1 . Watford and her family have lived in Curtis Bay, Baltimore for generations. Her community has faced environmental injustice. Heavy industries continued to move in her community. As a result, her neighbors have had to live with serious respiratory (呼吸的) problems.

When she knew a plan to build the nation’s largest trash-burning incinerator (焚化炉) less than a mile away from her high school, she realized she had to take action. The incinerator was being sold wrongly as clean, renewable energy equipment but actually it would be a source of brain-damaging chemicals and would release 200 million tons of greenhouse gases per year, both worse than coal burning. Watford felt she had a responsibility to warn her community to work together to shut this plant down.

She co-founded Free Your Voice (FYV), a 10-person student organization devoted to community rights and social justice. Together, they decided to start a campaign to take down Energy Answers, the incinerator’s developer. They went door-to-door talking to neighbors and organizing protests.

When it was discovered that Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) was going to be a customer of Energy Answers, the organization fought with the board and presented their case, urging BCPS to withdraw from the project. BCPS was convinced to cancel their contract, which in turn inspired 22 other customers to do the same. Without any financial gain, Energy Answers had no market to move forward with its plan.

Watford continues to work with Curtis Bay residents toward fair development. They have a vision for the future which includes building a zero-waste movement, a solar farm, and green jobs. She wants the entire human family to join the fight for environmental justice because survival as a species depends on our ability to take action.

Rising sea levels are threatening coastlines in China, for example in     1     (city) such as Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou. If sea levels rise by one meter, more than 92,000 square kilometers of China’s coast could be flooded. This could potentially force 67 million people     2     (move) away. Almost two-thirds of the ice in Asia’s glaciers (冰川) could disappear if average global temperature rises beyond 1.5℃ by the end of the century. If that happens, the impacts     3     China will be felt in multiple areas, from water availability, to agriculture, and to biodiversity.

The good news is     4     China is becoming a global leader on climate action. For example, over the last five years, China     5     (use) more solar and wind energy than any other country in the world. China is also the largest clean energy investor in the world —     6     (spend) some $130 billion in new energy in recent years.

The development of electric vehicles is particularly     7     (inspire) in China. More than 50 percent of electric vehicles in the world     8     (sell) in China every year. And China is now a world leader in the     9     (promote) of clean energy technologies.

Ecological civilization has become the cornerstone (基石) of China’s long-term development strategy, much like climate action is     10     important part of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

3 . Mark Covington, founder of the Georgia Street Community Collective in Detroit, stands in a corner of his urban farm, breathing the fresh air in the early morning.     1     Early in the day, the green crops giving life to tomatoes, cabbages, eggplants, and more are bathed in gold, as if being watered by the sun. The sounds of dogs, pigs, roosters, and a group of stirring bees drown out the sounds of the city.

In 2007, Covington lost his job and returned to his childhood street.     2     “It was dirty,” he said. “There were always vacant lots, but they had always been maintained for children to play on.” He knew that if he just cleaned them up, people would pile on them again.     3    

Covington started with a small community garden.     4     One mother sent three children to help him build a larger garden where the kids could grow food, stay busy during the summer and add structure to their lives. Little by little the seeds took root, as the hands on the garden that would evolve into a farm multiplied.

    5     On one corner: a movie screen and a public garden with vegetable and flower beds. On another: a farm and a community center in a building. Nearby are garlic beds and a greenhouse. “It’s somewhat spiritual for me,” Covington says. “It’s like a sanctuary (圣殿). People come here and don’t want to leave.”

4 . Young Alison Teal never rode in a pushchair or played on a swing on the playground.       1     She saw the view from atop a peak in Peru at just two months old on her mom’s back. They traveled the globe staying not at five-star hotels but in a six-foot-wide tent. From mountaintops to jungles, they immersed (沉浸) themselves in local nature and culture.

Between journeys they would return home to quiet part of the Big Island of Hawaii. Her front yard was the ocean, and her friends were dolphins.       2     Alison would dive into the water and release a sea leaf. A dolphin would catch it on its nose and throw it to the next player. Over the years, the dolphins grew to trust Alison.       3     She let them take the lead in their interactions. After studying at the University of California, Berkeley and then graduating from a film school, Alison continued her world travels. Her adventurous experience and survival skills landed her a spot on the reality show Naked and Afraid, in which she and a co-constant had to live on a deserted island for 21 days. Alison’s deep knowledge of how to live in a wildness saved the pair.       4     “After that, I couldn’t ignore our plastic problem,” says Alison. “I decided to protect our greatest resource, the ocean.”

Along with sharing her mission with her Instagram followers, the conservationist gave a TED talk on her discover.       5     Besides, she helped ban plastic bags in California. Her book, Alison’s Adventures: Your Passport to the World, is filled with travel tales and environment lessons. Alison believes all of us can make changes to protect the Earth.

Scientists have rediscovered a species of frog last seen more than 80 years ago. They relocated the small Hall’s water frog named after the American researcher Frank Gregory Hall     1     discovered the species in 1935 in a tiny hot spring near Ollagüe in Chile’s Atacama desert.     2     discovery made the scientists try their best to confirm(证实)that the so-called ghost species was indeed the same one Hall had discovered decades ago. “We asked the museum where Hall’s discovery was registered. They sent us a large number of     3     (picture),” said César Cuevas, a researcher from the Catholic University of Temuco.

The journal Zootaxa     4     (publish) the tale of the rediscovery last month. “Researchers made an effort     5     (establish) the frog’s ties to other species found in the region in order to determine how different, and therefore, how rare, it     6     (real) is. Meanwhile, protecting its habitat     7     (be) key,” Cuevas said. Mining, tourism development and expanding cities in Chile’s north, home to the world’s     8     (large) copper(铜)industry, all compete for water     9     the rare(罕见的)animals. “These animals are always living in the water. In just five minutes out of the water, they die,” Cuevas said in a call to protect     10     (they) habitat before it is too late.

7 . Margot doesn’t have a garbage can. It doesn’t need one because Margot simply doesn’t cause anything to get thrown away. The restaurant doesn’t allow any type of single use plastic. Margot, which opened last year, is one of the small but growing restaurants around the world aiming to avoid not only food leftovers, but also any garbage.

“Food waste has been increasing as an issue for restaurants over the last 10 years,” says Calvin Brown. He runs the Sustainable Restaurant Association. Based in the United Kingdom, the organization helps food business become more environmentally responsible. He says that food waste contributes to releasing the greenhouse gas, so there is strong motivation to reduce waste and help the environment.

In the USA, food waste and packing account for nearly half of the material sent to landfills. Restaurants from McDonald’s to Starbucks are addressing this issue with “no straw Mondays” and limits on single-serving plastic, but a handful of restaurateurs are trying to get rid of rubbish entirely. There’s also economic case to be made for waste reduction. One study shows that restaurants save seven dollars for every dollar invested in anti- waste methods.

Avoiding food waste is the first and perhaps most obvious challenge for sustainable restaurants. Doug McMaster, chef at Silo in London, only serves a set menu. This removes the worry that one particular item won’t sell well, and will spoil in the refrigerator. Compost (堆肥) is a necessity as well. Nolla (meaning “zero” in Finnish) in Helsinki, Finland is giving compost to its suppliers as well as its diners. Nolla also has food- tracking software more commonly used among corporate food service companies to keep track of what sells and what rots.

Sometimes restaurants call themselves environmentally friendly, but they might just be using the label. Calvin offers some pointers on what to look for to make sure a restaurant is truly committed to sustainability.

8 . The first time ever I realized that plastic was a serious matter for our planet was during a road trip in Western Australia, almost 12 years ago.

We ________ at a supermarket along the Coral Bay coast to buy some groceries and the lady at the counter told us they didn’t sell any shopping bags in order to prevent plastic in the ________ and to help preserving the endangered turtles living in that area. After a first reaction of surprise, we ________ all our shopping in our arms and left.

This was just one of the many experiences I’ve lived that made me more ________ about my impact and pushed me to adopt different habits to live and ________ more sustainably.

Our trip to Borneo was another life-changing ________ that has strengthened my resolution to a zero-waste lifestyle. While traveling in some countries, we came to know that ________ drinking water was always a challenge. So we had to travel with our water bottle, and we ________ to avoid using plastic during our trip.

Besides, we were also ________ impressed by our stay on Libaran Island. A sustainable turtle conservation ________ and the community had made big efforts to ________ the beaches and creatively reuse plastic for ten years. Despite that, the shore is ________ daily with tons of plastic coming from the tides.

Facing this global issue ________, raised in me a feeling of sadness and anger that soon turned into ________: to do as much as possible to reduce plastic in our life. Small changes can ________ a difference!

9 . A new form of real estate(不动产)is appearing along the beaches of South Africa and on the dry islands off its coast-tiny white beach huts. With good ventilation and a sea view, they are just big enough to fit a family of African penguins. Their unique selling point: a safe and cool place for penguins to breed.

African penguins, unlike their relatives that live in snow and ice, live well in the cold currents of the South Atlantic Ocean. But when they come to land, their thick black coat absorbs the heat, and they desperately look for cover-both for themselves and their fragile eggs.

Historically, the penguins dug burrows in layers of guano-accumulated seabird and bat feces- that lined Africa’s penguin colonies, but in the 19th century, traders started selling guano(鸟粪)as fertilizer, leaving the penguins and their eggs increasingly exposed to predators and the baking sun. This, combined with other threats such as egg poaching, overfishing and climate change, has caused African penguin populations to plummet. In 2019, they were thought to be less than 20,000 breeding pairs, down from an estimated 1.5 to 3 million birds in 1900.For more than a decade, the species has been listed as endangered by the IUCN.

To date, the African Penguin Nest Project has installed more than 1,500 nests across five of South Africa’s penguin colonies, and plans to expand into Namibia next year, the only other country with breeding populations of the species.

“This is still just a drop in the bucket,” says Graham, who anticipates they will need to deploy at least 4,500 more ceramic homes to protect penguins currently nesting in exposed areas. “The goal is that every penguin that needs a nest will get one.”