1 . A new form of real estate(不动产)is appearing along the beaches of South Africa and on the dry islands off its coast-tiny white beach huts. With good ventilation and a sea view, they are just big enough to fit a family of African penguins. Their unique selling point: a safe and cool place for penguins to breed.

African penguins, unlike their relatives that live in snow and ice, live well in the cold currents of the South Atlantic Ocean. But when they come to land, their thick black coat absorbs the heat, and they desperately look for cover-both for themselves and their fragile eggs.

Historically, the penguins dug burrows in layers of guano-accumulated seabird and bat feces- that lined Africa’s penguin colonies, but in the 19th century, traders started selling guano(鸟粪)as fertilizer, leaving the penguins and their eggs increasingly exposed to predators and the baking sun. This, combined with other threats such as egg poaching, overfishing and climate change, has caused African penguin populations to plummet. In 2019, they were thought to be less than 20,000 breeding pairs, down from an estimated 1.5 to 3 million birds in 1900.For more than a decade, the species has been listed as endangered by the IUCN.

To date, the African Penguin Nest Project has installed more than 1,500 nests across five of South Africa’s penguin colonies, and plans to expand into Namibia next year, the only other country with breeding populations of the species.

“This is still just a drop in the bucket,” says Graham, who anticipates they will need to deploy at least 4,500 more ceramic homes to protect penguins currently nesting in exposed areas. “The goal is that every penguin that needs a nest will get one.”

2 . Margot doesn’t have a garbage can. It doesn’t need one because Margot simply doesn’t cause anything to get thrown away. The restaurant doesn’t allow any type of single use plastic. Margot, which opened last year, is one of the small but growing restaurants around the world aiming to avoid not only food leftovers, but also any garbage.

“Food waste has been increasing as an issue for restaurants over the last 10 years,” says Calvin Brown. He runs the Sustainable Restaurant Association. Based in the United Kingdom, the organization helps food business become more environmentally responsible. He says that food waste contributes to releasing the greenhouse gas, so there is strong motivation to reduce waste and help the environment.

In the USA, food waste and packing account for nearly half of the material sent to landfills. Restaurants from McDonald’s to Starbucks are addressing this issue with “no straw Mondays” and limits on single-serving plastic, but a handful of restaurateurs are trying to get rid of rubbish entirely. There’s also economic case to be made for waste reduction. One study shows that restaurants save seven dollars for every dollar invested in anti- waste methods.

Avoiding food waste is the first and perhaps most obvious challenge for sustainable restaurants. Doug McMaster, chef at Silo in London, only serves a set menu. This removes the worry that one particular item won’t sell well, and will spoil in the refrigerator. Compost (堆肥) is a necessity as well. Nolla (meaning “zero” in Finnish) in Helsinki, Finland is giving compost to its suppliers as well as its diners. Nolla also has food- tracking software more commonly used among corporate food service companies to keep track of what sells and what rots.

Sometimes restaurants call themselves environmentally friendly, but they might just be using the label. Calvin offers some pointers on what to look for to make sure a restaurant is truly committed to sustainability.

3 . The first time ever I realized that plastic was a serious matter for our planet was during a road trip in Western Australia, almost 12 years ago.

We ________ at a supermarket along the Coral Bay coast to buy some groceries and the lady at the counter told us they didn’t sell any shopping bags in order to prevent plastic in the ________ and to help preserving the endangered turtles living in that area. After a first reaction of surprise, we ________ all our shopping in our arms and left.

This was just one of the many experiences I’ve lived that made me more ________ about my impact and pushed me to adopt different habits to live and ________ more sustainably.

Our trip to Borneo was another life-changing ________ that has strengthened my resolution to a zero-waste lifestyle. While traveling in some countries, we came to know that ________ drinking water was always a challenge. So we had to travel with our water bottle, and we ________ to avoid using plastic during our trip.

Besides, we were also ________ impressed by our stay on Libaran Island. A sustainable turtle conservation ________ and the community had made big efforts to ________ the beaches and creatively reuse plastic for ten years. Despite that, the shore is ________ daily with tons of plastic coming from the tides.

Facing this global issue ________, raised in me a feeling of sadness and anger that soon turned into ________: to do as much as possible to reduce plastic in our life. Small changes can ________ a difference!

Henan Province     1     (strike) by terrible rainstorms in July, 2021. Heavy rainfall raised the emergency     2     (respond) for meteorological disasters to level I,       3     (high) level in a four —tier system, in Zhengzhou. The National Meteorological Center said hourly precipitation (降水量) in Zhengzhou reached 201.9 millimeters once in an hour.

Nearly 11.45 million residents in 139 counties across the province were affected due     4     the record —breaking heavy rainfall     5     started on July 16, said Li Changxun, deputy head of the province’s Department of Emergency Management on 26th, July. Hundreds of thousands of houses collapsed, and more than 1.31 million residents were relocated to safe places.    6     total of 63 people had been killed with five people     7     (miss), reported by 26th, July, Li said,     8    (add) that repair crews were hurrying to fix bridges, electrical substations and gas pipelines to help return people’s lives to normal.

Though flooding during the summer months is an annual occurrence in parts of China, recent rains have alarmed scientists and officials, raising questions as to whether we should be prepared     9     (deal) with more extreme and unpredictable weather     10     (cause) by climate change.

7 . No doubt that humans have widely changed, developed, and exploited (开发) much of the natural world for our own ends. But how much of the land surface remains free of our often-harmful influence?

In a new study, scientists compared figures from four different sets of data using different kinds of methods and classification (分类) systems to answer this question. On average, the researchers say roughly half (48 to 56 percent) of the world’s land shows “low” influence of humans. While the figures may inspire many—stressing the vast expanse of significantly untouched lands that can still be protected through conservation measures—the study also shows just how much of the Earth has already been occupied and used by humans.

In fact, only about a quarter (20 to 34 percent) of the planet’s ice-free land surface shows “very low” signs of human influence, the researchers say, and the parts of the planet that we have left alone up until now constitute (构成) some of the least livable places on Earth. In other words, whether through urbanization, forestry, agriculture or other means, humans have applied the most influence on biodiverse land that presented ripe and easy opportunities for immediate human needs; in contrast, roasting deserts in the world’s hottest places, or frozen wastelands in its coldest spots, have been ignored.

Even so, the researchers say the results shown here give us a strong, clear marker that we can use to help structure existing and future conservation efforts by preventing disturbance on existing low influenced areas, meanwhile, recovering areas for conservation in land that has already been exploited too much.

“The encouraging takeaway from this study is that if we act quickly and decisively (果断地), there is a slim window in which we can still conserve roughly half of the Earth’s land in a relatively untouched state,” says biologist and lead author of the study, Jason Riggio.

There’s a chance, right now, to draw a line in the sand, and say “no more”.

8 . Margaret is a famous climate activist (气候活动家). When she was thirty- two years old, she created an Egyptian charity organization called the Green Generation Initiative (倡议), which has been planting trees and countering the acts of cutting down the forests at will and climate change in the North African nation since 2013.

GGI’s primary focus is on developing young climate activists through environmental education in schools and addressing food unsafety in the area through planting fruit trees.

Over 120, 000 trees have been planted in Egypt since GGI’s start and they have recorded a survival rate of over 90 percent, while thousands of schoolchildren have chosen to plant trees to make sure that they learn the importance of acting as a guardian over the health of the environment.

Speaking to world leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Margaret issued a warning on the harm of climate change, “Over 1 million of my fellow Egyptians are facing climate related hunger. In 2024, half of the world’s population will be short of water. By 2030, the climate problem will make about 50 million people in Sub- Saharan Africa homeless.”

Margaret added, “I have been doing what I can. I was inspired by the great Maathai, who called on thousands of women and men to plant tens of millions of trees throughout Kenya. Her approach was practical and deeply ecological (生态的). She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I started a tree growing initiative that raised the awareness of food safety for young Egyptians. So far, we have grown 30, 000 fruit trees, providing badly needed food for thousands of children. We are the adults on the Earth right now, and it is our responsibility to ensure that the children have food and water.”