2 . Scientists often compare coral reefs(珊瑚礁) to underwater rainforests, yet unlike the leafy plant base of a forest, corals are animals. The soft creatures are naturally half-transparent and get their brilliant color from algae(藻类) living inside them. When corals experience stress from hot temperatures or pollution, they halt the interdependent relationship with algae, typically pushing them out and turning white. Corals are still alive when they are white, but they're at risk and many eventually die, turning dark brown.

Scientists around the world are looking for means to protect and maybe increase corals. One common option is to create more protected areas — essentially national parks in the ocean. Beyond nature preserves, some conservationists are looking to more hands-on methods. One research center in the Florida Keys is exploring a form of natural selection to keep corals remaining. The reef system in the Keys has been hit hard by climate change and pollution, which is especially tough, because corals there help support fisheries worth $ 100 million every year.

To keep the wild ecosystem alive, Erinn Muller, the center's director, and her team are harvesting samples of the corals that survived the environmental stress naturally, keeping them to make them reproduce, and then reattaching them to the reef. They have 46,000 corals on plastic frames under the sea. So far, the center has regrown over 70,000 corals from five different species on damaged reefs.

In The Bahamas, Ross Cunning, a research biologist at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, focuses on corals with genes that could make them natural candidates for restoration projects. He published a study of two Bahamian reefs, one that survived an extreme 2015 heat wave, and one that didn't. "We think their ability to deal with these higher temperatures is built into their genes," says Cunning. There's evidence of corals evolving more quickly to resist rapidly warming climate. The big question scientists need investigate, adds Gunning, is how much more heat corals can adapt to.

4 . About 12 million tons of plastic wastes are entering the oceans every year. This garbage pollutes the water, kills wildlife and breaks down into small pieces that fish and other creatures eat.

Now a group of Spanish fishermen will receive economic support to catch plastics. It is part of a new project. Carlos Martin is one of the fishermen taking part in the project. He and his partners collect the plastic in the ocean and bring it back to land every week. Martin thinks rivers carry a lot of plastics to the sea. He says his most concern is no more than that the plastics often get caught in the nets, which makes nets not work properly. They take on mud（泥）, causing the nets to break because they weigh so much.

Under the new programs, one million pounds will support ocean cleanup efforts for fishermen like Martin. The money is coming from the European Union and the Catalan government. Sergi Tudela, the General Director of Catalonia Fisheries, is responsible for the cleanup project. He said, "We are hopeful that if we are successful in this project, we can apply it to other areas in the Mediterranean（地中海）."

Government reports show that the amount of plastic wastes washing up along the Spanish coastline has grown by 65 percent in just six years. Fishing equipment makes up a large part of the about 8 to 12 million tons of plastics left in the world's oceans every year.

Martin says the fishing community now understands how big the problem is. He says, "In the past we didn't see it that way. We took the plastic garbage and threw it back into the water. I think that after a few year here we have realized the problem. Nothing is thrown into the water; we collect everything and bring it to shore.

5 . Be a Green Child

What does it mean to be green? “Green” is more than just a color.     1     Why green? Plants are green, and without them the Earth wouldn’t be such a lovely home for us human beings. What can we do? Here’s a four-step guide to being green.

Reduce It!

    2     For instance, a shorter shower means you used less water and less fuel since your house uses to run the heater that warmed up the water.

Reuse It!

Sometimes people call ours a “throwaway society”. It means that we’re a little to willing to throw away old stuff (东西) and buy new stuff.     3    .

For instance, if your baby brother becomes older and loses interest in his plastic basketball hoop (篮圈), why not give it to another family who has a little kid?

Recycle It!

Recycling has never been easier. Many communities will pick it up right in front of your house and some towns even require it. Recycled goods go to a recycling center, where they can be turned into new cans, bottles, and paper.

Enjoy It!

It’s true that rubbish and pollution are problems, but the Earth remains a huge and beautiful place that’s ready for you to explore.     4     Go for a hike, visit local nature centers and gardens, and climb up mountains.

But before you travel the globe, take a look at your own backyard. Is there a spot where you could plant a tree or put in a little fruit or vegetable garden?     5    

6 . An endangered species is a group of animals that could soon become extinct.     1     Many species are nearly extinct and could disappear off the face of the earth very soon if we don’t do anything to save them. There are many reasons why species become endangered.

Habitat destruction is the main reason why animals become endangered and this happens in two ways. When humans move into a new area, the animals’ habitat is destroyed and there is nowhere for them to live and nothing to eat because humans chop down trees and build houses and farms.     2     Chemicals in rivers and poisons on farms cause the destruction of animals’ homes and food supplies.

    3     Animals have been brought to the edge of extinction because they are killed for their highly-valued meat, fur, bones or skin, or just for sport. Overfishing has resulted in many large sea creatures like whales and sharks becoming endangered species.

So what can individuals and governments do to protect endangered species? We should take care not to pollute natural areas, and farmers or companies who destroy animal habitats should face severe financial penalties.     4     Governments can help, too, by making it against the law to hunt, fish or trade in endangered species.     5    

7 . If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America - and their Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks, their plastic waste would likely still be around four centuries later. Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world’s oceans today, waiting to be eaten by some fish or oyster, and finally perhaps by one of us.

Because plastic wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, and its production only really took off around 1950, we have a mere 9. 2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6. 9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a surprising 6. 3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin - the figure that shocked the scientists who published the numbers in 2017.

No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, the earth’s last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone’s attention with a rough estimate: between 5. 3 million and 14 million tons of plastic waste each year just come from coastal regions.

Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine( 海 洋 的 )animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly, stuck by abandoned things made of plastic. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across.

“This isn’t a problem where we don’t know what the solution is,” says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. “We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to deal with it. We know how to recycle.” It’s a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says, ideally before the ocean turns into a thin soup of plastic.

8 . As the world’s population continues to increase, so does the amount of global waste people produce. According to data collected by the World Bank Group, nations will generate 4 billion tons of waste annually by the year 2100. The pollution from trash is not only ruining the world’s oceans, air and soil but endangering all living creatures.

For years government agencies have been telling citizens to live a zero-waste lifestyle. Traditionally, manufacturers would make a product to be used and thrown by consumers. This linear model of production offered no help in the fight against global waste. Alternatively, a circular economy has been introduced. This is a system which aims to minimize waste and restore used materials. Once a product’s value is exhausted, the materials are recycled and returned to manufactures. The outcome is less waste.

In 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported on the Taiwan island’s recycling success rate in an article titled The World’s Geniuses of Garbage Disposal. In 1997, Taiwan established its signature 4-in-l Recycling Program, consisting of communities, recycling enterprises, government cleaning teams and the Recycling Fund. Residents separate their recyclable waste and bring it to their community’s recycling locations. The local government collection teams and private collectors collect it. Recycling companies buy waste materials from them to generate profits. Importers and manufacturers who are responsible for the recyclable products pay a fee into the Recycling Fund. The Recycling Fund is an essential aspect of the program used to subsidize (资助) the recycling disposal system, support education and research and development as well as finance recycling efforts in the future.

By following a circular system, more products than ever are being manufactured using recycled materials. For example, used tires can be recovered to pave roads, while plastic is reused to make new plastic products. And it also helps to conserve natural resources, reduce pollution, save landfill space and even create new job opportunities.

9 . If you live in Shanghai, you might have to take a “lesson” in sorting garbage (垃圾分类), as the city recently introduced new garbage-sorting rules.

It’s   now   required that   people   should   sort   garbage   into   four   groups,   namely   recyclable, harmful, dry and wet waste. However, if people fail to sort their garbage properly, they can be fined up to 200 yuan.

More cities are introducing similar rules, following the practice in Shanghai. By the end of 2020, garbage-sorting systems will have been built in 46 major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shenzhen, reported People’s Daily.

According to a study by the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy, under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, over 90 percent of the public believe that garbage sorting is important for the protection of the environment.

However, garbage sorting is still a big problem in China. Only 30 percent of participants(参加者) said they think they are adequately sorting their garbage, the study noted.

According to Xinhua News Agency, it’s partly because many people lack the willingness to sort their own waste. In the past, some garbage rules didn’t give clear fines for people who failed to sort garbage.

“It’s a must to have a legal guarantee (法律保障) to support garbage sorting,” Liu Jianguo, a professor from Tsinghua University, told China Daily.

Liu Xinyu, a researcher of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told China Daily that the importance of the new rules in Shanghai is to change the past voluntary action into compulsory action for everyone.

Besides China, many other foreign countries have also introduced garbage-sorting rules. In Japan, waste sorting has become a basic survival skill, reported Xinhua. There is a fixed time to deal with each kind of garbage and littering can result in high fines and being sentenced in prison.

In Germany too, people are asked to sort waste into specific groups, reported HuffPost. For example, in Berlin, people have yellow dustbins for plastic and metals and blue dustbins for paper and cardboard.

10 . Do you know anyone who plays Ant Forest? It is a game on Alipay. Users collect “energy “ for their “trees” to grow. When their “tree” finishes growing, Alipay will plant a real tree in the desert areas of China.

This is part of China’s efforts to fight desertification . Since 1978, China has planted over 66 billion trees across its dry northern areas, according to China Daily.

Desertification means there are no trees or grass. Water can’t stay in the soil and sand is everywhere.

About 2.6 million square kilometers of China’s land is covered with sand. That’s about 27 percent of the country’s land. It has also caused sandstorms .

By planting new trees, sandstorms in China have been cut by 20 percent in recent years. About 13,000 square kilometers of land have become oases (绿洲).

Ian Teh, a British photographer , traveled through northern China last year. He saw many new oases.

“It was hard to imagine that it was ever a desert,” he told Wired magazine.