2 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well underway. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.

Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles reveals a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries, containing almost 300 pounds of lead in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leak into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable but deadly business.

Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an extraordinary scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world — and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare — causes one of the biggest environmental crises in the world yet receives little attention.

The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5. 5 million people per year, which would make it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is extraordinary, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.

But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that is fixable with some attention and a relatively modest financial investment. Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the dreadful effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.

1. How does the author describe the lead problem in paragraph 2?

A．By making a comparison.	B．By analyzing hidden causes.
C．By listing convincing numbers.	D．By explaining its working principle.

2. What can we learn from the text?

A．Lead enters rich countries in various ways.

B．Lead poisoning may make poor societies poorer.

C．Exposure to lead doesn’t necessarily harm someone.

D．Lead leaking has caused great panic in both countries.

3. What can be done to solve lead poisoning in developing countries?

A．Fixing these used batteries.	B．Putting certain effort and money.
C．Prohibiting the illegal use of lead.	D．Reducing the cost of recycling lead.

4. Which of the following is the best title for the text?

A．The Impacts of Lead Poisoning on Human Health

B．The Outcomes of Using Electric Vehicles

C．The Ways to Solve Lead Problem

D．The Global Lead Poisoning Crisis

6 . Dry lightning(雷电)can still be harmful even when conditions aren’t so dry, said a study published in Geophysical Research Letters last month. Dry lightning during little to no rainfall was previously thought to cause wildfire danger only with less than 2.5mm of rain in a day. A Washington State University-led study of wildfires in the US West found dry lightning caused wildfires despite up to 7.7 mm of rain.

“The rainfall amounts we recorded should help provide a better understanding of just how much rain can cause a fire risk,” said Dmitri Kalashnikov, lead author of the study.

The researchers analyzed(分析)cases on more than 4,600 naturally caused fires from 2015 to 2020. They matched 3,726 of those to the lightning strikes that likely started them with the help of National Lightning Detection Network.

The study found that 15.3% of those were holdover fires which burn without smoke, bringing about over a hundred fires each year. Analyzing the rainfall amounts around the time of the lightning strikes showed greater rainfall than previously thought among the earlier found fires ranging from 1.7 mm to 4.6 mm.

While humans still cause most fires either by accident or on purpose, lightning-caused wildfires burn the most areas. Nearly 70% of the wildfire-burned land in the West was from lightning-caused fires according to the study. For example, the largest wildfire burn area in California history took place in August 2020 after dry lightning caused many wildfires at once.

Dry lightning can also start wildfires in places that are hard for firefighters to reach. This study found the places where holdover fires happened repeatedly were in the forested mountains of the Southwest as well as the middle and southern Rocky Mountains. Holdover fires cause the problem because they are so hard to notice.

1. The new study found dry lightning can still cause wildfires with a daily rainfall of __________.

A．7.7 mm

B．8.0mm

C．9.4mm

D．10.2mm

2. What is the third paragraph mainly about?

A．The finding of the research.	B．The number of the cases.
C．The process of the study.	D．The designers of the test.

3. Why did holdover fires happen repeatedly in the forested mountains?

A．They are difficult to notice.	B．The fire service is short-handed.
C．Campers often smoke there.	D．The locals fail to call firefighters.

4. From which is the text probably taken?

A．A history textbook.	B．A science magazine.
C．A course plan.	D．A book review.

7 . A Swedish company came up with a creative and cheap way to clean up its streets: to hire birds. Crows, especially, have been trained to collect cigarette butts (烟头) off roadways and put them in a machine that rewards the clever birds.

The pilot project called Corvid Cleaning comes from The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation and aims to lower the cost of street cleaning in the city of Sodertalje.

Founder Christian Gunther-Hansen thought crows would be the best choice because they are very clever. “They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance for them to learn from each other,” he told Swedish news agency TT. “At the same time, they have a lower risk of eating any rubbish by mistake”.

The birds are trained through a step-by-step process to pick up rubbish and place it into a machine that offers them food.

Tomas Thernstrom, a waste expert for the Sodertalje Municipality, said one of the most interesting things about the project was that crows could be taught to pick up cigarette butts but humans can’t learn not to throw them on the ground in the first place.

1. Why did the Swedish company prefer to choose crows instead of other birds to collect cigarette butts?

A．Because crows are clever.

B．Because crows like eating cigarette butts.

C．Because there are plenty of crows in Sweden.

D．Because people there are interested in crows.

2. What’s the meaning of the underlined word “rewards”?

A．punishes

B．discovers

C．searches

D．awards

3. What’s the purpose of the pilot project Corvid Cleaning?

A．To train crows to collect cigarette butts.

B．To set up the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation.

C．To lower the costs of street cleaning.

D．To make the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation famous.

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．It’s difficult to train crows to pick up rubbish on the ground.

B．It’s difficult to stop people from throwing away rubbish everywhere.

C．It’s interesting to train crows to pick up rubbish on the ground.

D．People who throw away rubbish everywhere are not as clever as crows.

9 . The sound of leaves underfoot is usually associated with autumn. But this year, it was the soundtrack to summer walks across Europe, as maximum temperature records fell and the continent suffered its worst drought in 500 years.

The drought had been building for months after a dry winter and spring, but it was worse by a series of fierce heatwaves over the summer, says Sim on Parry at the UK Centre for Ecology &Hydrology. In France, nuclear power plants were forced to reduce their output as low river flows meant there wasn’t enough water to cool their reactors. Water levels on the Rhine river dropped so far that ships loaded with goods in Germany and the Netherlands, including coal and petrol, were unable to travel. Besides, farmers saw crops wither(枯萎). Harvests of soya-beans and sunflower seeds were predicted to fall by between12 and 16 percent.

This was a crisis caused in large part by climate change, says Richard Allan, who is also at the University of Reading. “Warming due to human-caused climate change made this event much more extreme,” he says. Studies suggest that the drought was made at least 20 times more likely by global warming.

However, that missing rainfall ends up somewhere, says Peter Gleick at the Pacific Institute in California. This year’s disastrous floods in countries including Australia and Pakistan are the “flip side” of the droughts, he says. “The droughts and the extreme floods that we are seeing are tied together, and are part and parcel of the broader challenge of climate change,” says Gleick.

In the wake of a drought, it is critical that nature gets time to recover. But for Europe, this was the second severe drought in four years. “My grass has already recovered from this summer... but if I had a tree that survived it, that would take 10 years or more to get back to a normal state,” says Niko Wanders at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

1. What is the author’s purpose in mentioning the sound?

A．To show the seasonal cycle.	B．To describe the beauty of autumn.
C．To emphasize the dry weather.	D．To clarify trees’ survival mode.

2. What is paragraph 2 of the text mainly about?

A．The reduction of river water.	B．The duration(持续)of the drought.
C．The causes of various losses.	D．The consequences of the disaster.

3. Which is probably the best way to tackle climate change according to the text?

A．Expanding climate monitoring.	B．Improving human behavior.
C．Promoting natural restoration.	D．Balancing water distribution.

4. What is the author’s attitude toward the climate change trend in Europe?

A．Conservative.

B．Unclear.

C．Concerned.

D．Hopeful.

10 . Want to help fight global warming? Take off your tie, says the Italian health ministry. It has urged employers to let their staff dress casually at work in the summer so that the air conditioning can be turned down.

“Taking your tie off immediately lowers the body temperature by 2 or 3 degrees centigrade,” the ministry said in a statement. “Allowing a more sensible use of air conditioning brings about electricity savings and protects the environment.”

It called on all public and private offices to let employees wear no tie during heatwaves like the one that has brought Africa-like temperatures to many parts of Italy this week.

The move reacts to a similar action from Italy’s biggest oil group, ENI, which told its staff earlier this month they need not wear a tie at work. The tie makers, however, were left hot under the collar.

“Italy confirms (证实) that it is a strange country,” Flavio Cima said angrily in a letter to financial daily IL Sole~24ORE under the headline: “I, tie maker, am responsible for global warming.”

“We can now happily continue with our lifestyle, using cars, consuming fuel, heating and cooling our homes at leisure. On one condition: we should not wear a tie while we do so,” he wrote.

“I should have listened to my friends and become an oil producer instead.”

Italy is one of the European Union’s worst performers on the pollution front and is among the EU countries expected to exceed (超出) their greenhouse gas emission (排放) targets.

1. What’s the purpose of the move of taking off ties?

A．To dress casually.	B．To fight global warming.
C．To keep the body temperature.	D．To improve working conditions.

2. Who first encouraged employees to take off ties?

A．ENI.	B．Flavio Cima.
C．A financial daily.	D．The Italian health ministry.

3. What does the underlined part “hot under the collar” in paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Angry.	B．Speechless.
C．Delighted.	D．Puzzled.

4. What can we know about Flavio Cima?

A．He stands by the oil group.	B．He agrees with the ministry.
C．He admits his responsibility.	D．He argues against taking off ties.