1 . Conservationists go to war over whether humans are the measure of nature’s value. New Conservationists argue such trade-offs are necessary in this human dominated epoch. And they support “re-wilding”, a concept originally proposed by Soule where people curtail economic growth and withdraw from landscapes, which then return to nature.

New Conservationists believe the withdrawal could happen together with economic growth. The California-based Breakthrough Institute believes in a future where most people live in cities and rely less on natural resources for economic growth.

They would get food from industrial agriculture, including genetically modified foods, desalination intensified meat production and aquaculture, all of which have a smaller land footprint. And they would get their energy from renewables and natural gas.

Driving these profound shifts would be greater efficiency of production, where more products could be manufactured from fewer inputs. And some unsustainable commodities would be replaced in the market by other, greener ones — natural gas for coal, for instance, explained Michael Heisenberg, president of the Breakthrough Institute. Nature would, in essence, be decoupled from the economy.

And then he added a caveat: We are not suggesting decoupling as the paradigm to save the world, or that it solves all the problems or eliminates all the trade-offs.

Cynics (悲观者) may say all this sounds too utopian, but Breakthrough maintains the world is already on this path toward decoupling. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United Sates, according to Iddo Wernick, a research scholar at the Rockefeller University, who has examined the nation’s use of 100 main commodities.

Wenick and his colleagues looked at data carefully from the U.S. Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center, which keeps a record of commodities used from 1900 through the present day. They found that the use of 36 commodities (sand, iron ore, cotton etc.) in the U. S. Economy had peaked.

Another 53 commodities (nitrogen, timber, beef, etc.) are being used more efficiently per dollar value of gross domestic product than in the pre-1970s era. Their use would peak soon, Wernick said.

Only 11 commodities (industrial diamond, indium, chicken, etc.) are increasing in use (Greenwire, Nov.6), and most of these are employed by industries in small quantities to improve systems processes. Chicken use is rising because people are eating less beef, a desirable development since poultry cultivation has a smaller environmental footprint.

The numbers show the United States has not intensified resource consumption since the 1970s even while increasing its GDP and population, said Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University.

“It seems like the 20th-century expectation we had, we were always assuming the future entailed greater consumption of resources,” Ausubel said. “But what we are seeing in the developed countries is, of course, peaks.”

2 . Climate change disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable people, particularly poor rural communities that depend on the land for their livelihoods and coastal populations throughout the tropics. We have already seen a chain of tough suffering that results from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, and more.

For remedies, advocates and politicians have tended to look toward cuts in fossil-fuel use or technologies to capture carbon before it enters the atmosphere – both of which are crucial. But this focus has overshadowed the most powerful and cost-efficient carbon capture technology in the world. Recent research confirms that forests are absolutely essential in reducing climate change, thanks to their ability to absorb and isolate carbon. In fact, natural climate solutions such as conservation and restoration of forests, along with improvements in land management, can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target of limiting warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, even though they currently receive only 2.5 percent of public climate financing.

Forests’ power to store carbon dioxide is staggering: one tree can store an average of about 48 pounds in one year. Intact (完整的) forests could take in the CO₂ emissions of some entire countries.

For this reason, policymakers and business leaders must create and enforce policies to prevent deforestation, foster reforestation of degraded land, and promote the sustainable management of standing forests in the fight against climate change. Protecting the world’s forests ensures they can keep performing essential functions such as producing oxygen, filtering water and supporting biodiversity. Not only does the world’s entire population depend on forests to provide clean air, clean water, oxygen and medicines, but l.6 billion people also rely on them directly for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, a huge amount of forest continues to be converted into agricultural land to produce a handful of resource-intensive commodities — despite zero-deforestation commitments from companies and governments. So now is the time to increase forest protection and restoration. This action will also address a number of other pressing global issues. For example, in less developed and rural areas — especially in the tropics — community-based forest-management programs can forge pathways out of poverty. In the Petén region of Guatemala, for instance, community-managed forests boasted a near-zero deforestation rate from 2000 through 2013, as compared with 12 percent in nearby protected areas and buffer (缓冲) zones. These communities have built low-impact, sustainable forest-based businesses that have stimulated the economy of the region enough to fund the creation of local schools and health services. Their success is especially noticeable in a location where, outside these community-managed zones, deforestation rates have increased 20-fold.

3 . Tiny trash factories

Not all waste has to go to waste. Most of the world’s 2.22 billion tons of annual trash ends up in landfills or open dump. Veena Sahajwalla, a materials scientist and engineer at the University of New South walks, has created a solution to our massive trash problem: waste microfactories. These little trash processors house a series of machines that recycle waste and transform it into new materials with thermal technology. The new all-in-one approach could leave our current recycling processes in the dust.

Sahajwalla launched the world’s first waste microfactory targeting electronic waste in 2018. A second one began recycling plastics in 2019. Now, her lab group is working with university and industry partners to commercialize their patented Microfactoric technology. She says the small scale of the machines will make it easier for them to one day operate on renewable energy, unlike most large manufacturing plants. The approach will also allow cities to recycle waste into new products on location. With a micro-factory, gone are the days of needing separate facilities to collect and store materials, extract elements and produce new products.

Traditionally, recycling plants break down materials for re us c in similar products. It is like melting down plastic to make more plastic things. Her invention evolved this idea by taking materials from an old product and creating something different. “The kids don’t look like the parents,” she says.

For example, the microfactories can break down old smart phoned and computer monitors and extract silica and carbon, and then combine them into silicon car bide nanowires. This generates a common ceramic material with many industrial uses. Sahajwalla refers to this process as “the fourth R,” adding “_________” to the common phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

In 2019, just 17.4 percent of e-waste was recycled, so the new ability offers a crucial new development in the challenge recycling complex electronic devices. “We can do so much more with materials,” says Sahajwala.” Traditional recycling has not worked for every recycling challenge.” She and her team are already working to install the next waste microfactory in the Australian town of Cootamundra by early 2021, with the goal of expanding around the country over the next few years.

Planet Plastic

Here’s a shocking statistic. Scientists have calculated the total amount of plastic ever made: 8.3 billion tonnes. Looked at another way, that’s as heavy as 25,000 Empire State Buildings or one billion elephants. And     1    , almost all of it has been made in the last 65 years.

So what’s the problem? Much plastic is in the form of packaging which is used just once and then thrown away. According to a major new study from the University of California, 9% of this is     2    , 12% is burned and 79% goes to landfill. And because most plastic doesn’t biodegrade (生物降解), once it’s in the ground, it stays there.

It’s a situation that has led the paper’s lead author, ecologist Dr. Roland Geyer, to say that we are “rapidly     3     towards ‘Planet Plastic’”. He believes that there’s already enough waste out there to cover the whole of Argentina.

The team behind this report also estimate that eight million tonnes of plastic waste are     4     into the sea every year. This has     5     concern that plastic is entering the food chain through fish and other sea life which consume the smaller pieces.

Of course, the reason why there’s so much plastic around is that it’s an amazingly useful material. We can’t get enough of it. It’s durable and     6    , and is used for everything from yoghurt pots to spaceships. But it’s    7     this quality that makes it a problem. The only way to destroy plastic is to heat or burn it — although this has the side effect of harmful emissions.

So what’s the     8     other than using less plastic? Oceanographer (海洋学家) Dr. Erik van Sebille from Utrecht University says we’re facing a flood of plastic waste, and that the     9     waste industry needs to “get its act together”.

Professor Richard Thompson, a marine biologist from Plymouth University, says it’s poor design that is at fault. He says that if products are currently designed “with recyclability in mind”, they could be recycled around 20 times over.

Dr. Geyer agrees: “The     10     of recycling is to keep material in use and in the cycle forever if you can. But it turns out in our study that actually 90% of that material that did get recycled — which I think we calculated was 600 million tonnes — only got recycled once.”

7 . Trash-Eating Robots

It has become common knowledge that our oceans are filled with garbage. Broken objects, used plastic bottles and so on fill our beaches and cover the ocean floor, doing immense damage to ocean creatures. Many individuals and organizations are working to remove this garbage and recent technological developments have given them a new tool to do so: trash-eating robots.

Robots of various shapes have been designed to collect garbage that they find floating in the ocean. For example, the French company IADYS has developed what it calls the jellyfishbot.     1     The jellyfishbot is remotely controlled and can clean up to 1,000 square meters per hour. It contains a net that can hold up to 30 liters. The jellyfishbots’ small size and ability to be easily controlled make them ideal for cleaning up crowded areas such as ports.

    2     Designed for use on rivers, the Interceptor looks like a boat with a conveyor belt that picks up trash. A shallow barrier attached to the Interceptor guides floating trash to the conveyor belt, but fish can swim under it safely. Once a sensor indicates that the dustbins are full, the Interceptor automatically sends a text message to onshore operators. These operators collect and empty the dustbins, sending the garbage to local waste management facilities.

Most of the garbage in the oceans comes down rivers.     3     Hence the Interceptor is used to stop pollution before it enters the ocean.

The Interceptor is completely solar-powered and operates on its own, which minimizes the need for human involvement. Robots are able to clean up large amounts of garbage without humans struggling with beach cleanup by hand.     4    

8 . The East African country of Kenya has been at the forefront of the global war on plastic since 2017, when officials banned plastic bags. In June 2020, the government ________ the efforts with a ban on single-use plastics in protected areas. Unfortunately, the measures have ________ made any impact. Hundreds of tons of industrial and consumer polymer（聚合物）waste continue to get ________ into landfills daily. However, if 29-year-old Nzambi Matee has her way, the unpleasant plastic ________ will soon be transformed into colourful bricks.

The material engineer’s search to find a(n) ________ solution to control plastic pollution began in 2017. She quit her job as a data analyst at a local chemical factory and set up a small lab in her mother’s backyard. It took her nine months to produce the first brick and even longer to ________ a partner to help build the machinery to make them. But the determined eco-entrepreneur was confident in her idea and did not________.

She says, “I wanted to use my education in applied physics and material engineering to do something about the problem of plastic waste pollution. But I was very ________ that the solution had to be practical, sustainable, and affordable. The best way to do this was by ________ the waste into the construction and finding the most efficient and affordable material to build homes.”

Her company, Gjenge Makers, now hires 112 people and produces over 1,500 bricks a day. The pavers（铺路材料） are made using a mix of plastic products that cannot be reprocessed or recycled. The polymer is obtained ________ from factories or picked by hired locals from Nairobi's largest landfill, Dandora.

The collected plastic is ________ with sand, heated at very high temperatures, and compressed into bricks that vary in colour and thickness. The ________ product is stronger, lighter, and about 30 percent cheaper than concrete bricks.

Matee, who was recently ________ as one of the Young Champions of the Earth 2020 — the United Nations’ highest environmental ________. Her dream is to reduce the mountain of trash in Dandora to just a hill by increasing production and expanding her offerings. She says, “The more we recycle the plastic, the more we produce affordable housing, and the more we create ________ for the youth.”