1 . Shop Sustainably
If you have to name one thing that contributes most to your ecological footprints, you may say the energy you use at home, or your car’s emissions.
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●Avoid unnecessary packing. Buy loose fruit and vegetables instead of pre-packaged produce, and avoid products that contain multiple single packages or double packaging, like grain in a box and a bag. Consider switching from tea bags and coffee pods to tea leaves and ground coffee.
●Go organic when you can. In addition to the benefit organic farming has to insect biodiversity, it’s also considered more sustainable and better for the environment.
●Buy seasonal and native products.
| A．Take reusable grocery bags. |
| B．Select single-use plastic bags. |
| C．It supports local farmers and food producers. |
| D．You can also refill your own containers with loose-packed food. |
| E．When buying organic products, look for those officially certified. |
| F．But it’s what we eat that accounts for up to 60% of our personal demand. |
| G．You’ll find it convenient whenever you buy tea or coffee in the supermarket. |
1. What would the man like to know about the future?
| A．How the environment will be. |
| B．How fast the technology will develop. |
| C．How rich he will be. |
| A．A scientist. | B．A teacher. | C．A doctor. |
3 . Topher White spends so much time walking in the forest and thinking about how quickly we’re losing it. The engineer is determined to stop global deforestation. Founder of the San Francisco-based non-profit Rainforest Connection, White has developed a small but clever strategy: using old cell phones to listen for the sound of destruction.
Forests are disappearing worldwide, and fast：an area about half the size of England is lost each year. The Amazon has lost close to one-fifth of its rainforest cover in the last four decades. Forest loss not only harms wildlife, including many species that live nowhere else, but it’s also a big contributor to the greenhouse gas emission(排放)that cause climate change.
”I didn’t know any of this when I started,“ says White, who began his journey in 2011, when he traveled to Indonesian Borneo to help decreasing gibbons(长臂猿).
Between 50 and 90 percent of the logging that happens in the world’s rainforests is illegal, according to White, yet detecting chainsaws(电锯)and other sounds related to that activity can be tough, because the air is already filled with the loud unpleasant mixture of sounds from nature. So he has developed a system in which he installs a cell phone that stays charged by solar cells, attaches an extra microphone, and listens. From there, the device can detect the sounds of chainsaws nearly a mile away.
Because it’s unfeasible to have people listening to the devices all the time, he added some “old-school data analysis”, so that the cell phone’s computers can distinguish a chainsaw’s sound from others in the forest. This way, his device can automatically detect logging activity and send a text alert to authorities who can determine if it’s illegal and then stop it.
White notes that he’s not alone in the fight: Many people and organizations are working tirelessly to stop forests from disappearing. For instance, local groups are particularly active in forest conservation efforts, White says.
So far, his monitoring devices have been used in Cameroon, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil and will soon be used in Bolivia. It’s not just about listening for logging. The same technology that can pick out the buzz of a chainsaw can pick out the sounds of specific birds, which is why Whtie sees the forest recordings as a potential science tool. He’s urging biologists and ecologists to use his monitoring system anywhere, whether it’s a remote forest or a park in London. “The more we learn about these places,” he says, “the easier it’ll be to protect them.”
1. The second paragraph is mainly about .| A．the measures to prevent forest loss |
| B．the causes and effects of forest loss |
| C．the areas that suffer great forest loss |
| D．the urgency about reducing forest loss |
| A．Impractical. | B．Unnecessary. | C．Possible. | D．Significant. |
| A．our advanced technology | B．our strong teamwork spirit |
| C．our good understanding of it | D．our environmental awareness |
| A．Efforts should be taken to preserve nature |
| B．Your old cell phone can help save the rainforest |
| C．Old cell phones can be used for helping gibbons |
| D．A creative way is being used to protect specific birds |
4 . Since the 1950s, some 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced globally, of which only about 10% has ever been recycled. Yet environmentally conscious companies and consumers continue to look to recycling as a way to ease the plastic problem. Manufacturing giants claim to be committed to making more of their products and packaging from recycled materials. However, this confidence masks (掩饰) a complex web of issues around plastic recycling. Recycling rates remain extremely low and critics argue that we should look at alternative ways to tackle plastic pollution.
While many plastics have the potential to be recycled, most are not because the process is costly, complicated and the resulting product of a lower quality than the original. Despite rising demand for recycled plastic, few waste companies turn a profit. Part of this is because virgin plastic—linked to oil prices—is often cheaper than recycled plastic, meaning there is little economic motive to use it. Worse yet, much of our plastic waste is difficult to recycle. Lightweight food packaging, like a mozzarella packet, contains different plastics, dyes and toxic additives (添加剂). This dirty mix means plastic recycled through mechanical methods—the most common form—can only be melted down and moulded again a couple of times before it becomes too fragile to be reused. And the nature of the process means plastic recycling has a carbon footprint of its own.
Given all of these difficulties, environmental critics say recycling is not the solution and argue that creating more products from recycled material to attract environmental consciousness merely worsens the problem. “The solution is to use less plastic and to stop misleading the public about the recyclability,” says Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a US campaign group with a mission to end single-use plastic. “They should stop making false claims about the recyclability of plastics since they know most will either be littered or burned or landfilled (填埋). Using less plastics means shifting to reusable products and relying more on paper, cardboard, glass and metal—all of which should be made from recycled content.”
1. Which of the following statements would environmentally conscious companies support?| A．Recycling can’t solve the plastic problem. |
| B．Creating more products from recycled material can help ease plastic pollution. |
| C．The solution to plastic pollution is to use less plastic. |
| D．People should give up recycling because the recycling rates remain extremely low. |
| A．The process is costly and complex. |
| B．Waste companies can’t make a profit. |
| C．The process of recycling has a carbon footprint. |
| D．Policy support is insufficient and people’s awareness of plastic recycling is insufficient. |
| A．Disapproving | B．Unclear | C．Neutral | D．Indifferent |
| A．An environmentally conscious customer’s attitude towards recycling plastics is not favorable. |
| B．Contributing factors to low plastic recycling rates. |
| C．Most plastics have the potential to be recycled. |
| D．Few waste companies turn a profit because the demand for recycled plastics is low. |
5 . Capentes is a waste picker. She collects bags of separated garbage, placing food waste in one container. This material will be turned into compost (堆肥) at the local recycling facility. The rest of the waste goes into separate containers. The recyclable materials are later sold.
The Mother Earth Foundation in the Philippines is a member of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, called GAIA. The organization wants to prevent food waste from going to landfills (垃圾填埋场). Food waste gives off methane (甲烷) gas as it breaks down. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane traps more heat than carbon dioxide. But it does not stay in the atmosphere nearly as long—around 12 years compared with hundreds of years.
GAIA says preventing organic waste from going to landfills or being burned is a proven and cost-effective climate solution. The environmental organization supports its members, including waste pickers, around the world. GAIA is working with governments to set up systems to separate and collect organic waste and establish facilities to compost it.
At a materials recycling facility in Malabon, organic waste collected from households is turned into compost. This material then goes into a community garden to grow vegetables. Some of the food waste is broken down into biogas. This biogas is then used to cook vegetables for waste workers to eat. It is a complete cycle, said Froilan Grate, chief of GAIA Asia Pacific, based in Manila.
Grate said there are challenges in establishing these systems in new places. It costs money to set up a facility for composting. People, including local officials, have to be educated on the importance of separating waste. Containers have to be provided to households that cannot buy more than one. And sometimes separating organic waste is not thought to be important. Also, unlike recyclables and metals, there is not a large market for organic materials. Therefore, waste workers must be paid for the system to work.
But Grate believes these problems can be solved. More people are making the connection between reducing methane and fighting climate change. The world needs better systems for dealing with waste because the current methods are adding to warming. The treatment of organic matter is an important way to reduce methane gas.
1. What is GAIA currently committed to?| A．Getting rid of food waste by burying it. | B．Reducing the impact of organic waste on the climate. |
| C．Economizing on food. | D．Reducing the harm of carbon dioxide. |
| A．The method to collect waste. | B．The process to treat organic waste. |
| C．How to use a recycling facility. | D．The wide use of organic waste. |
| A．Collecting organic waste does not require significant investment. |
| B．Every household needs to constantly replace the latest trash cans. |
| C．Organic waste holds a large share in the garbage market. |
| D．Families need to develop the habit of garbage sorting. |
| A．Methane: an Important Greenhouse Gas | B．The New Systems to Reduce Greenhouse Gas |
| C．The New Uses of Organic Waste | D．Waste Pickers Help Fight Climate Change |
1. 珍稀动物的重要性；
2. 保护珍稀动物的倡议。
注意：
1.写作词数应为80左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Protecting Rare Animals
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________7 . When 62-year-old fisherman Kpana Charlie has finished placing the day’s catch in his nets, he likes to sit on his wooden chair and let his mind go back to his childhood. Back then, his home on Sierra Leone’s Nyangai Island seemed like a paradise (天堂).
He spent endless hours playing with his friends on the island’s shining white beaches. He liked to kick around a soccer ball on the sports field in his village, and in mango season, he would shake the trees to collect their colorful fruit. Whenever he wanted to avoid doing his homework, he could simply disappear into the thick forest that covered much of the island.
Today, Nyangai is disappearing, swallowed up by the sea. As recently as ten years ago, it still measured some 2, 300 feet from end to end. What’s left today is a patch of (一片) sand which is 300 feet long and 250 wide. The forests are gone, flooded by saltwater. The soccer field lies under water for 22 hours of the day. And the land on which Charlie’s family home once stood, the home he was born in, has been disappearing under the waves. In as little as two years, Charlie fears, Nyangai may no longer exist at all.
With nearly a third of its population living in coastal areas, and its heavy reliance on agriculture and fishing, Sierra Leone has been treated as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate (气候) change.
Gabriel Jaka, head of operations for the country’s Meteorological Agency, says the reason for Nyangai’s troubles is clear. “We’re seeing a significant sea-level rise and these people don’t have any proper defenses,” he says. “All they have are sandbags. If we don’t act now, the effects on people are just going to get worse.”
1. What do the figures in paragraph 3 show?| A．Nyangai is large in area. |
| B．Nyangai has a long history. |
| C．Nyangai is being destroyed by humans. |
| D．Nyangai is suffering a lot from a sea-level rise. |
| A．Far-reaching. | B．Protected. |
| C．Easy to be attacked. | D．Difficult to keep in touch with. |
| A．Worried. | B．Calm. |
| C．Unconcerned. | D．Hopeful. |
| A．To introduce a poor fisherman. |
| B．To call for actions to fight climate change. |
| C．To present a fisherman’s old hometown. |
| D．To show the destruction of the forest. |
8 . Last summer on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai, Tina Taniguchi worked close to the ground. Her coconut leaf hat covered most of her thick brown hair. Wet soil had gotten on her clothes and her smiling face.
Taniguchi smiles a lot while working on the Hanapepe salt land on the west side of Kauai. It is a piece of land about half a hectare in size with pools of salty water. The salt becomes crystals (晶体)as the water dries.
“The work is tiring, but for me it’s also play,” Taniguchi said with a laugh. Taniguchi’s family is one of 22 families who make salt, following a cultural and spiritual tradition. Hanapepe is one of the last remaining salt lands in Hawaii. Its salt can be traded or given away but must never be sold. Hawaiians use it in cooking, healing, and as protection.
Over the past 10 years, there have been several threats to this field. They encompass development, pollution from a neighboring airfield, damage to the sand from vehicle traffic and waste left by visitors to the nearby beach. In addition, rising sea levels and weather might stop the practice.
The process of turning sea water into salt can be slow. The season begins once the rain stops and water starts to disappear from the salt beds. Ocean water travels underground and enters the wells. Each family has their own well. As water enters the well, so do tiny, red brine shrimp. These small ocean animals give Hanapepe salt its unusual, sweet taste.
The families first clean the salt beds and line them with black clay (陶土). Then they move water from the wells into the beds. There, salt crystals form. The top level, or layer, is the whitest. It is used for table salt. The middle layer is pinkish and is used in cooking, while the bottom layer, which is a deep red color, is used in blessings.
1. What do we know about Taniguchi?| A．She gives salt to others as a gift. | B．She works hard but with pleasure. |
| C．She has found a new way to make salt. | D．She fears old traditions will disappear. |
| A．Trade goods with it. | B．Use it as a treatment. |
| C．Make money from it. | D．Cook vegetables with it. |
| A．Prevent. | B．Include. | C．Improve. | D．Discover. |
| A．The special taste of the salt. | B．A thicker middle layer of salt. |
| C．More water in the wells. | D．A quicker process of making salt. |
9 . When lightning caused fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the fire spread quickly. Mild fires strike coastal redwood (红杉) forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark (树皮), up to about 30 centimetres thick at the base, which contains acids. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames. But this time flames shot through the top of 100-metre-tall trees, burning the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree expert at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”
Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The survivors use long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds (芽) that had been lying dormant (休眠的) under the bar k for centuries.
“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with big fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could cope with the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate environment.
The fire in 2020 was so intense that even the top branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize (光合作用) went up in smoke along with their pine needles. Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates (碳水化合物), which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Although the redwoods have sprouted (长出) new growth, Peltier and other forest experts wonder how the trees will cope with far less energy from photosynthesis, given that it will be years before they grow as many needles as they had before the fire. “They’re alive, but I would be a little concerned for them in the future.”
1. What’s special about this big fire for coastal redwood forests in 2020?| A．It burnt the top of the trees. | B．It was very close to the last fire. |
| C．It resisted burning effectively. | D．It caused relatively minor damage. |
| A．Sugars protected their barks. | B．Energy reserves promoted the growth of buds. |
| C．They got used to hot climate. | D．They took in much carbon to resist fire. |
| A．Unpredictable disasters. | B．Changeable climate. |
| C．Terrible environment. | D．Uncontrollable fires. |
| A．Their tissues can’t be repaired. | B．They can’t save energy anymore. |
| C．Their energy saved is not sufficient. | D．They grow too slowly. |
Tibetan antelopes are very graceful animals,
