1 . Even minor changes in behavior can have a positive environmental impact. Therefore, it is suggested to remove or reduce single-use plastic bags from your shopping trips, because the bags break down slowly, causing them to linger in landfills. But how long does a plastic bag really stick around?

The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that it takes a bag roughly 1000 years to break down. The term “break down” is a little misleading, though. Plastic ends up photodegrading (光降解) from ultraviolet (紫外线) radiation because the majority of microorganisms cannot eat it. And even after the bags degrade, the micro-plastics they leave behind may still harm the environment.

While 1000 years seems long, it is only an estimate. Since the invention of plastic bags in the 1950s or so, humankind has never actually seen the substance break down in real time. Instead, scientists have adopted respirometry tests (呼吸运动测量法), which helps estimate the breakdown rate of an organic substance by measuring the CO₂ that the microorganisms produce when breaking down the material. When an organic substance, such as food waste, is present, CO₂ levels rise, which allows scientists to estimate the rate of breakdown. However, because plastic bags don’t produce any CO₂,—microorganisms aren’t eating them, the bags are just sitting there. If buried in a landfill and sheltered from ultraviolet light, plastic bags will last a very long time.

Bags have an impact on the environment beyond just their removal. It takes fossil fuels to make bags; one estimate puts this amount at 12 million barrels (桶) of oil annually. And after a bag has served its purpose in a consumer’s hands, it may then enter the food chain for wildlife. Plastic that builds up along the food chain is consumed by creatures like birds and fish.

While reducing the use of plastic bags is a good idea, choosing a cloth bag might not be the habit that will help the environment the most. The carbon footprint left by the cloth bags must be countered by thousands of uses.

3 . Using CRISPR genome (基因组) editing on a few common crops, a team of plant and soil scientists seeks to greatly increase and speed up carbon storage to help fight climate change.

To prevent dangerous levels of global warming, scientists say it won’t be enough to just stop burning fossil fuels that release carbon into the air. Because it’s nearly impossible for humanity to do that as fast as is now required, we will also need to pull carbon out of the air and secure it.

Plants are among the best tools we have to do this, since these living solar collectors already capture billions of tons of carbon dioxide each year from the atmosphere through photosynthesis (光合作用). About half of that carbon winds up in roots and eventually the soil, where it can stay for hundreds to thousands of years.

But what if we could create plants and soils that are better at capturing carbon? With CRISPR genome editing—a new molecular (分子的) biology tool that allows scientists to make edits to the DNA code that underpins all life—that might be possible.

Last month, the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), a research team founded by CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, began to explore the idea. With an $11-million donation from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a team of researchers made a three-year effort using CRISPR to create new crop varieties that photosynthesi ze more efficiently and transport more carbon into the soil. Eventually, the researchers hope to create gene-edited rice and sorghum seeds that could—if planted around the globe--pull more than a billion extra tons of carbon out of the air annually.

It’s an ambitious goal, and the team is likely to face numerous challenges in the lab before its CO2-cleaning plants can be put in the ground. Additional social, policy, and ethical considerations will determine whether those crops are widely accepted by farmers. But the researchers believe their ambitious project is beneficial to cope with climate crisis.

4 . A new study by the Zoological Society of London has found that nearly one in five of the world’s 10,000 species of reptiles (爬行动物) are threatened with extinction. The study, which has been printed in the journal Biological Conservation, was carried out by more than 200 experts who assessed the risk of extinction of 1,500 reptiles selected at random from around the globe.

The primary author of the paper, Monika Bohm, explained to the Zoological Society:” Reptiles are often associated with extreme habitats and tough environmental conditions, so it is easy to assume that they will be fine in our changing world. “However, that’s far from the truth:” Many species are very high specialized in terms of habitat use and the climatic conditions they require for day to day functioning, “Bohm said.” This makes them particularly sensitive to environmental changes. “The paper highlights three critically endangered species in its research, including the jungle runner lizard Ameiva vittata, which has only ever been spotted in the Cochabamba region of the Bolivian jungle—an area under threat from the growth of agriculture and logging. The two most recent searches for the species have been unsuccessful. Meanwhile in Haiti, six of the nine species of Anolis lizard in the country risk extinction due to increasing deforestation (毁林).

Also at risk are freshwater turtles, with 50% of all species at risk of extinction from hunting; turtle parts are in high demand as ingredients in traditional medicine. According to the study 30% of freshwater reptile species are also in danger of completely disappearing.

Reptiles have a long evolutionary history: snakes, lizards, crocodiles and tuataras first appeared on earth around 300 million years ago. They are an important part of many ecosystems. ”This is a very important step towards assessing the conservation status of reptiles globally, “Philip Bowles from the IUCN Species Survival Commission said in response to the study.” Tackling the identified habitat loss is key conservation priorities in order to transfer declines in these reptiles.”

5 . Most old, disused airports are usually torn down to make way for shiny new developments, although at huge cost, but not Tegel airport, in Berlin, Germany. The deserted 580 acres will be turned into an eco-friendly living neighborhood land, in Tegel Project that officials hope will become the blueprint for future disused airports.

After the airport was closed down a number of years ago, following the building of a newer and modern version nearby, developers began dreaming up the ambitious 5 million square meter Tegel Project. Those behind the project hope it will address housing shortages, pollution and other ban living problems. It will provide at least 5,000 homes for more than 10,000 people.

The entire project is all about being energy-efficient: vertical gardens (垂直花园) on apartment blocks, which is one way to keep buildings cool without costly air conditioning. Every rooftop is also going to be fitted with solar panels which will provide electricity. Sponge City technology, such as rain gardens, will help the city absorb as much water as possible.

Although turning an airport into a neighborhood isn’t common, it’s not the first time it’s happened. When Denver’s main airport moved to a new location, developers made the most out of the old airport and converted the space into a residential community with important locations like hospitals, schools, and supermarkets easily reached on foot.

Next to the new development in Germany’s former Tegel airport will be a commercial zone. The Urban Technology Republic is aimed at tech companies that will be encouraged to open offices in the development, as well as a large city park that will stretch across half of the urban tech space. There will also be a campus for the Berliner Hochschule fur Technik University. Construction is due to begin in 2023, with the first areas opening by 2027.

6 . “It is necessary for us to go to places that still look like the ocean as it was 500 years ago,” says Enric Sala, former professor at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. However, in most parts of the world, marine conservation is stymied by opposition from fishing, oil, and mining interests. A mere 7 percent of the world’s ocean has protection—mostly weak rules, and only 2.5 percent is highly protected. Outside of these zones, the ocean’s story is a continuing failure.

A few remaining parts of the ocean are the last wild places of the sea—the marine equivalent of the remotest old-growth forest in the Amazon—still unaffected by overfishing, pollution and climate change. Enric is working with the National Geographic Society and together launched the Pristine Seas project in 2008. Over the past 14 years, Pristine Seas has helped create 28 marine reserves, making up two-thirds of the world’s fully protected marine areas—covering more than two million square miles in all.

Now Sala and his team have set an even more ambitious goal: to see more than a third of the world’s ocean conserved for the purpose not just of sustaining biodiversity but also of replenishing(补充)fish stocks and storing carbon.

Pristine Seas worked with native Palauans(帕劳人)to give an ancient conservation tradition a modern change. For centuries, Palauans have used what they all “buls”, a Palauan word which means closure, to preserve and rebuild their reef fish stocks. Over the years they have created 35 reserves to protect marine life around their islands, some of which ban fishing permanently.

Sala and his team calculate that a 14-fold expansion of the fully protected part of the ocean, from 2.5 percent to 35 percent, would provide 64 percent of the biodiversity benefits while increasing the global fish catch by almost 10 million metric tons. Even that may sound impossible, but the alternative is awful. For now, we still get to choose.

Young Chinese are increasingly making their voices    1     (hear) and influencing world opinion as they take on more important roles in international organizations and     2    (globe) projects.

At a ceremony in Beijing in April, 2018, singer and actor Wang Junkai     3    (make) the national goodwill ambassador (大使) for the United Nations Environment Programme.

“We young people have a responsibility to protect the environment and secure our future, and I am looking forward to learning from     4     working with the UN family on key environmental issues,” Wang said in    5    (he) speech after the appointment.

“The youth are no longer merely onlookers     6     it comes to environmental action, nor should they be. I will spare no effort in doing everything I can     7    (take) care of our Earth, and I invite everyone to join me in generating a wave of positive action,” he said.

Wang Junkai, or Karry Wang, best known     8    one of the TF Boys group, is one of the leaders on environmental protection and other public welfare topics among the Chinese youth. In 2016, Wang widely shared the online Wild for Life campaign,    9     gained 400 million views. A year later, he publicly spoke out on the urgent need to protect endangered wildlife, calling the animals the “superstars of the planet.” He stresses that young generation’s     10    (participate) will help achieve the sustainable development goals.

9 . In the United Kingdom, coffee consumption is on the rise. But beyond just fueling Londoners as they make their ways to work, coffee is also fueling their buses while fighting climate change.

It is reported that London’s buses will soon be powered in part by a newly developed biofuel, one that mixes diesel (柴油) with oils removed from spent coffee grounds, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (排放) from its bus transport system. Recycling technology firm Bio-Bean collects used coffee grounds from major coffee producers across the UK, and removes the oils from them. Then it’s mixed into B20 biodiesel, with 20% biofuel and 80% conventional diesel.

With B20, the buses don’t require any adaptions to run on it. Bio-Bean founder said that, if the UK could use all of the 500,000 tons of coffee waste it produced each year, it could power the city of Manchester for a year. London uses other biofuels to support its effort to cut emissions from its bus system. Coffee is just the latest source, joining used cooking oil and animal fat from meat processing plants, but those old coffee grounds have to go somewhere, and fueling the city’s labor force is preferable to sending them to a waste yard. Bio-Bean’s B20 is an easy way to save businesses money on waste removal, and using the biodiesel in buses cut carbon emissions by 80%.

Coffee waste is becoming an almost unlimited resource, considering London’s citizens alone create 200,000 tons of coffee grounds every year. As more and more Britons switch from tea to coffee, that number will only elevate. The use of coffee grounds as a biofuel source has the added benefit of improving air quality in the city but sadly, it does not give off the pleasant coffee smell one might expect.

10 . Erhai Lake in Dali city is the second largest freshwater lake of Yunnan province. It’s a famous attraction, as well as Dali’s main source of drinking water.

The lake used to be seriously polluted due to the rapid development of tourism and the local economy. Since 2018, local authorities have been building an environmental protection system for the lake, the Erhai Lake Ecological Corridor (生态廊道), to protect it from being polluted and to improve local ecosystem. The project contains five parts: a 129-km road around the entire lake, a pipe system to stop waste water flowing into the like, the removal of 1,806 families who lived within the protection area, the protection of the lake’s wetlands and ecosystem, and the construction of experimental fields for wetland research.

By the end of 2020, the road around the lake had been basically completed. A 12-km part of the Corridor has been open to the public for free since September 2020 for a test operation. The Corridor is described as a “pearl necklace” surrounding the lake, with the villages located along the shore of Erhai Lake being the “pearls”. These villages benefit from the project financially, as they are linked and gain access to transportation and tourism around the lake.

According to staff members of the project, the lake’s water quality has already improved a lot during the construction of the Corridor. More wild birds fly to the lake and there is less unwanted plants in the water. It is also providing a good sight-seeing place for both the city’s residents and foreign tourists.