1 . Earth Hour is an annual event, asking you to switch off all your lights for one hour in positive change for our planet. It is organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature and it’s a big event usually at the end of March every year.
Earth Hour started in Australia in 2007, when 2.2 million people in Sydney turned off all unnecessary lights for an hour.
It’s true that switching off the lights for just one hour saves only a little power.
Why is it in March? At the end of March in the northern and southern hemispheres (半球), the days and the nights are almost of the same length.
A.But this is only the beginning |
B.The logo of Earth Hour is “60+” |
C.On this evening, people “go dark” |
D.There are many events people can join in |
E.Since then it has grown into an international event |
F.The idea is to raise the awareness of environmental issues |
G.At this time, the sunset time is similar in both hemispheres |
2 . A NASA climate research scientist, Cynthia Rosenzweig, who has spent much of her career explaining how global food production must adapt to a changing climate, was awarded the World Food Prize on Thursday.
“We basically cannot solve climate change unless we address the issues of the greenhouse gas emissions from the food system, and we cannot provide food security for all unless we work really hard to develop adaptable agricultural systems,” she told The Associated Press in an interview.
Rosenzweig, who describes herself as a climate impact scientist, grew up in Scarsdale, New York, a suburban area that she said led her to seek out life in the country. Later, she moved to Italy, and developed a passion for agriculture. After returning to the United States, she focused her education on agronomy (农学).
She worked as a graduate student at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the early 1980s, when global climate models were beginning to show the effects of human-generated carbon dioxide on the global climate. As the only team member studying agronomy, she researched the impact on food production and has been working since then to answer those questions.
Rosenzweig’s work led to the Environmental Protection Agency’s first prediction of the effects of climate change on the nation’s agricultural regions in the agency’s assessment of the potential effects of climate change on the United States in 1988. She was the first to bring climate change to the attention of the American Society of Agronomy and she organized the first sessions on the issue in the 1980s. The research organization she founded, AgMIP, develops adaptation packages, which could include the use of more drought-tolerant seeds and improved water management practices.
Even the largest agribusiness corporations have shown a willingness to listen. Some models her colleagues have developed show how businesses could be effected by climate change and how they have a role to play in reducing the impact on climate.
“It’s really a global partnership of all the global food systems to come together to restrain climate change and maintain the food security for the planet,” she said.
1. What can we learn from paragraph 2?A.Plants can hardly cause greenhouse gas emissions. |
B.Issues of food security will result in climate change. |
C.Improving food systems will help address climate change. |
D.Some adaptable agricultural systems have been put into use. |
A.Modest. | B.Devoted. | C.Adaptable. | D.Warm-hearted. |
A.Rosenzweig’s contributions. | B.Rosenzweig’s challenges. |
C.Rosenzweig’s expectations. | D.Rosenzweig’s backgrounds. |
A.The models. | B.The practices. |
C.The colleagues. | D.The businesses. |