2 . During the COP27 climate conference (会议) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, an important deal on “loss and damage” was reached. This was a big step forward because at COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, there were no talks on loss and damage at all. The plan is that richer countries will pay money into a special fund that will be used to help poor countries.

Loss and damage means the damaging impact of climate change on developing countries. For nearly 30 years, poorer countries have been asking richer countries for money to help to protect communities from the effects of climate change. Richer countries have produced the most greenhouse gases, but poorer countries are often the worst affected by extreme weather conditions because they are less well equipped to face extreme climate events.

Brazil’s newly elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a speech about preserving the largest rainforest on Earth, the Amazon. During the last 50 years, more than 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for farms and towns. However, in his speech, Lula promised that there would be zero deforestation (伐树) in the Amazon by 2030. The conference didn’t just focus on world leaders. It brought together more than 45,000 people to discuss how climate change is affecting their lives. Climate refugees (难民) also had their voices heard. Tshilombo from the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya said, “Refugees don’t only flee because of war or conflict. It’s also about drought, the effects of climate change.”

Some countries weren’t happy with the overall outcome of COP27 because decisions weren’t made on cutting the use of fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and oil, etc. The UK Government’s Alok Sharma said, “I’m incredibly disappointed.”

However, this deal was a great achievement for developing countries. Sherry Rehman, the climate minister for Pakistan, said, “I am confident we have tuned a comer in how we work together to achieve climate goals.”

Several strange things happened before the Earthquake hit Tangshan. Some     1    (smell)gas came out of them and chickens were too nervous to eat. And in less than one minute, the whole city lay in     2    (ruin). The country united as one to relieve the disaster, and soldiers were sent to dig out those who     3    (trap) under the damaged buildings.

5 . Oceans are an appealing target for renewable energy production. Waves produce 32,000 terawatt-hours of natural energy per year — for reference, the entire world uses around 23,000 terawatt-hours every year.

The advantages of wave power are clear.     1     Turbines produce electricity through the power of waves, making them a completely pollution-free, renewable energy source. And the amount of kinetic energy in a wave is huge that energy is used to produce electricity. There is also a lot of potential because many countries have access to an ocean that can help power their electric systems. Also, waves are hardly interrupted and almost always in movement.     2    

But the disadvantages of wave energy are serious too. Building factories or electrical wires directly on the beach might prove challenging.     3     Local fishing zones could be affected or the factories could lead to more coastal erosion. High cost is a problem too. Wave power is a rising energy technology in the early stages of development, so calculating the costs is difficult.     4     Because constant movement can lead to more breaking, wave energy factories will most likely need regular and costly maintenance.

    5     For many ocean-bordering countries, wave energy will be a great addition to the newable energy mix. The bottom line is that wave power has enormous global potential. However, the industry needs more funding and research to finalize the technology involved so that countries can begin adding wave energy to their renewable energy source.

9 . Six relatives crowded in a small air pocket, day after day. A hopeless teenager grew so thirsty that he drank his own urine (尿液). Two frightened sisters were comforted by a pop song as they waited for rescuers to free them.

These earthquake survivors were among more than a dozen people pulled out of the rubble (瓦砾) alive Friday after spending over four days trapped in extremely cold darkness following the disaster that struck Turkey(土耳其) and Syria(叙利亚). The disaster has already killed more people than Japan’s Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, with many more bodies yet to be recovered and counted.

Relatives wept and chanted as rescuers pulled 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed from a basement (地下室) in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicenter (震中). He had been trapped for 94 hours. For one of the rescuers, Adnan ‘s survival hit home hard: “I have a son just like you,” she told him after giving him a warm hug. “l swear to you, I have not slept for four days... I was trying to get you out.”

The building was only 600 feet from the Mediterranean Sea (地中海) and narrowly avoided being flooded when the serious earthquake sent water pouring into the city center. A trapped woman told her would-be rescuers that she had given up hope of being found and prayed to be put to sleep because she was so cold.

Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the chances of finding more survivors were quickly waning. Death is closing everywhere: deadhouse and graveyard were unbearable, and bodies wrapped in blankets and tarps (防水油布) in the streets of some cities.

Temperatures remained below freezing and many people have no shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but was still struggling to reach many people in need.

The U.N. refugee agency estimated that as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria. Reporters said Friday that the agency is focusing on providing reliefs.

Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife visited survivors in the Aleppo University Hospital. It was the leader’s first public appearance in an affected area of the country since the disaster.

Turkey’s disaster-management agency said more than 20,200 people had been confirmed killed and more than 80,000 injured.

More than 3,500 have been confirmed killed in Syria, bringing the total number of dead to nearly 24000. Some12,000 buildings in Turkey have either collapsed or stood serious damage. Turkey’s vice president (副总统), Fuat Oktay said more than 1 million people were being housed in temporary shelters.

10 . For most of human history, people raised crops and livestock to feed their households rather than to sell them for profit. This began to shift after the Industrial Revolution, which saw the rise of plantation farming.

Industrial farming not only increased the crop-growing areas, but changed the techniques used by farmers. Instead of switching the crops that were grown on a field each year, entire plantations would be devoted to a single crop. This approach and intensive modes of farming led to destruction of local biodiversity and land worsening — within years, fields would cease to produce crops.

Plantations of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were a “get rich quick plan” rather than a long-term investment. Once a field became unusable, plantation owners would simply move on to new land. Up to the end of the 19th century, wide areas of our planet were still not claimed by global modernity. But today, while we are quickly running out of vegetative (覆盖植被的) land, this mindset continues. “Farmers still hold the view that land is cheap and limitless,” said Crystal Davis from the World Resources Institute. “Most of them just cut down more trees, when new land is needed.”

“To meet our ecological goals, we need to stop turning natural ecosystems to farmland,” Davis said. “We can achieve this in part by bringing back the land’s ecological wholeness and productivity.”

Davis points to the 20×20 initiative (倡议), which has seen 18 South American and Caribbean countries commit to recovering 50m hectares of land by 2030. It includes a number of projects aimed at introducing agroforestry (混农林业) practices to cocoa and coffee farms in Colombia and Nicaragua. There farmers are encouraged to grow crops while introducing more trees to their land.