2 . Greening the blue

Is there a “natural” way to enhance the potential of the oceans to lock away climate-warming CO₂? Planting more trees on land can help draw down more CO₂ from the atmosphere—the basis of many plans for carbon credits that companies buy to offset their emissions (抵消其排放).     1     Seaweed forests and saltmarshes (盐碱滩) are common examples.

Some regard the potential for this “blue carbon” as huge, although as yet there is no mechanism for integrating it into carbon offsetting plans. John Virdin of Duke University in North Carolina says, “    2    ” He adds, “You have to go out and measure all the carbon that’s there, you have to show that it’s not going to be lost, you have to keep monitoring it.” Virdin and others have proposed extending an existing land-based plan called REDD + (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) to the ocean, but that is an idea whose ship has yet to sail.

    3     In March, the UK government’s climate adviser, the Climate Change Committee, found that restoring and creating seagrass and saltmarsh ecosystems in the country would only lock away a small amount of CO₂, removing “well below” 1 million tonnes a year. Nonetheless, these are efficient carbon stores according to the committee.     4    

3 . More than three billion people rely on the ocean to make a living, most of whom are in developing countries. As the global population increases, the demand for seafood is expected to rise, too.

Although ocean ecosystems are stretched to the limit by climate change, overfishing and more, studies nevertheless suggest that seafood can be expanded sustainably to meet future food demands. Success will depend on small-scale fisheries. These fisheries can be remarkably efficient. Almost everything that hand-to-mouth fisheries catch is consumed. By contrast, around 20% of the fish caught by industrial ships is estimated to be wasted, mainly because of unwanted by-catch.

Small fishers rarely have the right resources to expand their operations, or even to survive. If they do scale up, they might lose some of their current advantages or engage in the same harmful practices as do large commercial fisheries. Managed with care, however, small fisheries could provide win-wins for livelihoods and the environment.

Most nations already have management policies for marine ecosystems that provide for small-scale fisheries. But small-scale fishers’ rights to access are often poorly defined, ineffectively enforced or unfairly distributed (分配). Government subsidies (补贴) also require reform. One estimate found that large-scale fishers receive about 3.5 times more subsidies than small-scale fishers do. Instead, subsidies and other funds should be directed towards small-scale fishers to let them expand their access to markets, while keeping them from adopting the negative practices of large-scale operations.

The total global loss and waste from fisheries is estimated at between 30% and 35% annually primarily due to a lack of technology, good manufacturing practices, and infrastructure such as decent roads and cold storage. Public and private investment in cold-storage facilities and processing equipment could help. One promising strategy is to pair international or national funding with direct contracts for feeding programmes linked to schools, hospitals and similar facilities. Such arrangements would provide small fisheries with large, consistent markets and storage infrastructure that boosts local consumption and does not incentivize (刺激) overfishing.

Moreover, simple incentive programmes could be conducted by funders, managers and local governments trying to promote sustainable fisheries. For example, local markets could display a rating system for individual fishers or small fisheries. This could include various elements of sustainability other than environmental ones — such as providing information on the type of fishing equipment, location of the catch and freshness. Promoting the rating as a social responsibility concept would inform consumers of the need to support sustainable fisheries.

Anyway, only joint problem-solving efforts can deliver seafood protein, sustainably, to a world that increasingly needs it.

Food delivery apps are changing the way we eat

It’s raining, it’s dinnertime, and the fridge is nearly empty. Years ago, we made do; today, we order food through our phones. Within twenty minutes, we get whatever it was we were craving, we’re warm and dry, and there’s not a single dish to wash afterward.

Food delivery apps have altered the     1     of how eat, particularly in big cities. The industry is a complex machine; there’s Meituan, Ele.me, Hema…the list goes on. These companies are     2     and changing at a rapid rate, bringing on the rise of virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens, and customers who will never step inside a brick-and-mortar shop（实体店）.

Of course, these apps bring all types of cuisines around the city to our fingertips, but it comes at a cost. And one of the real environmental     3     lies in all that plastic and excess food.

In the US alone, packaging accounts for 30 percent of municipal solid waste. In 2017, that meant 80.1 million tons. Food delivery systems are likely     4     this huge number to rise. Durable materials like the plastics serveware is made from, are difficulty to     5     of.

Restaurant delivery is a global phenomenon – as is the impact on the environment. Meituan, one of the leading Chinese delivery platforms, delivered 6.4 billion food orders in 2018. It is estimated that China     6     1.6 million tons of packaging waste(containers, utensils, plastic bags) in 2017, nine times more than in 2015.

In the EU, University of Manchester researchers estimate, over two billion single-use takeaway containers are used every year. Most of those are not     7    . According to the European Commission, packaging, which includes plastic utensils, plates, and straws, make up 70% of all     8     pollution found in European seas.

Plastic bans,     9     packaging materials, and other efforts to cut down on waste are on the rise. Food delivery apps should, too, do their part to raise awareness for plastic pollution and     10     the gap between food waste and hunger.

5 . In February 1970, a group of activists gathered in Vancouver, Canada to discuss a planned nuclear test on the Alaskan island of Amchitka. They eventually agreed to sail to the test site and _________ against the explosion in person. At the end of the meeting, the chairman raised two fingers to the room and shouted “Peace!”. After a brief pause, one young attendee _________ with a monumental line: “Let’s make that a green peace”. The group were so _________ the phrase that they named their first boat the Green Peace.

Over the last 50 years, the _________ movement has become so closely associated with the colour green that it’s almost impossible to see a green poster, label or recycling bag without thinking about our planet’s future. But though that connection is the product of a very recent crisis, its _________ go back some way. We have _________ green with nature and its processes for thousands of years. Indeed, the very word “green” comes from the ancient Proto-Indo-European word ghre, meaning “grow”.

The human species, which emerged in the green forests and grasslands of Africa about 300, 000 years ago, has a special _________ link with green. Our eyes might even have _________ specifically to see the green in plants. Unlike most animals, who are red-green colour blind, we humans developed a third cone cell, an additional photoreceptor enabling our _________ to spot ripe red and yellow fruits against a backdrop of green leaf, and to distinguish different green leaves from each other. In daylight conditions, human eyes are more ____________ to green than any other colour.

With the rise of farming, we started to use green as a(n) ____________ for nature and its processes. Archaeologists have recently found an extraordinary store of green jewels in the Levant, ____________ some 10, 000 years. The researchers believe that these objects, many of which had come from hundreds of miles away at great cost, were chosen because they ____________ young leaves and might have been used by early farmers to pray for rainfall or fertilise crops.

The ancient Egyptians, who were farming the banks of the Nile from about 8000 B.C., ____________ use green as identification for their crops. Egyptian painters often represented their god of ____________, Osiris — who was responsible for flooding the Nile’s banks, filling the soil with nutrients and pushing the first green shoots up through the fields — as a bright green being.

6 . With vigorous promotion and extensive participation over the past two years, waste sorting is a new trend that has reshaped the image of campuses across Beijing.

“In the past, sanitation workers sorted the garbage next to the trash cans near the dormitory, _________ a disgusting odor. On windy days, the trash was blown everywhere and we always _________ around it with our hands covering our noses,” says Sun Jiajing, a sophomore at Beijing Forestry University. “Now, we are more active in classifying waste.”

Since a revised guideline on household waste disposal in Beijing was _________ on May 1, 2020, many students have seen their campuses take on a new look that is more pleasant, tidy and appealing.

At Beijing Forestry University, about one in four students are trash-sorting volunteers.

In the Beijing No 20 High School, bins to recycle waste are placed on each floor and students on duty will set their wits to turning trash into _________.

“I received training on trash classification before taking on the role as head of the trash-sorting station. My job is to remind everyone to classify waste and recycle to the best _________,” says Ding Shuyi, a student at the school.

As China pushes _________ the “double reduction” education policy, which aims to ease the burden of _________ homework and off-campus tutoring for primary and middle school students, understanding of waste sorting has been fused into academic teaching via various innovative approaches.

“Our Chinese teachers encourage students to write poetries _________ on waste classification, math teachers lead them to do math on topics such as water conservation, while our music teachers choreographed a ‘waste sorting’ dance with the students,” says Zuo Chunyun, principal of a primary school in the suburban Tongzhou district of the capital.

Zuo adds that students in senior classes will join trash-sorting projects and map out _________ in the form of handwritten newspapers and mind maps. Decorations made from recycled materials are exhibited in the school’s corridors.

The same scene can be seen in Qianjin Primary School, Haidian district. “Garbage can be turned into __________,” says Wang Liping, the principal. “We have raised 100,000 yuan ($15,760) of charity funds by encouraging students and their parents to recycle waste, and the money was used to purchase movie screens for schools in Hotan, Xinjiang.”

According to Liu Jianguo, a professor at Tsinghua University, the implementation of garbage sorting depends on the __________ participation and unremitting efforts of society, which is conducive to the__________ of social civilization.

“Wide participation of students and school staff will help promote garbage sorting to become a new fashion in society,” adds Liu.

Official data shows that over 90 percent of the residents in Beijing have participated in waste classification, and about 85 percent can __________ categorize the garbage. But still, relevant departments are __________ to further raise the ratio.

“Our next move will be more precise supervision of groups that did __________ poorer jobs in sorting out garbage,” says a staffer with the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Management.

7 . The water off the coast of northwest Greenland is a glass-like calm, but the puddles (水坑) on the region’s icebergs are a sign that a transformation is underway higher on the ice sheet.

Several days of unusually warm weather in northern Greenland have caused rapid melting, made visible by the rivers of meltwater rushing into the ocean. Temperatures have been running around 60 degrees Fahrenheit — 10 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year, scientists said.

The amount of ice that melted in Greenland between July 15 and 17 this year alone — 6 billion tons of water per day — would be enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Each summer, scientists worry that they will see a repeat of the record melting that occurred in 2019, when 532 billion tons of ice flowed out into the sea. An unexpectedly hot spring and a July heat wave that year caused almost the entire ice sheet’s surface to melt. Global sea level rose permanently by 1.5 millimeters as a result.

Greenland holds enough ice — if it all melted — to lift sea level by 7.5 meters around the world. The latest research points to a more and more threatening situation on the Northern Hemisphere’s iciest island.

“Unprecedented (史无前例的)” rates of melting have been observed at the bottom of the Greenland ice sheet, a study published in February found, caused by huge quantities of meltwater flowing down from the surface. This water is particularly concerning because it can destabilize the sheet above it and could lead to a massive, rapid loss of ice.

And in 2020, scientists found that Greenland’s ice sheet had melted beyond the point of no return. The rate of melting in recent years exceeds anything Greenland has experienced in the last 12,000 years, another study found — and enough to cause measurable change in the gravitational field over Greenland.

At the East Greenland Ice-core Project — or EastGRIP — research camp in northwest Greenland, the work of scientists to understand the impact of climate change is being affected by climate change itself.

Aslak Grinsted, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, said that they have been trying to get flights into the camp but the warmth is destabilizing the landing site.

Before human-caused climate change kicked in, temperatures near 32 degrees Fahrenheit there were unheard of. But since the 1980s, this region has warmed by around 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade — four times faster than the global pace — making it all the more likely that temperatures will cross the melting point.

Here’s to guilt-free flying

Maj a Rosen gave up flying a decade ago out of concern for its environmental impact. But when she became a mother and started hanging out with other parents, she didn’t bring it up, even when the conversation turned to flying. It would have     1     the mood.

Then in April 2018, her home country of Sweden     2     a tax on aviation (飞行).The climate impacts of flying were on the evening news and the mood changed. Rosen    3     the moment. With her neighbor Lotta Hammar, she launched a campaign called “We stay on the ground”, which has    4    10,000 people to commit to avoid flights in 2019.

Kudos. But here’s the     5     truth: in the grand scheme of things, barely anyone will follow suit. The     6     classes tend to have a lot to say about the eco benefits of avoiding meat, cycling and eating locally sourced food. But that     7     generally disappears when it comes to flying.

We can’t rely on international     8     to stop aviation emission either. Yes, the UN has fixed up a deal to cap aviation emissions beyond 2020. But it lacks real bite, allowing airlines to continue emitting carbon provided they offset (抵消)it.

All this means we could really do with green tech riding to the rescue. Here, at least, there is a little good news. Even rather simple measures like freeing planes to fly in straighter lines could     9     cut carbon emissions. Hybrid (混合动力的)electric aircraft are also the pipeline. And we already know that planes can mix up to 50 per cent biofuels into their tanks and fly safely.

It’s time to redouble our    10     to make planes green. In the meantime, if you are still looking for a New Year’s resolution, you might want to think about joining those 105000 Swedes.

10 . One summer midnight several years ago, standing outside a wooden cabin in Michigan River, I looked up. The sky was filled with thousands of stars, the sight of which was almost enough to make me, a non-believer, offer a word of ___________ up into the star-filled sky. But to whom? Perhaps to Johan Eklof, author of The Darkness Manifesto.

As a bat scientist, Eklof’s work on bats requires a specific kind of darkness—the ___________kind, unpolluted by light. But this category of darkness is ___________. In the 1980s, Eklof tells readers, two-thirds of the churches in Sweden’s southwest housed bat colonies. Not any longer. “Today, forty years later, research I’ve done with my colleagues shows that this number has been reduced by a third, ___________ light pollution and other factors. Because the churches are all ___________ like carnivals(嘉年华) in the night,” he writes. “We are surrounding ourselves with light.”

Excess light is incredibly ___________ to the complex eco-systems nocturnal (夜间活动的) animals inhabit. It ___________ away the bats that Eklof studies. It frightens light-sensitive moths, leaving them easily ___________ to predation(捕食) or flying endlessly into lights that will never return their love. Baby turtles crawl away from the shoreline toward the lights of distant coastal cities and reef fish eggs go unhatched. Birds do not migrate ___________ and even they forget to sing. Modern advancements such as LED lights could significantly reduce some of the worst impacts, but they have not. At least, not yet.

It is worth mentioning that middle-aged writer like Eklof can ____________ for a darker world — for darkened campuses and unlit parking lots. But darkness is not safe for everyone. We need to address the social issues that make lighted places so ____________ in the first place.

The bottom line: We can change if we want to. Some of the solutions to light pollution— motion-detecting lights, shielded lights that do not ____________ light upward, artificial light with wavelengths that is similar to natural light—are already within our grasp, if we just ____________ them. “We could just turn it all off, but I guess we don’t want to,” said Eklof in a recent interview. “____________, it’s vital we find a middle way.”

Right now it is hard to know what that middle way might look like. In 50 years, every city could be equipped with an array of programmed and ____________ low-impact LED lights. Or we might have completely forgotten what darkness is—the sky filled with little moons.