The heat wave that broke high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland,     1     (cause) the surface of the island’s vast ice sheet to melt at near-record levels and a huge     2     (lose) of ice in the Arctic. On Wednesday alone, more than 10 billion tons of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt, which is equal to about 4,000,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Melting     3     (increase) in recent decades because of climate change and has been decreasing accumulation from snow. Previously, during the 1970s and the 1980s, Greenland lost an average of 50 billion tons of ice each year. From 2010 to 2018,that figure shot up to 290 billion Tons     4     (annual). Next summer, the extent of the melt could surpass (超过) the record set in 2012,    5     about 97% of the ice sheet’s surface began to melt, NASA-JPL Caltech reported at the time.

Greenland, the world’s     6       (large) island, lies between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, with 82 per cent of its surface covered in ice.     7     June 2019 study by scientists in the U.S. and Denmark said melting ice in Greenland alone would add between 5 and 33 centimeters to the rising     8     (globe) sea levels by the year 2100.     9     all the ice in Greenland melted, which would take centuries, the world’s oceans would rise     10     7.2 meter.

3 . I strongly believe that individual actions make a difference to our environment. I’ve been a vegetarian for more than two decades, choose to be child-free partially because I can’t justify my genes’ importance over the shocking amount of resources needed for raising another American, and haven’t owned a car in four years. Those things, over time, will absolutely reduce my impact on our beautiful world, and the more people do them, the greater the impact is.

But it’s not nearly enough.

While I will continue to do my part to fight climate change, I have to wonder why there isn’t an equal effort by those who have the biggest impact. According to a recent report, 71% of greenhouse gases are produced by just 100 companies. Surely, working to minimize their emissions (排放物) will do far more, much faster than me talking people’s ears off on Facebook about eating less meat. After all, I have been doing that kind of work for 20 years now, and we are still headed towards climate disaster.

Why should so much of the solution to global warming be on the shoulders of individuals?

When President Kennedy decided we needed to beat the Russians to the moon landing, he didn’t encourage housewives to figure out bow to get there. He got the smartest and most talented people together to solve the challenges. NASA got us there, with lots of hard work and late nights, and also full encouragement and funding from the US government.

But this is not the case with climate change. Big companies are let off the hook while we take on the huge burden of dealing with the emissions of the biggest and most powerful. That strikes me as just plain unfair. The serious threats of climate change require an all-hand-on-deck response. Corporations need to do their part, because I can’t do it on my own.

7 . Early fifth-century philosopher St. Augustine famously wrote that he knew what time was unless someone asked him. Albert Einstein added another wrinkle when he theorized that time varies depending on where you measure it. Today’s state-of-the-art atomic(原子的) clocks have proven Einstein right. Even advanced physics can’t decisively tell us what time is, because the answer depends on the question you’re asking.

Forget about time as an absolute. What if, instead of considering time in terms of astronomy, we related time to ecology? What if we allowed environmental conditions to set the tempo(节奏) of human life? We’re increasingly aware of the fact that we can’t control Earth systems with engineering alone, and realizing that we need to moderate(调节) our actions if we hope to live in balance. What if our definition of time reflected that?

Recently, I conceptualized a new approach to timekeeping that’s connected to circumstances on our planet, conditions that might change as a result of global warming. We’re now building a clock at the Anchorage Museum that reflects the total flow of several major Alaskan rivers, which are sensitive to local and global environmental changes. We’ve programmed it to match an atomic clock if the waterways continue to flow at their present rate. If the rivers run faster in the future on average, the clock will get ahead of standard time. If they run slower, you’ll see the opposite effect.

The clock registers both short-term irregularities and long-term trends in river dynamics. It’s a sort of observatory that reveals how the rivers are behaving from their own temporal frame(时间框架), and allows us to witness those changes on our smartwatches or phones. Anyone who opts to go on Alaska Mean River Time will live in harmony with the planet. Anyone who considers river time in relation to atomic time will encounter a major imbalance and may be motivated to counteract it by consuming less fuel or supporting greener policies.

Even if this method of timekeeping is novel in its particulars, early agricultural societies also connected time to natural phenomena. In pre-Classical Greece, for instance, people “corrected” official calendars by shifting dates forward or backward to reflect the change of season. Temporal connect ion to the environment was vital to their survival. Likewise, river. time and other timekeeping systems we’re developing may encourage environmental awareness.

When St. Augustine admitted his inability to define time, he highlighted one of time’s most noticeable qualities: Time becomes meaningful only in a defined context. Any timekeeping system is valid, and each is as praiseworthy as its purpose.

Antarctica (南极洲) is the highest, driest and coldest place on Earth. It is also the remotest, a fact which account for its     1     environment. It is widely described as the last     2     on our planet. The cold climate plays a significant role in     3     the continent’s year-round ice fields. Even though Antarctica receives more sunlight than the equator (赤道) , the temperatures are lower because the ice there     4     the heat back into space.

For centuries, Europeans wondered about the     5     of a South-Polar continent, but no one actually knew for certain Antarctica was there until 1820 when European explorers “discovered” it. Since then, men have gone to Antarctica in search of     6     . Testing their abilities, several teams of explorers set out in 1911 to be the first men to stand at the South Pole.

Once completely     7     Antarctica has more recently been playing host to adventurers seeking for excitement, scientists interested in experimenting, and companies looking to     8     this wild area for profit.

Yet, Antarctica’s fragile and complicated eco-system is threatened by its human visitors. Damage to the environment is done as people come looking for resources beneath the ice, or     9     leave their rubbish behind. Currently, countries are working to ensure that the damage to Antarctica’s environment is     10     , and that Antarctica will remain an unspoiled place.

10 . The South Bronx is one of the poorest and most polluted places in America, with smog-choked freeways and smelly wastewater treatment plants.

“We’re a dumping ground,” Omar explains. “All the garbage from the rest of New York City ends up here.”

But Omar started looking at garbage in a different way. “A lot of what people throw away is perfectly good,” he says. “Just look at that stuff from construction sites — doors, sinks, toilets. People will buy those things. It’s only called garbage because somebody threw it away.” Omar was just out of college and working for an environmental group called Sustainable South Bronx when he started considering how to get this “good garbage” to people who could use it. Instead of destroying old things, why not clean them up and resell them? Why not hire people in the community to do the work? Better yet, why not make this business a “cooperative,” which means the people working in the business own it and share the profits?

Out of this, Omar started the first cooperative in the country dedicated to reusing construction waste. To start his business, Omar put up flyers along the truck-jammed, trash-filled neighborhood streets, looking for people to work with him. He soon found four other dedicated workers. They rented a warehouse and started looking for donations of used materials.

In April 2008, Omar’s cooperative, ReBuilders Source, opened its business and began selling construction supplies — at reasonable prices — to neighborhood builders and home owners. With the help of city officials, he also began planning a new training program to help local residents learn the skills to get good jobs that help the environment and even start their own cooperatives. Workers were trained to carefully take buildings apart so that things like doors and windows can be reused instead of being smashed and sent off to a landfill. Deconstructing buildings this way could be a huge industry with many good jobs for people who need them.

“If you have a use for something,” Omar says, “it’s no longer waste.”