3 . I finally climbed into bed at 1: 20 in the morning. My friends had helped me celebrate my 31st birthday in the basement apartment, where I lived.

Earlier in the day I had prepared for the unlikely event of a flood. We are about a third of a mile from the banks of the Ahr River. It had been raining buckets that week and the government had sent out a flood warning, though not for where I was. Still, I’d placed sandbags on the floor outside my garden door and put electronics on tables. “Silly bro!” My friends laughed at me for doing that, but I thought, why take a chance?

As I drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by the sound of rushing water, as if I were lying beside a waterfall. When I got off the bed, I was shocked that cold water was rising fast. In darkness, I grabbed my cellphone and turned on the flashlight. When I stepped out of the bedroom, I saw water shooting through the gaps of the door.

I began to panic. I knew I had to get out—fast! In bare feet, I started to make my way to the only escape: the door that led upstairs to the main floor. Finally I made it to the door and tried several times to-pull it open even just a little bit, but the rushing water shut it again. I looked around for anything I could use to keep it open. There in the corner was a coat rack (架子). I took it and, once again, opened the door, throwing the coat rack between the door and the frame (门框) to keep the door from shutting. Finally, I managed to make a gap just wide enough to squeeze (挤) through and make it into the hallway.

I leaped on to the stairs and ran outside. I stood there in the darkness, wet through. What was once a lovely street was now a waterscape, with floating ruins instead of people and cars. The river had drowned (淹没) the neighborhood!

5 . Most of us have heard of the 3Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle. It is the core principle of a sustainable (可持续的) life, but few of us can apply it in our own lives. Now, there’s a “lab” you can explore and discover a way toward living sustainably.

3R Lab is located in Xuhui district, Shanghai. It offers exhibitions, activities and goods that showcase the 3R principle. The key to a sustainable life, according to Vincent T. M. Fong, the 32-year-old from Hong Kong who created the lab, is to make it a long-term promise. “A sustainable life should be sustainable itself in the first place. You can’t lead a sustainable life on a whim. Small and comfortable changes are exactly what you need,” Fong said.

The lab regularly hosts ugly fruit markets, offering these strange fruits which are often thrown away by traditional markets and consumers at a quite attractive price. “They’re thrown away simply because of their appearance. Buying fruit regardless of how they look reduces food waste significantly in our daily life,” Fong commented.

A water tank with two types of straws is another equipment in the lab. “One type is made from normal plastics widely used in our daily life while the other is from PHA, a new replacement for plastics, and the water is sourced from the Suzhou River,” explained Ni Li, an employee of the lab. Visitors can see how the PHA straws degrade (降解) into a thin layer in just one month, while the others remain unchanged.

“Leading a sustainable life does not necessarily mean sacrifice,” said Fong. Consuming ugly fruit and using degradable plastics are small changes that are good for the environment and easy to stick to. Only in this way can the 3R principle become part of our lives, he added.

After working there for six months, Ni, who wasn’t mindful of the 3R principle before arriving at the lab, now uses her cup every time she buys a coffee. “The job has reshaped my life,” Ni said.

10 . More than half of the world’s oceans have changed greatly in color over the past 20 years, with human-caused climate change as the likely cause, according to the study published in the journal Nature. Oceans around the equator (赤道), in particular, have become greener, a trend that cannot be explained by natural, year-to-year variability (变化性) alone, reflecting changes in their ecosystems.

The ocean’s color changes based on what’s found in its upper layers. Bluer oceans tend to have little life, while greener oceans have more phytoplankton (浮游植物). Phytoplankton are the base of the ocean food web. In a balanced ecosystem, they serve as fuel for zooplankton and fish, which are eaten by larger fish, seabirds and marine mammals.

Nevertheless, the change in color has indicated a change in the ecosystem. While some areas are likely to have less phytoplankton, others will have more. These kinds of shifts could have ripple effects throughout the entire ocean ecosystem.

To determine whether this trend was related to climate change, researchers compared two ocean-color models which simulated how the oceans would respond under two conditions: one with added greenhouse gases and one without. The results predicted in the greenhouse gas model aligned (一致) almost exactly with what the researchers found from real-world data---within 20 years, about half of the oceans obviously shifted in color.

Dutkiewicz said she was not surprised at this finding. “But still I found the results overwhelmingly alarming; and there is another wake-up call that human-caused climate change has significantly impacted the earth system,” she said. “All changes are causing an imbalance in natural ecosystems. Such imbalances will only get worse over time if our oceans keep heating.” she added.