1 . For as long as there’ve been cars and planes, someone has been trying to combine the two. This Italian _________ was built in the 1940s. The trouble is, they’ve never been really _________, but now things could be about to change. Andy Wall, Sales Director, PAL-V said, “So, we had to stop _________, and we are now at the very last stage of processing the regulations within permissions for flight with this _________. So…It’s getting so _________. “The PAL-V Liberty is made by a Dutch company which is nearing the end of the long process to get everything licensed and _________.

The question is, who is going to buy one? Well, they’ve already got lots of _________. Marco van den Bosch, Chief Commercial Officer, PAL-V told us, “This is the _________ way to become a pilot. There’s always a small James Bond seat in every heart of every guy and every girl, so that’s where we’re _________ to.”

It takes less than ten minutes to turn it from a plane to a car. __________, isn’t it? You could __________ it at any airfield and then drive home. If you want to __________ one of these, it’s going to cost you €300,000. It sounds __________ but probably it will be a new motoring and air travel revolution if you want to be at the forefront of what they’re promising. You’ll need a private pilot’s __________ in the UK, but you can learn both here in Coventry and in Oxford. There’ve been many false starts in bringing a flying car to market. Next year, they believe, is when you may __________ one driving along a street near you.

2 . Winter _________ Eastern Canada into a deep freeze. We sat at home, waiting for the COVID-19 cases to decrease and for the weather to improve. Each of us looked forward to something to keep us _________ the isolation: seeing friends, eating in restaurants, watching a movie at a cinema ... My hope has quietly been _________ dust in the garage since November.

My bike got stolen within months of moving to Toronto. I rode my old bike faithfully for almost 20 years before getting the replacement, which then got stolen, forcing me back to Old Faithful. The faint of heart might have _________ biking completely at that point, but not me, _________ what biking means to me: freedom.

Every spring I take Old Faithful down from the rack, clean it, lubricate it and pump up the tires. As time goes by, the old gal has started showing her age, and now there are more replacement parts on her than _________ ones. But with all bike stores being _________ on new models as the pandemic has swept them clean, she is all I have.

On my bike, I’m limitless and unshackled by gas tanks or batteries; as long as I’m alive and eating, I’ve got fuel and can pedal to the ends of Earth if I want. No _________ is impassable. Jammed roads mean nothing: I can still weave between cars in traffic. This memory means even more to me with the experience of _________.

Society gritted its teeth (咬紧牙关) in the knowledge that we just had to __________ it out for a year to get to the other side. Then Delta hit. Then Omicron. A year __________ into two, and that’s when the walls really started closing in. That’s when we really needed hope. So, I count the days until I can return to my bike. On my bike, I achieve another state of mind. As ridiculous as it sounds, in the old days when I __________ up a hill, in my mind I became the leader in the Tour de France and that inner-city hill became the Alps. I would push myself to reach the top each time. I wanted to feel that little __________ of making it to the summit, knowing that doing so told me once again that I could go anywhere and that nothing could hold me back. I was free.

Every few years I add a new ache or pain. I am starting to get old. At some point, I won’t be able to tackle those hills the way I used to, but biking is a time-limited undertaking and is worth every __________. Therefore, every time I encounter a hill, I don’t give up. I never want to lose this sense of __________. I’m waiting for that first warm day when I’ll escape the pandemic walls. I want to put on my helmet and for one brief, beautiful moment, be free again.

3 . Is the west falling out of love with the car? For environmentalists it seems a(n) _________ dream, but it is happening. While those with young families may carry on using four wheels, a combination of our ageing societies and a new attitude among the young seems to be _________ our 20th-century car addiction. Somewhere along the road, we reached the high point of the car and are now moving down the other side.

That _________ takes several forms. Sales of new cars have almost halved in the US, down from nearly 11 million in 1985 to about 5.5 million now. We shouldn't _________ that to a great degree, though. Cars last longer these days, and sales go up and down with the economy. But we have hit peak car ownership, too. And, more to the point, peak per-capita travel (人均出行).

The phenomenon was first _________ in The Road ... Less Traveled, a 2008 report by the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, but had been going on largely unnoticed for years. Japan reached it in the 1990s. They talk there of "demotorisation". The west had its _________ point in 2004. That year the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia and Sweden all saw the start of a decline in the number of kilometres and average person travelled in a car that _________ today.

What could be driving us _________? Fuel costs and rising insurance premiums (保险费) may be a factor. And urban congestion, combined with an absence of parking places and congestion charging, makes an increasing number of us look on the car as a(n) _________ way to move around in cities where there are public transport alternatives.

Demographics (人口统计数据) are another possible __________. It is surely no __________ that "peak car" happened first in Japan, which has the world's oldest population. Pensioners do not drive to work, and many don't drive at all. There is also the rise of "virtual commuters" who work from home through the Internet.

Besides these new __________ pattern, leisure lifestyle are also changing. The biggest __________ in car use in the US is among people under 35. The number of American 17-year-olds with a drivers' licence has fallen from about three-quarters to about half since 1998. Twenty-somethings have recently gone from driving more than the average to driving less.

Social scientists detect a new "culture of urbanisms". The stylish way to live these days is in inner-city apartments, not the __________. Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist at the University of Toronto in Canada, points out that the young shop online, telecommute, live in walk-able city neighborhoods near public transport and rely more on social media and less on fact-to-face visiting. Given those changes, they can think of better ways to spend their money than buying a(n) __________.

4 . Private jets receive ridiculous tax relief that hurt the environment

The blue jeans and T-shirts of the global elite are no more comfortable than those worn by the middle class. They drink the same coffee and carry the same smartphones. But a(n) ________ is growing between the rich and the rest when they fly. Ordinary folk ________ sleeplessly into cheap seats. The elite stretch out Hat, taking naps. This would be no one else’s business but for two things. First, private jets are horribly polluting. Second, they are often and ________ subsidized (补贴).

Private airlines were ________ hard by the global financial crisis, when both companies and individuals sought to reduce expenses. But now private jets are booming again, partly because new booking services and shared-ownership schemes are cutting the cost of going private and ________ busy executives away from first— and business-class seats on regular flights. But the boom is also a result of tax relief, which is even more ________ than those offered to ordinary airlines. America’s rules are ________ still. Its tax reform allowed individuals and companies to avoid paying 100% of the costs of a new or used private jet against their federal taxes, creating extraordinarily cheap jet purchases.

Flying on a private jet can help ________ on time for those whose time is extraordinarily valuable. Since companies can avoid paying their corporate-tax bills by presenting how much these flights cost them, in some countries the use of a private jet is a tax-free ________ for executives. But a growing volume of research suggests that flying them ________ is often a waste of money for shareholders. The jets are often used to fly to places where corporate seniors are more likely to have holiday homes than business meetings. ________, users of such planes are more likely to commit deception: a careless attitude to other people’s money sometimes shades into complete criminality. The environmental effects of corporate jets are awful. The emissions for new supersonic business jets under development will be many times higher. Amazingly, these emissions are largely ________. Airlines are not covered by the Paris agreement to limit climate change, and most private jets are ________ from CORSIA, a carbon-offsetting (碳补偿) scheme involving most airlines.

All air travel is bad for the environment. The tax breaks for cooking the planet in this way cannot be ________. They should all be abandoned. Carbon emissions should be ________, not subsidised by the sleepless masses and the even less fortunate souls who never fly.