1 . If you look at the dynamic “Global Temperatures” map on NASA’s website, you can see the historic temperature change over time across the planet as the timeline goes from 1880 to the modern day. By 2019, the entire planet is in red, orange, and yellow colors, indicating temperatures much higher than the historical average in every country and human inhabitance.

If the timeline went to 2023, the map would look even worse. That’s because the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever, according to ocean monitors. July was the hottest month in recorded history. Next July could be worse. Unless we do something quickly, we face dealing with more and more dangerous and expensive natural disasters in the future.

Forest fires sent smoke from Canada across the North American continent, causing New York City to have the worst air quality in its recorded history. Heavy rainstorms fell on Vermont and the Northeastern United States in just a couple of days in the middle of July, which exceeded the amount that area would usually receive in two months and caused extreme damage to homes and businesses. Around the same time, flash flooding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — north of Philadelphia — killed nearly a dozen people.

Erich Fischer, a researcher specializing in climate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is concerned that natural disasters could get much worse in the future—and in ways we cannot predict. He called for a “strike for climate justice,” which actually took place on Sept. 15, 2023. “The strategy needs to be twofold (双重的) . We need to decrease carbon emissions as much as realistically possible. That is already happening with people using electric cars and other green technologies. At the same time, we also need to find ways to predict the risk of natural disasters ahead of time,” said Erich Fischer.

3 . Elmer Whitaker sighed as he looked over his muddy crops. A terrible ________ had swept through his farm the night before, and his crops were now covered in ________ and destroyed. His neighbor, a kind young man named Thomas, ________ to offer his help.

"What a disaster, “Whitaker said.” My whole family has always survived on the harvests of this field. I feel ________ and don't know what to do now.

Thomas calmed him down and thought for a moment. “I see this not as a disaster but as an ________ ,” he said. Whitaker looked at him ________. “How can it be?” he asked. Thomas smiled ________, “Now you have a chance to try something new. You’ve always grown beans and cabbages. Why not try planting ________ crops that will also fit in this soil? You can diversify and therefore ________ your farm once again.”

Elmer Whitaker considered this. Thomas was right-he had become set in his ways. This disaster could push him to make his farm ________ and sustainable in a new way. “You have ________ me,” Whitaker said. He clapped Thomas on the back. “Thank you for showing me the opportunity in this difficulty. ”

And so Whitaker ________ new crops and soon, the farm was full of life again. Farmers from neighboring towns were ________ with the wonder of Whitaker’s fields, and they began to ________ their crops as well. Elmer Whitaker’s farm has become a ________ of adaptability and hope, telling everyone that in every storm, there is a chance for new growth.

4 . For the past 13 years, Martin Burrows has been working as a long-distance truck driver. Spending up to five nights a week on the road can be a lonely business, leaving him with plenty of time to notice his surroundings. “I kept seeing more rubbish everywhere and it was getting on my nerves. I decided I had to do something about it,” he says. One day, he stopped his vehicle, took out a trash bag and started picking up the garbage. The satisfaction after clearing a small area was remarkable.

Before his time on the road, Burrows spent over two decades in the military as a vehicle driver. His service saw him stationed throughout Europe and also on tours in Afghanistan. After returning to civilian life, he was diagnosed with PTSD (创伤后应激障碍) and had a mental health crisis in 2017. His involvement in fundraising for Help for Heroes led him to meet a man who used model-building as a distraction from PTSD. Burrows realized that his act of roadside cleanup had a similar calming effect on his mental well-being.

By 2019, Burrows had begun using his free time on the road to regularly clean up garbage. A passerby encouraged him to set up a Facebook group, which he called Truckers Cleaning Up Britain. “I was worried I’d be the laughing stock of my town for putting videos and photos up of me cleaning but people started to join,” he says. “I was amazed. The local council stepped in and gave me litter-picking supplies and we’re up to almost 3,000 members now.”

Since truckers are so often on the move, the Facebook page acts as a means of raising awareness rather than a platform for organizing cleanups. Burrows expressed his intention to continue the cleanup efforts as long as his physical condition allowed, as he still found joy in the process.

6 . A United Nations report found the ozone layer (臭氧层) is slowly recovering, more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing ozone-consuming chemicals. The ozone layer, a blanket of gas that exists between 10km and 50km above Earth’s surface, protects the planet from the sun’s powerful radiation.

“We see things getting better,” said Paul Newman, co-chair of the UN team that examines the health of the ozone layer every four years. The global average amount of ozone 30km high in the atmosphere won’t be back to 1980 levels until about 2040, the report said. And it won’t be back to normal in the Arctic until 2045.In Antarctica, where the ozone layer is so thin that there’s a big hole, it won’t be fully fixed until 2066, the report said.

The global effort to recover the ozone hole came out of a 1987 agreement called the Montreal Protocol. Professor Petteri Taalas said the recovering of the ozone layer showed what could be achieved when the world worked together. “Ozone action sets an example for climate action,” Professor Taalas said.

There were signs of recovering in the last report on the ozone layer four years ago but the improvements were only slight. “Those numbers of recovery have solidified a lot,” Mr. Newman said. Mr. Newman added the two main chemicals that damage the ozone layer—chlorine (氯) and bromine (溴)—were now in lower levels in the atmosphere. Chlorine levels were down 11.5 per cent since peaking in 1993 and bromine, which is more damaging to the ozone layer but is at lower levels in the air, dropped 14.5 per cent since its 1999 peak.

UN environment program director Inger Andersen has previously said the recovering of the ozone hole was “saving two million people every year from skin cancer”.

7 . Levon Biss was looking at insects from his garden through a microscope he bought for his son. For fun, they unintentionally placed an insect under the lens (镜片). “It is amazingly beautiful!” they both screamed.

The father had been making a career taking photographs for advertisements. But that experience gave him a new direction. Around the world, insect populations are in decline because of habitat loss and climate change. Biss thought that if people could see what he saw through his son’s microscope, they would care more about protecting insects.

So Biss turned to macrophotography: taking close-up pictures of small things, like flowers or bugs. His work has attracted attention not just for its unusual beauty. It also raises awareness about the need for conservation.

In 2016, Biss showed his first insect project, Microsculpture. The term refers to the features of an insect’s exoskeleton, or outer shell, which develops over time as the bug adapts to its environment.

Biss’s pictures capture the insects in all their microscopic details. Then he blows up the images until the insects become larger than life, some of them eight feet tall. But each image takes weeks to make. He uses a digital camera with a microscope lens. The camera is fixed on a computerized track, which allows Biss to take a shot, then move the camera by seven microns (微米) — a distance equals to about 1/10 the thickness of a human hair — for the next shot. In the end, Biss might take 10,000 shots of a bug. A computer combines these small pictures into a single image.

Biss’s latest exhibition is Extinct and Endangered at the American Museum of Natural History. He selected bugs that were extinct or endangered, hoping his photographs would serve as a better purpose. “I communicate visually,” he says, “The way I work is through pictures. But I think it’s my duty to shake things up and get people to pay attention.”

8 . Two environmental groups want a major soft drink giant to be pulled out of the world’s largest climate conference over plastics concerns, arguing the material has become “the new coal”.

Just Zero and Beyond Plastics, two US-based groups, called on the United Nations Climate Change Conference to cancel Coca-Cola’ s status as a sponsor of this year’s COP 27 on Wednesday. They believed that the soft drink manufacturer’s role in the event is undermining the global fight against climate change and conflicts with the efforts to bring down emissions.

“COP 27 is supposed to focus on solutions to the serious climate crisis.” said Judith Enck, who heads Beyond Plastics, “Instead, we’re allowing it to be a stage for company greenwashing.”

She was joined in her remarks by Just Zero State Policy Director Peter Blair, who said the company’s sponsorship of COP 27 “makes it hard to see this meeting as anything more than a performative act.”

Coca-Cola has repeatedly emphasized its recycling commitments and investments, which include plans to achieve net-zero emissions by midcentury. But an annual audit of corporate brands by Break Free From Plastic, an international coalition, has notably named Coca-Cola “the world’s top plastic polluter” for four years running.

Critics charge that its pollution footprint speaks for itself. Coca-Cola has said that it is responsible for around 3 million metric tons of plastic packaging, an inevitable (不可避免的) waste product. Such numbers, advocates argue, should disqualify the company from COP 27 sponsorship.

“By pouring millions of dollars into sponsoring COP 27, Coca-Cola is making a shameful play to give the appearance of environmental responsibility.” said Blair. “But behind the scenes, Coca Cola launched campaigns to block improvements in real recycling and resist calls to transition away from single-use plastic bottles to reusable and refillable glass containers.

    1    (handle) the widespread use and environmental damage caused by single-use plastics,   a Chinese research institute has proposed developing new technologies    2    using a more eco-friendly substitute-bamboo. The proposal,    3    (announce)on Thursday by the International Centre for Bamboo and Rattan, comes after the Bamboo as a Substitute for Plastic Initiative introduced at the High-level Dialogue on Global Development held     4     (virtual) in Beijing in June.

Fei Benhua, director of the International Centre for Bamboo and Rattan, said bamboo-straw manufacturing technology could be realized and used to replace plastic straws on     5    large scale,    6    (add) that using bamboo to make straws is just the beginning.

The world makes nearly 400 million metric tons of plastic every year for use in packaging, construction, catering and other    7    (purpose), and China’s delivery industry annually     8    (produce) about 1.8 million tons of plastic waste. A sharp rise in single-use plastics,     9    are produced almost entirely from fossil fuels, has damaged the well-being of the planet. Bamboo, on the other hand, can be used to produce cups, straws, paper and packaging, while being     10    (recycle) and environmentally friendly.

10 . Ngoc Anh knows the value of trees. Years ago, he worked as a logger. He cut trees down illegally and sold them for money.

But very heavy rainfall and floods increasingly damaged his community in the central province of Quang Binh. The 36-year-old Ngoc started learning about the climate and natural crises. He changed his job and became involved in tourism and environmental conservation.

Now, Ngoc Anh is one of 250 former loggers to receive training from a tourism company. He works as a travel guide. He usually leads foreign tourists through forests and into some of the world’s largest caves in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park.

“Whenever I saw a large tree, my head used to calculate how tall the tree was and how to cut it into logs of different sizes,” Ngoc Anh said. “But now when I see such a tree, I will tell the tour group how valuable it is because there aren’t many left.”

Global Forest Watch estimated that the country had lost about 3 million hectares of forest from 2001 to 2020. That was a 20 percent diminution in 20 years. The losses were mostly driven by logging.

In 2007, the government started taking more measures to prevent illegal logging, which has helped slow the rate of deforestation.

Together with a park official, Ngoc Anh and other tour guides help guard the trails to keep poachers (偷猎者) away. They remove animal traps and clean up any waste.

Nowadays, Ngoc works for less than half the money he earned before as a logger. But he hopes to earn more as the tourism recovers.