1 . After most people complete their undergraduate degree, they either take a break or jump into a job. Few, like Brianna Craft, set out to save the world.

It started when she was a freshman sitting in an environmental studies class in 2006. Craft was shocked when the professor described the harm climate change was having on people. She records the moment in her new book, Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir.

After graduation, Craft spent a year in AmeriCorps, focusing on protecting the environment. AmeriCorps is an organization connecting individuals and organizations to help communities tackle their toughest challenges. “That helped me figure out that my future was not in doing science,” she says. Instead, she wanted to work with people and policy.

She then had an opportunity to attend the UN climate negotiations (磋商). That, in turn, prepared her for her current role as a senior researcher at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Her focus is to ensure that the lowest contributors to greenhouse gases and those most affected by climate change have a voice in international climate negotiations.

For five years, Craft attended and supported climate conferences around the world, leading to the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015. Craft says, “I wanted people to care about the work I did in the climate negotiations, and why we pushed so hard to form this agreement.” That led her to write Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir.

Craft brings the viewpoint of an African American woman from a rural northwest community. She weaves (编织) together several storylines-including her difficult childhood with an irresponsible parent, her self-discovery in college and her work to help work towards climate agreements and ensure that even the smallest countries have a voice.

3 . Plastic is everywhere in our modern world. Its toughness makes it an extremely useful material from household items to vehicle parts, but that same toughness makes it hard to break down for recycling or disposal (处理). However, Japanese scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed a new plastic material that can be broken down more easily and can self-heal and remember past shapes.

Based on a kind of plastic called an epoxy resin vitrimer, which is brittle (脆性的), the new plastic boasts a huge range of advantages. Once scratched with a knife, it can completely patch itself up after being heated to 150 ℃ for just 60 seconds. When shaped into the shape of a crane, then flattened, it can fold itself back into the crane shape by being heated up. It does all of this much faster than others of its type.

The new plastic can also break down easier. Even if it’s discarded (丢弃) into the environment, it still poses less of a, problem than other kinds of plastic, which the team demonstrated by placing it in seawater for 30 days. It biodegraded by 25% and released molecules (分子) that are essential food for marine life.

The new plastic is more resistant to breaking. It can also repair itself, and can recover its original memorized shape. It even biodegrades safely in a marine environment, according to Shota Ando, a researcher of the study.

The material can be used in a variety of applications, “Infrastructure materials for roads and bridges are often composed of epoxy resins mixed with compounds such as concrete and carbon,” said Ando. “By using the new plastic, these would be easier to maintain as they would be stronger and healable using heat. Unlike conventional epoxy resins, this new material is hard but stretchable, so it could also be expected to strongly bond materials of different hardness and stretch.”

4 . Landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom has designed a new green roof on the Rangsit Campus of Thammasat University, about 25 miles north of central Bangkok, Thailand. Her imaginative work challenges the common thinking that urbanization has a negative impact on the planet, whether flooding, excess (过度的) energy use, disrupted (扰乱) biodiversity or the heat island effect.

The 236, 806-square-foot structure, which opened in December 2019, includes a flood water management system and Asia’s largest rooftop organic farm. It combines modern landscape architecture with traditional agricultural knowledge, creating a green and friendly environment.

The green roof, containing an H-shaped landscape, looks like a futuristic hill with a brick building beneath it. The hill features a complex pattern of zigzagging terraces (之字形梯田) of planted beds, leading all the way down to the bottom. When rainwater hits the roof, it flows down the zigzags while being absorbed by the soil in the beds, The excess water is directed into four storage ponds — with a capacity of up to 3 million gallons. The process slows down the flow speed of rainwater runoff compared to a normal concrete rooftop. This keeps the area from flooding during heavy rains.

The roof’s terraces are filled with organically grown crops, including a drought tolerant variety of rice, many local vegetables and herbs. The farm can supply the canteens on campus with a large amount of rice, herbs and vegetables a year. The food waste is composted (把……制成堆肥) to fertilize the farm, and water from the storage ponds is used to water plants, creating an entirely localized and circular system.

The farm serves as an outdoor classroom and a source of local jobs, too. Farmers offer workshops on sustainable agriculture and nutrition as part of the university’s sustainability curriculum. “Students and community members are invited to participate in seasonal seeding, harvesting, and so on,” says Voraakhom. “The urban farm is training a new generation of organic farmers with real-world skills. It also promotes a sense of community.”

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is road testing a new way to keep winter roads ice-free by spreading on them cheese brine, the salty liquid     1    (use) to make soft cheeses, like mozzarella(马苏里拉奶酪).

Wisconsin, also called “America’s Dairyland”, is famous for its cheese. The state produced 2.8 billion pounds of cheese last year! As a result, there     2    (be) a lot of leftover cheese brine.     3    (dispose) of the brine can be expensive. So what should cheese makers do     4     the waste?

Cheese brine has salt in it,     5    , like the rock salt, helps lower water’s freezing point.

    6    (normal), towns use rock salt to de-ice streets. The salt lowers water’s freezing point, causing ice     7    (melt). But using cheese brine could help both cheese     8    (produce) and cities save money, while keeping roads safe.

In addition to saving money, cheese brine could also be a more eco-friendly option. Many people suspect that all the rock salt used every winter     9    (harm) the environment, because road crews spread about 20 million tons of salt on U. S roads every year!     10    , by spreading cheese brine on streets before adding a layer of rock salt, Milwaukee may be able to cut its rock salt use by 30 percent.

6 . Beach is a relaxing place to catch waves, get some sun, enjoy picnic, spot wildlife and go exploring. Here are tips from experts on how to be a better beachgoer, so future generations of sea lovers can get their beach therapy (疗法) when they need it.

Use safer sunblock

Many sunblocks advertise that they are “reef-friendly”, which has no firm definitions, and their usage isn’t regulated by governmental bodies.     1    . Only purchase mineral-based sunscreens so that it won’t do harm to reefs.

Get involved

    2    . If you forget to bring one, find an abandoned bag at the beach. It may seem a little gesture, but it will help remove rubbish. By working together people can really make a difference.

Thoughtful toys for kids

It’s fun for your little ones to play with plastic toys in the sand.     3    . They end up polluting the environment and can be accidentally eaten by animals, causing them serious harm on even killing them. Pack metal or wooden toys instead.

Read the signs

Signs at the beach aren’t optional reading. They tell you where you can’t go and what you can’t do, so you don’t mess with the local ecosystem.     4    . They are storm barriers and home to many animals.

Destroy what you build

It doesn’t matter how much time and effort your children spent building sand castles or digging tunnels: if you are on a beach marked as a sea turtle habitat, fill in the trench and knock down the structure. Sea turtles have heavy bodies and they can die if they fall into a hole and get trapped.     5    .

8 . In the last 100 years, the global temperature has gone up by around 0.75℃. Such a small increase is causing sea levels to rise and ________ the habitat of many species of plants and animals. A(n) ________ of 2℃ in global temperatures could result in ________ of 30% of the world’s land species.

Sea levels in the UK have increased by around 10 cm in the last 100 years and experts ________ that global sea levels could rise by up to 59 cm in the near future. ________, areas which were land a few hundred years ago are now under water.

As a result of the changing ________, the world’s ecosystems are also changing faster than ever before. So what is ________ climate change? The main cause of climate change is the huge amount of greenhouse gases like CO₂ in the atmosphere, but the reason for this is the world’s population — you and me. As the ________ increases, more land is needed to provide food, and more energy is ________ too. Burning fossil fuels for heating, lighting, transport, or electricity ________ CO₂. Furthermore, humans breathe out CO₂ and trees “breathe in” CO₂ and produce oxygen — so by ________ trees, we are increasing the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere and reducing the amount of oxygen. As a result of these ________, CO₂ levels are now at their highest for 800,000 years.

The biggest ________ we all face is to prevent further environmental disasters. We need to ______________ burning fossil fuels and start using renewable energy. If we can get enough ________ from renewable fuels, we can stop using fossil fuels completely.

9 . San Francisco’s waterfront (海滨) is on the National Register of Historic Places for good reason.

Its beautiful old landmarks, like the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge, have been seen in many books, TV shows and movies—from the stories and novels of Jack London to the 1970s TV series The Streets of San Francisco. The future of San Francisco’s waterfront, however, isn’t safe.

In 2016, the National Trust for Historic Preservation put part of the city’s shoreline on its list of the U. S.’s most endangered historic places, in part because of the threat of sea level rise. The waterfront landmarks of many cities are under increasing threat from floods and rising sea levels brought on by human-driven climate change. St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy and the Venice Beach boardwalk in Los Angeles face similar challenges to San Francisco.

“The whole issue of climate change and historic preservation intersects (交织) right at the waterfront,” said Elaine Forbes, director of the Port of San Francisco. As she watched the boats come and go on a sunny afternoon, Forbes said, “Sea level rise hasn’t historically been as much of a threat to San Francisco as major earthquakes.” However, that’s changed. Parts of the main road that runs along the waterfront have flooded from heavy rains in recent years. The state estimates (预估) the water could rise up to about two and a half feet above its present level by 2060, and possibly up to seven feet by the turn of the century.

Now, San Francisco is considering measures to save its historic shoreline. But the growing magnitude and frequency of the climate-related threats, the high costs and effort needed in saving heritage sites, and competing ideas about what’s worth saving and what isn’t, can make it hard for cities to know what to do first.

10 . Some breathtaking blue lakes may not be so blue in the future, thanks to climate change.

In the first global record of lake color, researchers find that roughly one-third of Earth’s lakes are blue. But, should average summer air temperatures rise by a few degrees, some of those clear waters could turn a cloudy green or brown, the team reports in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters.

The changing colors could change how people use those waters and offer information about the balance of lake ecosystems. Lake color depends in part on what’s in the water, but factors such as water depth and surrounding land use also matter. Compared with blue lakes, green or brown lakes have more algae (水藻) and organic matter, says one of the researchers.

The scientists then looks at local climates during that time to see how they may be linked to lake color around the world. Lakes in places with average summer air temperatures that was below 19°C were more likely to be blue than lakes with warmer summers, the researchers find. If average summer temperatures increase another 3°C — an amount that scientists think is possible by the end of the century — those 3,800 lakes could turn green or brown. That’s because warmer water helps algae produce more flowers, which changes the qualities of the water, giving it a green-brown color, Yang says.

If some lakes do become less blue, people will probably lose some of the resources they have come to value, says O’Reilly, a scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallss. But the color changes wouldn’t necessarily mean that the lakes are any less healthy. “Humans don’t value lots of algae in a lake, but if you’re a certain type of fish species, you might be like this is great, ” O’Reilly says.

Lake color can hint at the balance of a lake’s ecosystem and it gives sickness a baschins for assessing how climate change is affecting Earth’s freshwater resources. Continued increasing of lakes could help scientists discover future changes.