2 . Recently, environmentalists have encouraged us to buy local food. This reduces “food miles”, that is, the distance food travels to get from the producer to the seller. They reason that the higher the food miles, the more carbon emissions (碳排放). Buying local. food, therefore, has a lower carbon footprint and is more environmentally friendly.

However, the real story is not as simple as that. If our aim is to reduce carbon emissions, we must look at the whole farming process, not just transportation. According to a 2008 study, only 11% of carbon emissions in the food production process result from transportation, and only 4% came from the final delivery (运输) of the product from the producer to the seller.

In fact, imported food from other countries often has a lower carbon footprint than locally grown food. Take apples, for example. In autumn, when apples are harvested, the best thing for British people to do is to buy British apples. However, the apples we buy in winter or spring have been kept refrigerated for months, and this uses up a lot of energy. In spring, therefore, it is more energy-saving to import them from New Zealand, where they are in season. Heating also uses a lot of energy, which is why growing tomatoes in heated greenhouses in the UK is less environmentally friendly than importing them from Spain, where the tomatoes grow well in the local climate.

We must also take into consideration the type of transport. Transporting food by air creates about 50 times more emissions than shipping it. However, only a small number of goods are flown to foreign countries, and these are usually high value, perishable (易腐烂的) goods which we cannot produce locally, such as seafood and out-of-season berries. Even then, these foods may not have a higher carbon footprint than locally grown food. For example, beans flown in from Kenya are grown in sunny fields using human labour and natural fertilisers (肥料), unlike in Britain, where we use oil-based fertilisers and machinery. Therefore, the total carbon footprint is still lower.

It’s also worth remembering that a product’s journey does not end at the supermarket. The distance customers travel to buy their food, and the kind of transport they use will also add to its carbon footprint. So driving a long way to shop for food will wipe out any environmental benefits of buying locally grown produce.

Recently, some supermarkets have been trying to raise awareness of food miles by labelling (标记) foods with stickers that show it has been imported by air. But the message this gives is too simple. Lots of different factors contribute to a food’s carbon footprint besides the distance it has travelled.

1. What can we learn about “food miles”?

A．It influences how people deliver and transport food.

B．It will increase if people are encouraged to buy local food.

C．It is the key factor contributing to a food’s carbon emissions.

D．It shows how far the food goes from farmland to supermarkets.

2. The author will probably agree that ________.

A．transporting food by air is the most energy-saving type of shipping

B．storing local food creates more carbon emissions than importing food

C．human labour and natural fertilisers can increase the carbon footprint

D．growing out-of-season food takes less energy than importing food in season

3. What is the author’s attitude towards cutting food miles to reduce carbon emissions?

A．Supportive.

B．Confused.

C．Negative.

D．Doubtful.

5 . 假设你是北京市某中学的学生李华，请根据以下提示，针对北京市遭沙尘暴袭击的情况，向某英语报社写一封信，呼吁大家植树造林，保护环境。
1. 过去家乡树木成林，如今人们毁林种地建房；
2. 气候变化，土地沙漠化；
3. 植树造林，人人有责。
注意：1. 词数80左右：开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
Dear Editor，

I’m a student at a middle school of Beijing.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours，

Li Hua

6 . Surrounded by the sea off the coast in Mid-Norway, lies an island called Myken. This small island has about ten permanent residents, and for more than 50 years has been supplied with electricity via a 32-kilometer undersea cable (电缆). A break that appeared in the cable last autumn resulted in two months without power, so the island community started looking into a better way of sourcing their electricity.

“Myken is far out at sea, so as far as possible it should be taking care of things itself,” says Kyrre Sundseth, who is a hydrogen (氢) researcher in Norway and also the project manager for Myken’s energy project. “This is why we want Myken to become entirely self-sufficient in energy. It is also important to take the environment into consideration,” he says.

Much points to the idea that the solution may lie in a Hydrogen plant, specifically tailored for small islands. The “raw materials” for hydrogen production come from nature itself in the form of the sun and wind. Researchers have calculated that energy costs will be lower by using hydrogen production than the undersea cable option. And it is possible to store energy in the form of hydrogen for longer periods. This means that supplies will not have to rely on a lot of expensive batteries or external energy sources, even during periods when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.

The Myken project has attracted several technology companies. They are currently working on a pilot project. The pilot involves experiments on the feasibility (可行性) of the hydrogen system in which electricity is generated from solar and wind sources. The electricity can be used immediately, but during periods when all the energy generated is not required, the spare energy can be used to split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be stored in a tank, and used later to generate electricity. The pilot will help researchers know more about how effectively the system will work in the hydrogen plant. Since the island has a distillery (酿酒厂), where the distillation (蒸馏) process relies on energy, a hydrogen plant on Myken offers an even greater environmental benefit. Spare heat from the hydrogen system can also be used for the heating part in the distillation process.

“In Norway alone there are about 300 island inhabited all year round by small populations,” says Kyrre Sundseth. “All of these islands may be candidates for using this technology. In global terms we’re talking about 10,000 similar islands.”

1. Why is a hydrogen plant suitable for Myken?

A．It is perfect in size for small islands.

B．It can send electricity to faraway places.

C．It will restore local natural environment.

D．It provides green and sustainable energy.

2. What is mainly talked about in Paragraph 4?

A．The study on the energy storage.

B．The test on the hydrogen system.

C．The experiment on the raw materials.

D．The research on the innovation of the pilot.

3. According to the passage, a hydrogen plant will ______.

A．produce purified seawater

B．prove more technically reliable

C．contribute in more than one way

D．benefit from the distillation process

4. What does Kyrre Sundseth think of the project?

A．Promising.

B．Systematic.

C．Irreplaceable.

D．Time saving.

7 . My sister Alice and I have been trying to get people to stop dropping cigarette (香烟) butts (烟头) for seven years. One day, we were walking in our hometown and saw hundreds of cigarette butts on the ground. They made the town look so ugly that we decided to start a group to make people stop dropping butts. We called it “No Butts About It”.

At first, we drew pictures with “The Earth is not your ashtray (烟灰缸)” written on them. We put the pictures around our hometown—in parks, by beaches, and along roads. We wanted to make people understand that dropping butts hurts the environment. Most smokers don’t think that dropping butts hurts the Earth. But it does, and all rubbish does!

Later, we wrote to companies and asked them for money to help us. We used the money to buy ashtrays to give to smokers. We wanted smokers to carry the ashtrays with them so they didn’t have to drop butts.

At the moment, we are trying to get cigarette companies to put an ashtray in each pack of cigarettes. Some companies want to do it. Many people have started to join our group since it began. Today there are 45 other “No Butts About It” groups in America.

Now there even groups in England, Australia, and India! Many newspapers have written about my sister and me over the last seven years. And we have won many prizes for what we do. But we are not interested in prizes. We just want to make the Earth a better and cleaner place for animals, plants and people.

One day, it will be.

1. What did the writer think about the cigarette butts in the first place?

A．They made the town smelly.	B．They made the town unhealthy.
C．They made the town dirty.	D．They made the town poor.

2. What does the writer do with the cigarette butts?

A．Give ashtrays to the smokers.	B．Stop people buying cigarettes.
C．Pick up the cigarette butts.	D．Win prizes for starting groups.

3. From the passage we can know that _____.

A．no companies wanted to give money to them

B．the writer believes that the Earth will be a better and cleaner place

C．there are only 45 “No Butts About It”

D．the writer likes to be on newspapers and win prizes

4. Which is the best tittle for the passage?

A．Save our Town From Cigarette Butts.	B．Buy Yourself An Ashtray.
C．Cigarette Butts Also Destroy Other Countries.	D．No Butts Prize.

8 . 假如你是李华，你的英国朋友Tom看到你在微信上分享了学校最近举行的主题为“建造绿色家园”的植树活动，发邮件向你询问有关情况。请你用英语回复邮件，内容包括:
1.活动情况简介；
2.活动的意义。
注意:1.词数100左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9 . It's important to learn how we can protect the environment. Here are 5R rules for us.

Reduce. If you want to reduce waste, you should use things more wisely.    1     If everyone uses paper carelessly, soon we would not have any trees left. Other things are also being wasted, and people don't know what to do with the waste in big cities. So it is necessary to reduce the amount of waste we produce.

Reuse. You should always think of reusing things before throwing them out. For example,    2    . In a family, you may pass on such clothes to younger brothers or sisters.

Recycle. Bottles, cans and paper can easily be recycled. By doing so we can save lots of time and money. For example,    3    . The metal can be used to make new coke cans.

Recover.    4    . You have two choices: one is to throw the apples away, the second is to throw the rotten ones and keep the good ones. In this way, you are recovering the eatable parts of food.

Repair. If one of the legs of your table is broken, you should repair it. If you want to buy something newer and better, it is better for you to sell the old table, or     5    

Learn the rules to protect our environment. Let's try our best to make the earth cleaner and more beautiful.

A．give the clothes you do not use or the ones which are too small to the poor.

B．coke cans are sent to a factory, where they are smashed flat and melted.

C．A large number of trees are being cut down to make paper.

D．Trees are planted every year.

E．give it to people who can use it after repairing it.

F．don’t throw it away if you can use it.

G．When you buy a box of apples, there may be a few rotten ones.

10 . The day will come when renewable energy such as wind, solar, geothermal and others replace fossil fuels as the major source of world energy. However, most analysts insist that this day will not arrive for many decades to come—certainly well past the middle of the century. Systems of fossil fuels have already been firmly set up, and it is too costly or impractical to replace the existing systems with renewables. But there are good reasons to believe that the transition (转变) to renewables will come much faster than previously thought.

It is hardly surprising that many experts say we will see a relatively slow transition from fossil fuels to renewables, given what is known about previous energy changes of this sort. “Energy transitions take a long time,” observed Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba in Scientific American. It took more than 50 years for coal to replace wood as the worlds leading source of energy and another 50 years for oil to replace coal; the change from fossil fuels to renewables, he argued, is not likely to come any faster.

Under ordinary circumstances, Smil’s forecast would no doubt prove accurate. But these are not ordinary times. Growing concern over climate change is leading to increasingly strict controls on CO₂ and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (排放), while the development in renewables technology is lowering their price and speeding their installation.

There are, of course, many difficulties in the effective control of carbon emissions, as demonstrated by coal companies to block the introduction of new rules by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Nevertheless, it is impossible to dismiss the progress being made at the local and international levels to promote the use of renewables. The European Union (E.U.), for example, is well on the way to achieving a 20% reduction in GHG emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, along with a 20% increase in the use of renewable energy.

The transition to renewables will be faster due to dramatic improvements in the pricing and performance of such systems. As a result of the steady increases in the efficiency of wind and solar systems, together with the savings achieved through large-scale manufacture, the price of renewables is falling globally. With prices dropping this fast, solar energy is now proving competitive with fossil fuels for generating electricity in many areas.

The change from fossil fuels to renewable energy will not come overnight, and it will not escape many setbacks. Nevertheless, renewables are likely to replace fossil fuels as the main source of electrical power well before mid-century.

1. Vaclav Smil believes that ________.

A．renewable energies are not very practical

B．the change to renewables will come slowly

C．systems of fossil fuels have been firmly set up

D．there are many setbacks of renewable energies

2. We can learn from the passage that European Union ________.

A．has cut down half of the carbon emissions

B．has failed to find a way to reduce GHG emissions

C．is trying their best to encourage the use of renewables

D．tries to stop the introduction of new rules on renewables

3. The renewables are more competitive because of ________.

A．their falling prices	B．the decline in coal industry
C．international trade	D．the new rules on CO2 emission

4. The author writes this passage in order to ________.

A．call on people to use less fossil fuels

B．give advice on how to promote renewables

C．argue that the energy transition will come sooner

D．prove the renewables will be the major source of energy