it could face if it continued to break EU safety rules. Former research has shown that too much polluted air will shorten people’s life length. Air pollution falls only behind cancer, obesity and heart disease in the biggest health risks to the nation, Prime Minister Theresa May recently said.
1. What does the underlined word “stunt” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Slow down | B．Speed up |
| C．Set down | D．Keep up |
| A．It’s better to cycle or walk kids to school |
| B．Driving costs more than walking and cycling |
| C．A cleaner vehicle will not collect toxic gases |
| D．Most people have a good knowledge of toxic gases |
| A．Air pollution only affects kids’ lungs |
| B．Air pollution levels have risen in Spain |
| C．Air pollution has greatly changed kids’ character |
| D．Air pollution may worsen kids’ school performance |
| A．Ignore EU safety rules |
| B．Take steps to improve air quality |
| C．Encourage people to drive cleaner vehicles |
| D．Stop parents from driving children to school |
