1 . If you’re aiming to cut back on meat and you want to build muscle strength, you’re not alone. Now, a new study finds that swapping red and processed meat for plant protein a few times a week leads to better health and lowers carbon emission.
“We found that there was an increase in life expectancy of approximately nine months linked to 50% reduction of red meat consumption,” says Olivia Auclair. “When it comes to diet changes to improve health and climate, we don’t need to go to major extremes or completely wipe out foods from our diet.”
But sudden changes can be jarring. For a long time Kyle Backlund had been in the habit of eating meat at many meals, and when he cut back, he felt a drop in his energy level and experienced some tiredness and weakness. When he realized he needed to increase his protein intake, his wife Stephany Marreel — who does most of the cooking and also eats a plant-based diet — found a solution by adding tofu, vegetables, and grains. Kyle says he is now feeling good on his plant-focused diet.
People can get all the protein and nutrients they need from a plant-based diet as long as they do a little planning, says Dr. Christopher Gardner, a food scientist. “If someone is consuming a reasonable variety, meeting protein needs from plant sources is no problem,” Gardner says.
There’s an environmental argument for shifting diet as well, Gardner says. Livestock (家畜) require lots of land and water. Beef production requires 20 times more land and produces 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions, per gram of protein, compared to beans. If people in the U.S. swapped beef for beans, this one switch alone could get the U.S. about halfway to its greenhouse gas reduction goals.
1. What should you do to improve health and climate according to Olivia Auclair?| A．Change your meat-based diet a little. | B．Give up red meat in your meals. |
| C．Become a devoted plant-protein lover. | D．Take up proper ways of cooking. |
| A．Admirable. | B．Upsetting. | C．Meaningful. | D．Rewarding. |
| A．By exercising more. | B．By consuming less red meat. |
| C．By eating various foods. | D．By having whole grain. |
| A．Cattle are the main source of greenhouse gases. |
| B．Americans are reducing greenhouse gas emission. |
| C．Shifting diet can be beneficial to the planet. |
| D．Bean production requires lots of land and water. |
Leo and Matt, both aged 16, are best friends who shared a passion for environmental sustainability. They were both students at a bustling high school in the heart of the city, a school that was infamous for its morning and afternoon traffic jams. The narrow streets leading to the school were always clogged (堵塞) with cars, buses, and bicycles, causing a great deal of inconvenience and pollution.
“Look what we are suffering every day!” complained Leo. “Isn’t there a solution to the problem?” Matt sighed.
They decided to take matters into their own hands and find a solution to the sticky problem. Initially, they made some speeches, distributed leaflets and volunteered to relieve the traffic congestion (拥堵), trying to persuade some parents to park their cars a little farther away the school and not to use cars too often. But two weeks passed, there was nothing better. Then they realized it was no easy work to deal with the trouble. They needed more hands for help and a well-thought-out plan for it.
They first gathered ten schoolmates who shared the same ambition. Then they started to conduct a thorough survey to understand the root causes of the traffic congestion. They interviewed students, teachers, and parents, as well as observed the traffic patterns during different times of the day. They learned that the majority of the congestion was caused by parents dropping off and picking up their children, as well as the lack of sufficient parking spaces.
Armed with this information, the team designed a detailed plan. They proposed the creation of a carpool system for students, encouraging them to share rides to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. They also suggested dedicated drop-off and pick-up zones, clearly marked with signage, to help streamline the process.
To further reduce congestion, they advocated for the construction of bike racks (架子) and encourage students to cycle to school. They even proposed a rewards system for those who chose sustainable modes of transportation.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
With their plan in hand, Leo and Matt presented it to the school authorities.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A few months passing by, the school traffic congestion had significantly improved.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________From pocket parks to forest parks, China is bringing nature closer to urban life. From 2021 to 2022, Shanghai has transformed 62 woodlands into leisure spaces,
Parks can do good for the environment too. Take Beijing’s Central Green Forest Park as an example. The park
As cities in China become
4 . More than 30 years ago, Jadav Payeng started planting trees on a barren sandbar (贫瘠的沙洲) near his birthplace in India’s Assam region. That day, the then-16-year-old noticed many snakes washed up on the sandbar after a flood. They were dying due to heat exposure at a rapid rate. “How can I help them?” Then he had an idea: Trees can provide shade for them!
Jadav lives on an island, Majuli, which is in the middle of the Brahmaputra River. It begins at the base of the Himalayas, at the meeting of a fan of rivers that drain (流走) snowmelt. At one time, villages upstream had redirected the river, creating more forceful currents around the island and carrying away the soil, thus damaging the natural habitats of its wildlife. As a consequence, much of the island became barren sand, and an entire community was at risk of being displaced.
Jadav also noticed that nobody was doing anything about it besides watching their part of the world disappear. So, he started to put his idea into action — every day, one or two or three at a time. He took notes of how they grew, harvested their seeds, grew saplings (树苗) in his hut and planted before going off to work.
Now that once-barren sandbar is a 1,360-acre forest, home to many animals: deer, Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceros and even a group of 100 elephants that visit every year. There are now native grasses that have taken root in the shade and varieties of native trees grown from seeds that have washed ashore. But most importantly, the island that is also home to a few hundred people is holding its own against the bad weather. Standing beside one of the first trees he planted 30 years ago, Jadav tells us: “It’s a little thing, something anyone can do.”
1. What was Jadav’s original aim to plant trees?| A．To save the snakes from heat exposure. | B．To protect the snakes from extinction. |
| C．To produce materials to stop flooding. | D．To use the leaves to create more shades. |
| A．Villagers’ ignorance of ecology. | B．Villagers’ redirecting the river. |
| C．The extreme weather conditions. | D．Loss of wildlife’s natural habitats. |
| A．Frank and learned. | B．Subjective yet reliable. |
| C．Determined and careful. | D．Smart but hot-tempered. |
| A．What the forest means to the wildlife. | B．How ecology benefits the human kind. |
| C．How Jadav feels about his simple deeds. | D．What difference Jadav’s efforts have made. |
5 . In 1999, Giuliana Furci, founder and founding director of the Fungi (真菌) Foundation, developed a deep interest in fungi. They were everywhere, and the 20-year-old took particular joy in the variety of mushrooms: small and button-shaped; tall and umbrella-like; round with red caps topped with white flakes. Some were commonly found in people’s diets, for they were rich in nutrients such as vitamin, fiber, minerals and protein.
But Furci also quickly realized that these fungi went largely ignored in Chile, where there were few guidebooks and an almost total lack of policies and resources to protect them from over-harvesting and other human activities. Determined to correct this, Furci wrote a field guide and set up the Fungi Foundation—a nonprofit dedicated to fungi conservation. In her guide, special attention went to the role of fungi in the ecosystem.
“Life on the planet wouldn’t exist without fungi,” said Greg Mueller, a mushroom conservation expert. “Because of their relationship with forests and trees, we can’t survive without fungi. In terms of the health of the planet, they’re incredibly important to humans and the overall ecosystem.” Fungi can break down plants and animals, thus cycling nutrients and increasing their availability in the soil. They are also important contributors to the soil carbon stock through the same process. What’s more, fungi have been found to help degrade (降解) various pollutants, such as plastic. And mycelium (菌丝体), which is the root structure of mushrooms, is now being used to replace unsustainable materials, such as plastic and animal-based products.
Because of these, exploration of fungi was expanded at a faster pace. However, some were already listed as critically endangered. In 2010, Furci took an even bigger step—with other environmental nonprofits, she put forward a proposal for the government to systematically assess how large new developments such as housing, dams, and highways affect fungi. In 2012, a law was passed and Chile became the first country in the world to protect fungi by law.
1. What can we learn about Furci from the first two paragraphs?| A．She enjoyed collecting mushrooms. |
| B．She was fond of cooking mushrooms. |
| C．She worried about the situation of fungi. |
| D．She had a habit of writing field guidebooks. |
| A．The life on earth without fungi. |
| B．The importance of fungi on earth. |
| C．The relations between trees and fungi. |
| D．The practical uses of fungi in the future. |
| A．By writing free instructions on plants. |
| B．By starting a non-profit ecotourism company. |
| C．By raising awareness of the importance of fungi. |
| D．By passing laws to ban over-harvesting mushrooms. |
| A．Ground-breaking. | B．Debatable. |
| C．Romantic. | D．Unmatched. |
6 . There are two distinctive types of electric buses making their way along Nanjing Xi Lu, one of Shanghai’s busiest roads. The first is a fleet of blue trolleybuses that serve bus route number 20, a line set up by a British-run transport company in 1928. They use poles to receive electricity from wires overhead and have kept the route running in this way for nearly a century. But while the historic electric buses are a reminder of Europe’s past technological innovation, the new buses traveling alongside them are symbols of China’s contemporary net-zero ambition. These modern electric buses powered by lithium batteries (锂电池) , were introduced in Shanghai in 2014. They offer a smoother ride, especially during starts and stops. Widely used across China, these buses are key to the country’s EV transition and are influencing the global shift towards green transportation.
The most recent data available shows that China in 2018 was still the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the global transport sector, responsible for 11%, and behind only the United States, which accounted for 21%. After around two decades of government support, China now boasts the world’s largest market for e-buses, making up more than 95% of global stock. At the end of 2022, China’s Ministry of Transport announced that more than three-quarters (77% or 542, 600) of all urban buses in the country were new energy vehicles. The speed of this transition was remarkable.
So far, however, the Chinese cities with the most successful e-bus introduction — such as Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai — all have moderate weather and are relatively flat. To take its e-bus campaign to the next level, China faces challenges. For one thing, it is difficult to bring fleets to cities such as Hong Kong, which — like London — have double-deckers. These two-storeyed vehicles are “very hard” to electrify, because they are heavier, use more energy, and so need bigger batteries, reducing the number of passengers they can carry. Cold weather is a problem, too, as it can make a battery’s charging time longer and its range shorter. The reason China has not achieved 100% electrification for its buses is its northern regions, which have cold winters, says Xue Lulu, a transportation expert at the World Resources Institute China.
1. How does the author describe the two types of electric buses in the first paragraph?| A．By contrasting their historical significance and technological advancements. |
| B．By highlighting their roles in protecting the environment and lasting use. |
| C．By focusing merely on their technical details and performance. |
| D．By explaining their operational challenges and requirements. |
| A．The global impact of carbon dioxide emissions. |
| B．The progress of China in reducing CO2 emissions. |
| C．The different emission levels of China and the USA. |
| D．The need for more government support in e-bus market. |
| A．Poor winter weather conditions. | B．Lack of transportation experts. |
| C．Short charging time of the battery. | D．Heavier and bigger bus bodies. |
| A．Worklife. | B．Culture. | C．Travel. | D．Earth. |
7 . If you haven’t taken down your Christmas tree yet, no worries. Here’s an idea: have you ever thought about eating it?
Julia Georgallis has some recipes. Over the last five years, she’s been preparing carefully for Christmas dinners in London with a friend. “How can we make something sustainable around Christmas time? What can we cat? What’s the thing that no one eats and that somehow represents Christmas? And then we just decided on Christmas trees,” Georgallis says.
She turned it into a book, How to Eat Your Christmas Tree. And her idea is that it’s not that odd. Some people enjoy Christmas wine. Some people like to go shopping and most people can get behind saving the planet.
“What I aimed for this book to do, really, was to get people thinking about the odd ways that they can be more sustainable in their daily lives,” Georgallis says.
“Eating Christmas trees isn’t going to save any animals in danger or freeze any ice caps. But if we start to think about everything that we do as a whole, then that builds up, you know, and that helps,” she says.
Most of the recipes in her book use the needles from the tree. “You’d use the needles like a herb,” she says.
“And different Christmas trees kind of have different flavors. They’re quite subtle, but they do have different flavors. So fir (冷杉), which is a really popular choice of Christmas trees, gives people better feeling and atmosphere. And then you have pine, which is a little bit more delicate.”
A warning: some Christmas trees are poisonous if eaten — like cypress and cedars. And be sure your tree wasn’t sprayed with pesticides (杀虫剂) and other chemicals. “So if you have any doubt that your Christmas tree might not have been grown to eat, then maybe don’t eat it,” Georgallis says.
And, of course, don’t even think about eating your artificial tree!
So, with all those instructions and with the appropriate tree, what could we cook? Well, Georgallis’ book has all sorts of recipes for different foods and drinks. Let’s open up the world’s cuisine with simple ingredients!
1. What’s the main purpose of Georgallis’ book?| A．To tell people not to buy real trees. | B．To inspire people to be more eco-friendly. |
| C．To teach people how to enjoy Christmas wine. | D．To encourage people to throw away odd traditions. |
| A．Artificial trees can also be cooked. |
| B．Eating Christmas trees does good to saving animals. |
| C．Different trees have different features and tastes. |
| D．All Christmas trees have their own ways to be cooked. |
| A．Tips for choosing Christmas trees. | B．Warnings for cooking Christmas meals. |
| C．Comparison between real and artificial trees. | D．Recipes for different foods with Christmas trees. |
| A．A diary. | B．A novel. | C．A scientific report. | D．A lifestyle magazine. |
8 . People have come to understand the enormous impacts-beneficial as well as harmful- plastics have on human lives and the environment. As polymer (聚合物) scientists committed to inventing sustainable solutions for real-world problems, we set out to tackle the issue of plastic waste by rethinking the way polymers are designed so we could make plastics with recyclability built right in.
Everyday items including milk jug, grocery bags, and takeout containers are made from a class of polymers called polyolefins. These plastics are really durable (耐用的) because the chemical bonds in those polymers are extremely stable. In a world set up for disposable (一次性的) items, durability is no longer a design feature but rather a design drawback. Imagine if half the plastics used today were recyclable through twice as many processes as they are now. Also conventional recycling requires careful sorting of all the collected materials, which can be challenging with so many different plastics. For example, separating paper from metal doesn’t require complex technology, but sorting a container from a milk jug of a different polyolefin is difficult to do without the occasional mistake.
In a study published in Science in October 2023, we described a series of polymers with only two building blocks-one soft polymer and one hard polymer-that behave like polyolefins but could be chemically recycled. Connecting two different polymers multiple times until they form a single, long molecule (分子) creates what’s called a multiblock polymer. By changing how much of each polymer type goes into the multiblock polymer, our team produced a wide range of materials with properties that covered all polyolefin types.
Using the same strategy but by adding hydrogen, we could disconnect the polymers back into their building blocks and easily separate them to use again. When we made new polymers out of these recycled plastics, they performed just as well as the original materials even after several rounds of chemical recycling. So we were able to create materials with similar properties of the plastics the world relies on. We believe this work is a step toward more sustainable plastics.
1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about concerning plastics?| A．Their multiple uses. | B．Their chemical properties. |
| C．Their recycling challenges. | D．Their classification criteria. |
| A．mixing building blocks with long molecules |
| B．integrating chemicals into the two polymers |
| C．combining two different multiblock polymers |
| D．adjusting the percentage of the two polymers |
| A．They are made from sustainable materials. |
| B．They can be recycled by adding hydrogen. |
| C．Their reliability outperforms traditional plastics. |
| D．Their properties change with rounds of recycling. |
| A．Designing for Recycling | B．Classifying Plastic Waste |
| C．Replace Plastics with Polymers | D．Technology Creates the Future |
9 . Researchers in Australia have identified enzymes (酶) in the body of certain beetle larvae (甲虫幼虫) that can degrade or break down plastic. In a study published in Microbial Genomics, they write that these “superworms” could help reduce plastic waste in the future.
“Superworms are like mini recycling plants, cutting up the polysyrene (聚苯乙烯) with their mouths and then feeding it to the bacteria in their stomach,” said Chris Rinke from the University of Queensland in Australia. “The breakdown products from this reaction can then be used by other microbes to create high-value chemicals.”
In the study, scientists divided beetle larvae into three groups, feeding one group wheat bran, one polystyrene and one nothing. Over three weeks, they monitored their growth. “We found that superworms fed a diet of just polystyrene not only survived, but even had marginal weight gains,” said Rinke. “This suggests the worms can get energy from the polystyrene, most likely with the help of their stomach bacteria.”
On the other hand, the plastic-fed worms gained much less weight and were overall much less healthy than the bran-fed ones, though better off than the starvation group. After three weeks, some larvae were also set aside to grow into beetles, according to the study. About 93% of the bran-fed larvae formed adult worms, while about 67% of the plastic-fed larvae and 10% of the starved larvae formed adult worms.
The researchers investigated the superworm’s stomach bacteria to find the specific enzymes linked to plastic degradation, writes Fionna M. D. Samuels for Scientific American. The enzyme that degrades the polystyrene appears to live with the stomach bacteria, not the worm itself.
Polystyrene is one of the most common plastics used today. But it’s not very chemically reactive, and breaking it down with industrial recycling methods takes high heat. So, researchers have been looking for plastic-degrading enzymes and bacteria for years.
Further research will still need to be done to figure out how to employ these worms, bacteria and enzymes in recycling facilities.
1. What does Chris Rinke compare superworms to?| A．Small plants. | B．Beetle larvae. | C．Stomach bacteria. | D．High-value chemicals. |
| A．Few. | B．Tiny. | C．Obvious. | D．Normal. |
| A．The damage of plastic to life. |
| B．Possible causes of plastic pollution. |
| C．Researchers’ efforts over the years to recycle plastic. |
| D．The necessity of finding out a way to degrade plastic. |
| A．To report a new way to recycle plastic. | B．To call on people to reduce plastic waste. |
| C．To explain how larvae can degrade plastic. | D．To introduce the findings of a new research. |
10 . Back in 2007, Uruguay had a serious problem with no obvious answer: The economy was growing very fast, but there wasn’t enough energy to power the rapid
Then Ramón Méndez Galain, a physicist, started
Méndez Galain’s plan was built around two simple
To solve the problem of how to pay for all those wind farms, Méndez Galain came up with a variation on a(n)
The strategy worked
| A．decline | B．growth | C．consumption | D．program |
| A．building | B．blocking | C．repairing | D．seeking |
| A．rely on | B．find out | C．refer to | D．give up |
| A．risk | B．power | C．pollution | D．benefit |
| A．facts | B．theories | C．answers | D．principles |
| A．water | B．light | C．wind | D．ice |
| A．tended | B．undeveloped | C．protected | D．limited |
| A．break | B．put | C．send | D．turn |
| A．tool | B．software | C．image | D．approach |
| A．responsible | B．weak | C．private | D．profitable |
| A．public | B．opposite | C．rich | D．powerful |
| A．managing | B．selling | C．abandoning | D．starting |
| A．hardly | B．relatively | C．unexpectedly | D．rarely |
| A．forgotten | B．achieved | C．apologized | D．approved |
| A．income | B．food | C．supply | D．electricity |
