1 . British sculptor Jason Taylor has made it his mission to use his talent to conserve our ecosystems by creating underwater museums. Over the years, the environmentalist has put over 850 massive artworks underwater worldwide. On February 1, 2021, Taylor launched his latest work---The Underwater Museum of Cannes.

“The main goal was to bring attention to the fact that our oceans need our help,” Taylor told Dezeen. “Ocean ecologies have been destroyed by human activity in the Mediterranean over the past few decades, and it is not obvious what is taking place when observing the sea from afar.”

The Underwater Museum of Cannes contains 6 sculptures featuring local residents of various ages. They range from Maurice, an 80-year-old fisherman, to Anouk, a 9-year-old student. Towering over 6-feet-tall and weighing 10 tons, the faces are sectioned into two parts, with the outer part like a mask. The mask indicates that the world’s oceans appear powerful and unbeatable from the surface but house an ecosystem that is extremely fragile to careless human activities.

Though the waters surrounding the sculptures now appear a pristine blue, the seabed was filled with old boat engines, pipes, and other human-made trash when the project began about four years ago. Besides removing the trash, Taylor also restored the area’s seagrass. Just one square meter of the seagrass can generate up to 10 liters of oxygen daily. The seagrass also helps prevent coastal erosion and provides habitats for many ocean creatures.

“The idea of creating an underwater museum was to draw more people underwater and develop a sense of care and protection,” Taylor told Dezeen. “If we threw unwanted waste near a forest, there would be a public outcry. But this is happening every day in our surrounding waters and it largely goes unnoticed.”

3 . When most kids go to the beach, they’re too focused on making sandcastles and splashing around to notice litter, but several years ago, for 7-year-old Cash Daniels, noticing a plastic straw sparked a lifelong passion for saving the planet.

Cash, who is now known as the “conservation kid”, has always loved nature. He grew up fishing along the Chattanooga River, after all! But once he learned that 80 percent of all trash from land and rivers ends up in the ocean, he couldn’t sit back.

He started with cleanups along the river, something that quickly went from a family affair to a community effort with volunteers and neighbors. In 2019, Cash, together with a Canadian conservationist, Ella Galaski-Rossen, started a nonprofit called the Cleanup Kids. Despite living in different countries, they managed to create educational videos on their YouTube channel. “We hope to be a really big nonprofit that eliminates plastic in the U. S. and Canada,” Cash said. “We want to inform kids and adults in the landlocked states of how their actions are connected to the water and the ocean,” Cash said.

Cash was selected as one of America’s top 10 youth volunteers of 2021 by the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards. He also earned the title of National Honoree, where he received a$5,000 grant to go to a nonprofit of his choice, and he became the first person to win the Youth Conservationist Award two years in a row from the Tennessee Wildlife Federation.

“I want to travel the world, teach others, and help them feel connected to the ocean. Because if you are connected to the ocean-if you love it and what lives in it—you’ll want to protect it,” he said. “This is my fun, and it becomes more fun with every new discovery.”

4 . The Atlantic salmon (鲑鱼) of Scotland are hardy and determined animals. Each spring and summer, they return from the North Atlantic Ocean to lay eggs in Scotland’s shallow rivers,leaping up waterfalls and over barriers, pushing themselves upstream in enormous efforts. Some fail, and others succeed, but today they face yet another challenge.

During the mid-1980s, there were between eight and ten million salmon swimming around Scotland’s Atlantic coast; that number has now dropped sharply. There’s evidence of reducing the availability of the salmon’s prey (猎物) as climate change warms and acidifies oceans. New research suggests climate change is also bearing down on rivers, which is bad news for salmon.Adapted to life in cold water, salmon experience slow growth and population changes at high temperatures. Heat influences their health and reduces their resistance to disease.

“Now salmon are struggling to deal with the rising temperatures. There are recent records of 27°C in the upper reaches of the Dee catchment,” says Peter Cairns, director of an environmental charity. In 2018, Scotland recorded the lowest pole catch for salmon since records began. Evidence suggests that the degraded quality of river worsens the impact of our changing climate. “Atlantic salmon evolved using river systems in Scotland that were once way more forested and therefore shaded.” Yet Scotland is today one of the least wooded countries in Europe, with just 3 percent of its native woodland undamaged. Scientists have found that just 35percent of rivers in Scotland have enough tree cover for salmon survival.

A movement to get trees back on riverbanks is gathering pace. “Broad-leaf trees close tothe bank can reduce the light that enters the water,” explains fisheries scientist Anthony Hawkins. A new initiative called Riverwoods — led by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and supported by Scottish Water and several other government and regulatory bodies — aims to create a network of woodlands along Scotland’s riverbanks, and has already received a number of large funds.“Money is not the pressing business. River health is complex, but tree planting is one of the most basic things we can get started with right away,”says Cairns.

5 . In recent years, lots of American companies have gotten behind a potential climate solution called carbon capture and storage, and the government has backed it with billions of dollars in tax preferences and direct investments. The idea is to trap planet-heating carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of factories and power plants and ship it to sites via thousands of miles of new pipelines. Communities nationwide are pushing back against these pipeline construction and underground sites, arguing they don’t want the pollution running through their land.

Now the U. S. Forest Service is proposing to change a rule to allow storing this carbon dioxide pollution under the country’s national forests and grasslands. “Authorizing carbon capture and storage on National Forest System (NFS) lands would support the Administration’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent below the 2005 levels by 2030,” the proposed rule change says.

Some experts, like June Sekera, a research fellow with Boston University, question the timing of the proposed rule change, given community pushback across the country to pipelines planned on private land. Yet she says the Forest Service proposal to open up national parks for CO2 storage is “an end run around local towns and counties. And it’s a much simpler and way less expensive route.”

In an email, Scott Owen, press officer for the Forest Service, writes that the proposed rule change would allow the Forest Service to consider proposals for carbon capture and storage projects. He writes that any proposals must still pass through a secondary screening, adding, “The Forest Service has been ‘screening’ proposals for use of NFS lands for over 20 years as a means to be increasingly consistent in our processes and also be able to reject those uses that are inconsistent with the management of the public’s land. ” He notes the Forest Service currently does not have any carbon capture project proposals under consideration. The Forest Service has opened public comments on the proposed rule change until Jan. 2, 2024.

One morning on my way to school, noticed an elderly woman dressed in a yellow vest (马 甲)carrying a garbage bag and one of those rubbish claws (爪形器具)."What's that lady doing?" I asked mum. "Vest Lady. She just picks up rubbish around here for fun," mum said. "Why would someone think picking up rubbish looking like a construction worker is fun?" I puzzled.

For several years I'd witness this mysterious Vest Lady—rain or shine — on my way to school. I had thought she was crazy for picking up rubbish. Eventually I smiled and waved at her each time I saw her. Later, I moved to high school. The time I saw rubbish here and there I felt really annoyed. Then I'd think, "Why isn't anyone picking up this rubbish? People are so inconsiderate I" However, shortly after, I realized picking up the rubbish was not someone ease's problem.

Now I couldn't walk past litter without feeling guilty. I volunteered to clean up rubbish around our school. Strange as it might sound, picking up litter was kind of a thrill for me! In fact, I was so determined that for my 17th birthday I bought myself a rubbish claw, reusable gloves and a reflective safety yellow vest with my own name on it.

During my first attempt in my stylish equipment, met with unfriendly looks from others as if I were a criminal doing community service. One day,I had an epiphany(顿悟):"I'm acting just like Vest Lady!"

But there was too much rubbish around, cigarette ends littered about, cans rolling on the street,pieces of paper hidden in the grass and plastic. alone was too weak J How would I get more volunteers involved in rubbish removal? A smart idea flashed into my mind.

Soon I created my website go picking up com.

More and more people on vests with their own names.

10 . From the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the orange gardens of Seville, urban planners down the ages have taken inspiration from nature. And those living in the concrete and brick jungle have perhaps never appreciated green space more than during the covid-19 pandemic. During lockdowns, citizens have found parks and gardens an unexpected source of calm and joy.

The evidence of positive effects from nature includes studies on specific psychological conditions.     1     It can promote positive social interactions and even help generate a sense of meaning to life. Being in green environments boosts various aspects of thinking, including attention, memory and creativity. Equally healthy natural spaces provide us with a whole range of essential “ecosystem services” for free.     2    

The evolving understanding of nature’s broad health benefits, plus our ongoing pandemic experience, is a big urge to build the green cities.     3     The Million Trees Los Angeles initiative and an ambitious greening programme in New York are the inspiring examples in the US.

    4     Most urban growth in the next decades will occur in developing nations. China encourages the building of parks, green spaces and wildlife passageways in many cities. Admittedly, developing countries face many challenges in building greener cities, but they can learn from the mistakes already made in older-growth cities in the West.

    5     It is important to make green spaces multipurpose so they meet a variety of needs. Biologist Gretchen Daily, at Stanford University, has pioneered the concept of ecosystem services as a way of evaluating the benefits nature provides and factoring these values into economic decision-making. She also favours combining more natural elements into the built environment, such as green roofs, and even designing buildings that imitate patterns found in nature.