1 . A librarian, whose name is Raden Roro Hendarti in Indonesia’s Java island, is lending books to children in exchange for trash they collect in a special way to clean up the environment and get the kids to read more.
Each weekday Raden Roro Hendarti fills up her three-wheeler with books, and then she rides it to Muntang village. There she exchanges books with the children for plastic cups, bass and other waste that she carries back. She told Reuters (路透社) she is helping develop reading in the kids as well as make them aware of the environment. As soon as she shows up, little children, many accompanied by their mothers, surround her “Trash Library” and exchange for the books.
They are all carrying trash bags and Raden’s three-wheeler quickly fills up with them as the books fly out. She’s happy the kids are going to spend less time on online games as a result. “Let us build a culture of reading from young age to reduce the harm of the online world,” Raden said.
She collects about 100 kg of waste each week, which is then sorted out by her colleagues and sent for recycling or sold. She has 6,000 books to lend and wants to take the mobile service to neighbouring areas as well. She hopes that more and more people can do something to help protect the environment.
1. Why is Raden lending books to children in exchange for trash they collect?| A．To collect trash and fight against climate change. |
| B．To teach children to save the earth by reading books. |
| C．To protect the environment and help children read more. |
| D．To introduce her books on protecting the earth to children. |
| A．Curious. | B．Responsible. | C．Hard-working. | D．Positive. |
| A．the service is popular only among adults. |
| B．Raden exchanges books two days a week. |
| C．Raden may take the service to neighbouring areas. |
| D．the waste will be sorted out after recycling or sold. |
| A．A Great Librarian. | B．Trash for Books. |
| C．Promotion for Recycling. | D．More Reading, Less Online Games. |
2 . The world’s most famous tire (轮胎) graveyard (坟地) of 42 million tires in the sands of Kuwait is finally being cleaned up and recycled. This news in itself would be a major relief to locals who have to suffer from the clouds of black smoke arising during fires. But the government isn’t stopping there. They are aiming to create a green city of 25,000 homes in line with a post-oil Persian Gulf, with a focus on sustainability and tourism.
The first step is to clear the ground. The Salmiya area, nicknamed “Rubber (橡胶) Mountain”, is formed from hundreds of small mountains of spent tires — a reaction from the one million cars which were added to Kuwait’s roads over the decade.
EPSCO Global General Trading recycling company has opened a recycling plant for the tires, where they’ve been collected, sorted, cut up, and pressed into other materials like rubbery coloured flooring tiles (铺地砖). The plant opened in January of 2021, and can recycle up to 3 million tires a year. The recycled material is then exported out to nearby gulf neighbours and Asia. In the place of the tires will be South Saad Al-Abdullah City, a green city characterizing a new era in the Middle-Eastern country.
Spent tires are a major environmental problem worldwide due to the room they take up and the chemicals they can release.
“We have moved from a difficult stage that was characterized by great environmental risk,” says Oil Minister Mohammed al-Fares. “Today the area is becoming clean and all tires are being removed to begin the launch of the project of Saad Al-Abdullah city.”
Expected to cost €3.3 billion and require 30 years to complete, the city hopes to feature green technology, probably like the kind one can see in other cities on the Persian Gulf, both existing and not. Saudi Arabia is planning to build a zero-emissions, car-less future city that’s centered around access to big data rather than water or crops.
1. Why is the Salmiya area called “Rubber Mountain”?| A．It is rich in rubber. | B．It has too many waste tires. |
| C．It used to be a mountain. | D．It has been a tradition. |
| A．A recycling company. | B．The purpose for removing tires. |
| C．How to build a green city. | D．What is done with the spent tires. |
| A．To make a prediction. | B．To explain an idea. | C．To present a fact. | D．To analyze a cause. |
| A．The Transformation of a Huge Landfill | B．Spent Tires, a Big Threat to the Environment |
| C．The Salmiya Area’s Measures to Kick Pollution | D．Kuwait Tire Mountain to Be into a Green City |
3 . Nanako Hama gets a lot of mail, mostly from strangers who live in her home city of Tokyo. In light envelopes, they send locks of their hair, hoping to recycle it.
People generate a huge amount of hair waste. Nearly all of that waste ends up in landfill, where it can release harmful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
But hair possesses useful qualities that it’s a shame to simply throw it away. That’s why people all around the world, like Hama, have been collecting hair and finding innovative ways to recycle it, including making mats (垫子)out of it for removing oil leaks.
Hama is part of the nonprofit Matter of Trust (MoT) members working at more than 60 centers dotted across 17 countries, using machines to make hair donated from local salons and individuals into square mats, which are then used to clean up the floating oil.
Hair is particularly well-suited for this, says MoT co-founder Lisa Gautier. “That’s because its rough sort of outer layer lets oil stick to it.” MoT’s mats have been used in major oil leaks. including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 2007 Cosco Busan incidents.
In a 2018 study, Murray, an environmental scientist at the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia found that mats made of recycled human hair could absorb 0.84 grams of oil onto its surface for every gram of hair—significantly more than polypropylene (聚丙烯), a type of plastic that’s typically used to clean up floating oil.
Besides, hair is also useful as fertilizer (化肥). Hair contains a relatively high nitrogen (氮), a chemical element crucial for plant growth, and each lock of hair is made of roughly 16 percent of this essential nutrient. Last year, more than 560 gallons of liquid fertilizer made from human hair was sold to farmers in northern Tanzania and the feedback from the farmers has been very encouraging.
“It’s just a great way to use hair in a productive way. Hair is an answer literally hanging in front of our eyes—for oil and soil,” Hama says.
1. How does the author introduce the topic in paragraph 1?| A．By detailing the background. | B．By presenting a scene. |
| C．By describing the feedback. | D．By supporting evidences. |
| A．Fertilize the soil. | B．Prevent oil leaks. |
| C．Clear the sea of oil. | D．Take in harmful gas. |
| A．Its color and strength. |
| B．Its length and amount. |
| C．Its weight and flexibility. |
| D．Its structure and component. |
| A．Debatable. | B．Applicable. |
| C．Irreplaceable. | D．Uncontrollable. |
4 . The number of fish caught just outside an expanded Marine Protected Area (MPA) in Hawaii has risen. It is a sign that quadrupling (使成四倍) the size of the reserve in 2014 may have increased fish populations in the region.
When the Marine Protected Area around Hawaii was enlarged to 1,600,000 square kilometers, marine conservationists around the world were delighted. As opposed to those who advocates marine conservation, fishers may have felt differently at first, as fishing inside the area is not allowed. Yet by creating a space for the ever reducing tuna (金枪鱼) populations to recover, supporters argued, the reserve would benefit fisheries (捕鱼业) as well. As populations inside the reserve boundaries steadily increased, they predicted, the fish would spill (溢出) over into the surrounding areas, increasing the amount of tuna available to catch.
Proving that is tricky, however, as tunas can’t be counted directly. Their numbers may rise or fall for a variety of reasons other than the expansion of a reserve. But the new study, published in Science this week, strongly suggests the number of fish caught just outside the MPA is higher now than it used to be.
Alan Fried, chief scientist for the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas project, calls the study a “very careful and strict test of spillover from Marine Protected Area.”
Importantly, says John Lynn, an environmental economist at the University of Hawaii and one of the study’s authors, the increase in tuna catches near the reserve held up even when looking at the average numbers caught by particular fishers. This shows the effect is not due to more effective crews now fishing local waters, he explains.
Lynn and colleagues found the catch per hook increased over the 10 years of the study. Fishers were catching on average six more yellow-fin tunas and five more big-eye tunas per year after the expansion than before.
1. What can we infer about the Marine Protected Area?| A．It used to be about 400,000 square kilometers before 2014. |
| B．It is accessible to local fishers for fishing after its expansion. |
| C．It would not benefit fisheries in the long run. |
| D．It was lacking in space for tunas to hunt for food. |
| A．Joyful. | B．Cautious. | C．Unpleasant. | D．Excited. |
| A．Tunas will benefit the local fisheries. |
| B．Tunas available to catch outside MPA will increase. |
| C．The number of tunas can’t be counted directly. |
| D．The expansion of Marine Protected Area is beneficial. |
| A．Advocates call on protecting the local fisheries. |
| B．Expanded Marine Protected Area helps fisheries. |
| C．Local fisheries hold a promising future. |
| D．Tuna population can be counted in an accurate and scientific way. |
5 . A new study says that no matter how much the world cuts back on greenhouse gases, a large and important part of ice of Antarctica (南极洲) is expected to disappear.
Researchers used computer models to expect the future melting (融化) of protective ice around Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea in western Antarctica. They said the melting will take hundreds of years. It will slowly add nearly 1.8 meters to sea levels. And it will be enough to change where and how people live in the future.
The study found that even if future warming was limited to just a few tenths of a degree more, it would have limited power to prevent ocean warming that could lead to the breakdown of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Study lead writer Kaitlin Naughten is an expert on oceans at the British Antarctic Survey. She said their research suggests that Earth is set on the path to a quickly increasing speed of ocean warming and ice shelf melting over the rest of the century.
While past studies have talked about how serious the situation is, Naughten was the first to use computer modeling to study how warm water from below will melt the ice. The study looked at four different cases in how much greenhouse gases the world produces. In each case, ocean warming was just too much for this area of the ice to survive.
Naughten looked at floating areas of ice that hold back glaciers (冰川). Once these areas of ice melt, there is nothing to stop the glaciers behind them from flowing (流) into the sea.
The study also looked at what would happen if future warming was limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius over mid-19th century levels: the international goal. They found the rapid melting process in this case as well.
The world has already warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times and much of this summer went past the 1.5 degrees mark.
1. Which can best describe the findings of the study?| A．Cheerful. | B．Encouraging. | C．Misleading. | D．Disappointing. |
| A．Her research area. | B．Her research time. |
| C．Her research method. | D．Her research purpose. |
| A．They will flow into the sea. | B．They protect the Antarctic ice. |
| C．They have warmed about 1.2℃. | D．They disappear faster than other ice. |
| A．Ice in Parts of Antaretica Will Disappear | B．Climate Change Will Harm Humans |
| C．Sea Level Will Rise Suddenly in the Future | D．Limiting Greenhouse Gases Makes No Sense |
6 . Hiking is tricky when you’re carrying a threatened species. Ally Whitbread carefully walked through the wilds while carrying a cooler full of small, rare snails —the Chittenango ovate amber snails.
“I feel like I’ve got 500 babies to take care of—just like a very crazy mother hen,” she said. Whitbread is part of a team transporting a lab-grown population to a new, remote home. The snails are facing extinction —only dozens are estimated to remain at one waterfall in upstate New York. “Such a recovery process can take years to decades. There are several things remaining to be unlocked during the process —what the action is going to bring, what role that species might play, and whether they might live well. We are just racing to better understand our planet’s biodiversity before the species die out.”
It took the scientists years to raise this population in the lab. The hike to a hidden waterfall is a chance to examine what makes them grow well in the wild, or what doesn’t. The snails don’t have any known unique features critical to humans, and it’s been a long journey just to attempt to save them. These efforts could figure out their hidden benefits.
Specialist Cody Gilbertson said the drive to save them can go deeper, not just the love for science. The creatures are no bigger than a fingertip and look up at their caregivers. “You know their big eyes are staring at you, like —there’s no way that you’re not going to kind of fall in love,” Gilbertson said.
Dropping them off at their new waterfall home wasn’t even the end —it’ll be another 5 years before the team knows whether the snails can survive there. They’ll go for a hike twice a month to track their progress.
1. How does Whitbread feel about the snails’ future?| A．Hopeful. | B．Uncertain. | C．Excited. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．To figure out their hidden benefits. |
| B．To observe their reproducing process. |
| C．To preserve the planet’s biodiversity. |
| D．To identify factors in their survival. |
| A．Open. | B．Develop. | C．Improve. | D．Uncover. |
| A．Their lovable appearance. | B．Their endangered state. |
| C．Their potential role. | D．Their growing conditions. |
7 . Kenya has started its biggest rhino (犀牛) relocation project and began the work of tracking and moving 21 of the critically endangered animals, which can each weigh over a ton, to a new home.
A previous attempt at moving rhinos in the East African nation was a disaster in 2018 as all 11 of the animals died. Ten of them died from stress, dehydration and starvation intensified by salt poisoning as they struggled to adjust to saltier water in their new home, investigations found. The other rhino was attacked by a lion. The latest project experienced early troubles. A rhino targeted for moving was successfully hit with a tranquilizer (镇定剂) shot from a helicopter but ended up in a small river. Veterinarians (兽医) and rangers held the rhino’s head above water with a rope to save it while a tranquilizer reversal drug took effect, and the rhino was released.
The black rhinos are a mix of males and females and are being moved from three conservation parks to the private Loisaba Conservancy in central Kenya, the Kenya Wildlife Service said. Rhinos are generally solitary animals, which enjoy being alone, and are at their happiest in large areas. They are being moved because there are too many in the three parks and they need more space to walk and, hopefully, to give birth to babies.
Kenya has had relative success in reviving its black rhino population, which fell below 300 in the mid-1980s because of illegal hunting, raising fears that the animals might be wiped out in a country famous for its wildlife. Kenya now has nearly 1,000 black rhinos, according to the wildlife service. That’s the third biggest black rhino population in the world behind South Africa and Namibia.
Kenyan authorities say they have relocated more than 150 rhinos in the last decade and the country is aiming to grow its black rhino population to about 2,000, which they believe would be the ideal number considering the space available for them in national and private parks.
1. What can be inferred from paragraph 2?| A．Kenya was once stricken by a disaster. |
| B．Rhinos often like to drink saltier water. |
| C．The rhino relocation project was challenging. |
| D．The attempt to move rhinos in 2018 went smooth. |
| A．They all weigh less than a ton. | B．They prefer to spend time alone. |
| C．They adapt to new environments easily. | D．They have gone extinct by the mid-1980s. |
| A．Feeding. | B．Losing. | C．Restoring. | D．Recording. |
| A．Fun Facts About Rhinos | B．Ways of Protecting Rhinos |
| C．The Culture and History of Kenya | D．The Biggest Rhino Relocation Project in Kenya |
8 . The green revolution in the 1960s was one of the greatest achievements in human history. By promoting more productive varieties of wheat and, especially, rice, scientists in India, Mexico, China and the Philippines doubled Asia’s rice yields from 1965 to 1995.
But the world has reached a crossroad again. By one estimate, the world will need to produce almost a third more rice by 2050. Yet rice production has increased by less than 1% a year over the past decade.
This has many explanations. Urbanization and industrialization have made labour and farmland scarcer (稀缺的). Overuse of chemicals and irrigation have poisoned soils and dried up groundwater. But the biggest reason may be global warming that often leads to extreme conditions. Heavy rains and droughts last year in India, the world’s biggest rice exporter, led to a reduced harvest and an export ban. Floods in Pakistan, the fourth-biggest exporter, wiped out 15% of its rice harvest. Rising sea-levels are causing salt to enter the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s “rice bowl”.
It is getting worse. Rice is not just a victim of climate change, but also a contributor to it. It is a bigger source of greenhouse gas than any foodstuff except beef. If you count the destruction of forestland for rice fields, that footprint is even bigger.
Therefore, governments need to attract producers and consumers away from rice. India and Indonesia are promoting millet, which is more nutritious and uses much less water. Canceling subsidies (补贴) that favour rice over other crops would make such efforts more effective. India, for example, purchases rice from farmers, often at above-market rates, then distributes it as food aid to the poor. It should make its interventions more rice-unfriendly, by replacing subsidies and free rice with income support for farmers and the poor. That would encourage farmers to choose the best crop for their local conditions — much of India’s agricultural north-west would switch from rice to wheat overnight. Poor Indians would be free to choose a more balanced diet. As a result, it would correct a market unfavorable to environment and health.
1. What can we know about the green revolution in Asia?| A．It has remarkably reduced the use of water and chemicals. |
| B．It once increased rice production by more than 3% a year. |
| C．It has popularized more productive crops, especially wheat. |
| D．It has been mainly led by scientists from America and Europe. |
| A．Worsening global warming. | B．Unnecessary bans on rice export. |
| C．Lowering prices for the crop. | D．Urbanization and industrialization. |
| A．Expand the planting of rice. | B．Give rice farmers more subsidies. |
| C．Replace rice with better local crops. | D．Distribute rice as food aid to the poor. |
| A．Achievements of the Green Revolution | B．Efforts to Promote More Suitable Crops |
| C．Consequences of the Green Revolution | D．Ideas to Fix the Current Global Rice Crisis |
9 . I fell in love with rhinos when I worked in a zoo in the 80s, and spent much of the next 20 years as the keeper of the largest captive (圈养的) group of rare black rhinos.
There’s a popular misconception that rhinos are aggressive and stupid, but I found them sensitive and affectionate animals. Weighing over a ton, black rhinos are unexpectedly agile (敏捷的) and have an unpredictable nature — but, given reassurance, they tend to believe people. In the past few decades, their numbers have dropped dramatically. In recent years, I’ve helped look after rhinos being moved to the reserve so they can form new populations in countries that have few left. Last year, I helped on a project to fly five black rhinos from a private reserve in South Africa to the Serengeti National Park. Once there, the animals had to be kept captive for a few weeks to adapt to the new environment, in which time they lived in “bomas” — wooden enclosures with “bedrooms”, designed to create a calm space.
A couple of weeks before their planned release, the sky filled with smoke. Watching the flames rushing through the bush toward the bomas, I froze. Terrified that it would catch fire, my instinct was to release the rhinos, but they hadn’t yet been fitted with transmitters (发信器). If I let them out into a bushfire and they were injured, we’d have great difficulty tracking them down. So I dashed back to the bomas and called the rhinos to the bedrooms. Sensing the fear in my voices, they moved without hesitation and remained astonishingly calm. It was crucial the rhinos didn’t panic — they can easily hurt each other if they do.
That we and the rhinos had escaped safe and sound was a miracle. The teamwork of everybody there played a large part, and the rhinos were very much a part of that team. The relationships we’d built with them had proved crucial — had they or we panicked, all our work would have been in vain.
1. What does the author think of the rhinos?| A．They are trusting animals. | B．They are highly organized. |
| C．Their habitats are under threat. | D．Their adaptability needs improving. |
| A．To assist rhinos to settle in. | B．To boost tourism in the reserve. |
| C．To avoid rhinos’ aggressive behavior. | D．To stop rhinos from fleeing. |
| A．By setting them free. | B．By tracking them down. |
| C．By driving them into bomas. | D．By fitting them with the transmitters. |
| A．The keepers’ timely alarm. | B．The inborn nature of rhinos. |
| C．The faith in the keepers’ heart. | D．The teamwork between the keepers and the rhinos. |
10 . Finding a California condor in the wild would be the most unusual treat. perhaps even more unusual than finding a wolf in Yellowstone National Park. In fact, the wolf was what opened my eyes to the fact that humans could bring an animal back to the place where it had disappeared.
In 1987, there were only 27 California condors left, none of which were in the wild, only in captive breeding programs, It was those breeding programs that contributed to their population rise, enough that by 1991 some of them could be freed into the wild.
Still, the hope of seeing a California condor, which remains an endangered species, is very low, let alone getting a photo of one. California condor population dropped mostly due to human factors, such as poaching and living areas destruction-these are challenges California condors still face today.
Although this is just a bird’s-eye view of the challenges California condors face and there are many others, it is part of why the opportunity to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service team and their partners helping their recovery is so special to me as a photographer. I am not only able to photograph the birds in their wild living areas, but also understand and record how difficult the work is of those people on the front lines of the protection.
I am grateful for the work of the team, and my hope is that California condor population will continue to rise allowing future generations an opportunity I never had when I first got here-to look to the sky and see one flying around.
1. What helped the increase of the California condor population in 1987?| A．Rules for hunters. | B．Captive breeding programs. |
| C．The improved natural environment. | D．The enlargement of wild living areas. |
| A．It is difficult. | B．It is easy. | C．It is boring. | D．It is dangerous. |
| A．He guided ways for them. | B．He made records by photos. |
| C．He helped the birds to recover. | D．He rebuilt the birds’ living areas. |
| A．New Way, New Hope | B．Wolves and California Condors |
| C．A Photo of a California Condor | D．The California Condor’s Coming Back |
