1 . Shop Sustainably
If you have to name one thing that contributes most to your ecological footprints, you may say the energy you use at home, or your car’s emissions.
●
●Avoid unnecessary packing. Buy loose fruit and vegetables instead of pre-packaged produce, and avoid products that contain multiple single packages or double packaging, like grain in a box and a bag. Consider switching from tea bags and coffee pods to tea leaves and ground coffee.
●Go organic when you can. In addition to the benefit organic farming has to insect biodiversity, it’s also considered more sustainable and better for the environment.
●Buy seasonal and native products.
| A．Take reusable grocery bags. |
| B．Select single-use plastic bags. |
| C．It supports local farmers and food producers. |
| D．You can also refill your own containers with loose-packed food. |
| E．When buying organic products, look for those officially certified. |
| F．But it’s what we eat that accounts for up to 60% of our personal demand. |
| G．You’ll find it convenient whenever you buy tea or coffee in the supermarket. |
If you’re looking to take part in voluntourism in the area, consider the Lizard Island. It’s a private national park that works
The Great Barrier Reef’s Ocean Park Rangers (巡游者), government workers responsible
Hope that this
One hope of the programme is to inspire
A new book for children
Last Friday, Juniper went to
4 . For the history of life on Earth, organisms have relied on the light of the sun, moon, and stars to find their way and schedule their lives. While the beginning of electric lighting in the late 19th century may have benefited humans, it has caused problems in the natural world. Among the impacts of artificial light at night(ALAN), light pollution lures migrating birds to cities with shocking consequences, contributes to the alarming decline in insect populations, and convinces sea turtle babies to amble(缓行)away from the water instead of towards it.
Now, a new study from the University of Plymouth adds another disappointing finding about how ALAN is affecting the creatures with whom we share the planet: Light pollution from coastal cities can trick corals(珊瑚)into reproducing outside of the optimum times when they would normally reproduce.
Using a combination of light pollution data and spawning(产卵)observations, researchers were able to show for the first time that corals exposed to ALAN are spawning one to three days earlier and closer to the full moon compared to those on unlit corals. “That shift may reduce the survival and fertilization success of gametes(配子)and genetic connectivity between nearby lit and unlit coral systems,” they explain.
“Corals are among the most biodiverse, economically important, and threatened ecosystems on the planet,” write the authors of the study.
“Climate change has led to mass bleaching(褪色)events. Habitat destruction, fisheries, and pollution have reduced corals substantially since the 1950s,” they write, adding, “The complete loss of corals is anticipated over the next 100 years.”
If we want to reduce the harm ALAN is causing, we could perhaps look to delay the switching-on of night-time lighting in coastal regions to ensure the natural dark period between sunset and moonrise when coral reproduction remains undisturbed.
1. Why is the first paragraph written?| A．To present the topic of the text. | B．To advocate energy conservation. |
| C．To explain a natural phenomenon. | D．To provide background information. |
| A．Possible. | B．Appropriate. | C．Flexible. | D．Sensitive. |
| A．Extinction. | B．Losing value. |
| C．Terrible diseases. | D．Exposure to moonlight. |
| A．Creatures Rely on Natural Lights to Schedule Their Life |
| B．Night-time Lighting Shortens Natural Dark Period |
| C．Coastal Lights Trick Corals into Early Spawning |
| D．Light Pollution Leads to Serious Consequences |
5 . Raising livestock (牲畜) is a big part of the carbon emission from agriculture. But it is hard to change people’s habits and get them to give up their hamburgers, especially since more than one-third of Americans eat fast food every day. We previously called for carbon labels on everything from buildings to burgers. Now, a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that labels on fast food affected people's choices.
The study said shifting current dietary patterns to more sustainable diets with less red meat could reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 55% and have health benefits.
The 5,000 participants in the study were shown fake menus. One group got menus with high climate impact labels on red meat items and another had low climate impact labels on fish or plant-based burgers. Both menus were effective in reducing the orders for red meat. But interestingly, the high-impact labels were far more effective, with 23% of the participants choosing a more environmentally sustainable selection, while menus listing low-impact choices encouraged only 10% participants to change.
“We found that labeling red meat items with high-climate impact labels was more effective in increasing sustainable selections than labeling non-red meat items with low-climate impact labels,” wrote the authors of the study.
Lead author, Julia Wolfson, said, “These results suggest that menu labeling, particularly labels warning that an item has high climate impact, can be an effective strategy for encouraging more sustainable food choices in a fast food setting.”
The study points out negative labels might be unpopular: “It is unlikely that the industry would voluntarily adopt a negative label approach; such an approach needs to be carried out via law. However, high climate impact labels may easily be adopted in settings like universities and hospitals.”
They have a point that this label is aggressively negative, more like a cigarette warning than a food label. In the study, the authors note that future research should test more label designs using qualitative and quantitative research on how people understand different climate impact labels.
1. What is paragraph 1 mainly about?| A．The impact of carbon emission. |
| B．The background of the new study. |
| C．The request of giving up carbon labels. |
| D．The difficulty in changing people's habits. |
| A．They liked them very much. |
| B．They stuck to their preferences. |
| C．Some of them stopped eating fast food. |
| D．Some of them changed their food choices. |
| A．It will be banned by law. |
| B．It will face some resistance. |
| C．It will produce bad results. |
| D．It will be accepted by all industries. |
| A．Raising livestock causes carbon emission |
| B．Fast food has a negative effect on climate |
| C．Researchers are focusing on climate impact |
| D．Labels on fast food help protect the environment |
6 . Desertification, the process by which fertile (肥沃的) land becomes desert, has severe impacts on food production and is worsened by climate change.
Africa’s Great Green Wall is a project to build an 8,000- kilometre-long forest across 11 of the continent s countries. The project is meant to contain the growing Sahara Desert and fight climate change.
First proposed in 2005, the project aims to plant a forest from Senegal on the Atlantic Ocean in western Africa to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti in the east.
| A．But the project faces many problems. |
| B．That is only 4 percent of the programme’s goal. |
| C．However, it is difficult to work on the Great Green Wall. |
| D．A quarter of Africa is under threat of food shortage. |
| E．Some progress has been made in recent years in the east of the continent. |
| F．Supporters hope that the project will create millions of green jobs in rural Africa. |
| G．The U.N. says up to 45 percent of Africa’s land is impacted by desertification, worse than any other continent. |
7 . Money Daniels spends several hours every week cleaning up cans and bottles in the rivers near his home with other teen environmentalists in Chattanooga, TN. Together, they have collected more than 1 ton of aluminum cans, nearly 1,000 cans a week for a year. In January, he co-founded a club called the Cleanup Kids with his best friend. The project’s mission: to encourage kids to pick up 1 million pounds of trash across the globe before the end of the year.
Daniels says he first developed a passion for wildlife when he was 3. “As far back as I can remember, I’ve always loved animals,” Daniels says. Marine life especially interests him. When he began discovering trash on walks along the river with his family, he immediately thought of his favorite sea creatures.
His mission now is saving the earth’s rivers, which he points out are even more polluted than the world’s oceans. “Eighty percent of the ocean’s trash comes from rivers,” he says. In 2019, he adopted the name Conservation Kid on Instagram, and started posting about things like how something as simple as a deserted face mask can entangle (缠住), choke, and kill turtles, birds, and fish. Mask waste has increased an estimated 9,000% since the pandemic(疫情) began.
Although he mostly speaks to other teens, Daniels has found that adults are often persuaded by his argument that cleaning up, recycling, and ridding plastic ought to be a selfish act for humanity: when plastics break down, they can wind up in our drinking water. He has met with the mayor of his city, and his experiences speaking with influential grownups has convinced him that adults can change their habits.
But, in truth, the burden to save the planet has landed on children like him. “Kids may be a small percent of the population, but we’re 100% of the future,” he says. “And we can save the world.”
1. What led to the birth of Daniel’s project?| A．The inspiration from his best friend. |
| B．The goal to make a role model for kids. |
| C．The concern for the ocean life. |
| D．The idea of other teen environmentalists. |
| A．The ocean’s trash has grown rapidly. |
| B．The river pollution requires less attention. |
| C．Many animals are infected in the pandemic. |
| D．River waste contributes most to the ocean’s trash. |
| A．Optimistic and creative. |
| B．Caring and responsible. |
| C．Considerate and generous. |
| D．Courageous and devoted. |
| A．Grownups’ selfish behaviors for humanity. |
| B．A teenager’s contributions to saving the waters. |
| C．A youngster’s responsibility to protect the world. |
| D．Teen environmentalists’ efforts to clean the oceans. |
8 . In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a suggested safe threshold (阈值，界限) — carbon neutrality by mid-21st century is essential. This target is also laid down in the Paris agreement signed by 195 countries, including the EU, which aims to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to undertake rapid reductions.
Carbon neutrality means having a balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere in carbon sinks. Removing carbon oxide from the atmosphere and then storing it is known as carbon sequestration (碳封存). In order to achieve net zero emissions, all worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will have to be counterbalanced (抵消) by carbon sequestration.
Carbon sink is any system that absorbs more carbon than it emits. The main natural carbon sinks are soil, forests and oceans. According to estimates, natural sinks remove between 9.5 and 11 Gt of CO2 per year. Annual global CO2 emissions reached 38.0 Gt in 2019. Moreover, no artificial carbon sinks are able to remove carbon from the atmosphere on the necessary scale to fight global warming at present. The carbon stored in natural sinks such as forests is released into the atmosphere through forest fires, changes in land use or logging. This is why it is essential to reduce carbon emissions in order to reach climate neutrality.
Another way to reduce emissions and to pursue carbon neutrality is to offset (补偿) emissions made in one sector by reducing them somewhere else. This can be done through investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency or other clean, low-carbon technologies.
The European Union is committed to achieving the carbon neutrality by 2050. Under the Green Deal it aims to become the first continent that removes as many CO2 emissions as it produces by 2050. On 7 October 2020, the European Parliament backed climate neutrality by 2050 and a 60% emission reduction target by 2030 compared to 1990 levels — more than Commission’s proposal of 55%.
In addition, members called for all EU countries individually to become climate neutral and insisted that after 2050, more CO2 should be removed from atmosphere than is emitted. Also, all direct or indirect subsidies (补贴) to fossil fuels should be canceled by 2025 at the latest.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To introduce the topic. | B．To present a fact. |
| C．To explain an agreement. | D．To define a concept. |
| A．There will be no carbon emission. |
| B．The carbon emission will reach its peak. |
| C．The temperature will rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius. |
| D．The amount of production of CO2 will equal its removal. |
| A．Because they release more CO2 than they take in. |
| B．Because man-made ones couldn’t replace natural ones. |
| C．Because there aren’t enough of them. |
| D．Because people are destroying them. |
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Indifferent. |
| C．Unclear. | D．Ambitious. |
9 . Say No to Non-electric Cars
Most modern cities have taken action to reduce traffic jams and improve air quality. But if they want to become more livable, they should think about more ambitious goals.
Amsterdam has set a good example. As from 2030, driving a gas vehicle there will not be allowed. The Dutch capital wants its citizens to become healthier and happier.
The advantages of such plans are clear.
Saying no to non-electric cars or even all cars is hard.
| A．But will everyone support such plans? |
| B．The government should advocate the use of electric cars. |
| C．Traffic jams waste huge amounts of fuel and time each year. |
| D．Electric cars not only are energy-saving but produce little noise. |
| E．But let’s think seriously about our well-being and that of our planet. |
| F．People who drive electric car maybe given discount son parking fees. |
| G．One way to do is to encourage them to switch to electric cars or give up driving altogether. |
10 . Animal and plant species are disappearing at frightening rates. The problem has led to efforts to “rewild” places where such life existed before human development, pollution and climate change forced it out. The American city of Detroit is an example of how human actions can increase rewilding, which generally means helping natural systems in damaged locations, removing dams or building tunnels to reconnect animal pathways cut by roads.
Detroit’s population reached a high of 1. 8 million in the 1950s. Then the population began dropping. By 2000, there were fewer than one million people living in the city. Thousands of houses and other buildings were left empty over the years. Some structures were destroyed, leaving empty areas that plants and animals regained as habitats. Nonprofit groups have also planted trees and community gardens in these areas. Bald eagles found their way back as bans on DDT and some other insect poisons were put in place nationwide. Anti-pollution laws and government-supported cleanups made nearby rivers better for fish and native plants.
Now, Detroit is home to 300 bird species and is a busy visiting place for ducks and others during migration. Additionally, this city offers a special way to study plants and animals in urban settings. Unlike most big cities, its population is decreasing but its streets and buildings remain in place. And there are many kinds of habitats, including large lakes, rivers and human neighborhoods. Detroit’s parklands are so quiet that people don’t even know they’re in the city.
“It used to be that you had to go to some remote location to get exposure to nature,” said John Hartig, a professor of University of Windsor. “Now that’s not the case. Like it or not, rewilding will occur. The question is how we can prepare communities and environments to anticipate the presence of more and more wildlife. After all, many city people have lost their tolerance to live with wildlife. To really make a difference in dealing with the biodiversity crisis, you’re going to have to have people on board. ”
1. What might have happened in Detroit at the beginning of 21st century| A．The city was overpopulated. | B．More community gardens were built. |
| C．Many buildings were deserted. | D．The environment was badly damaged. |
| A．It’s government-supported efforts that really matter. |
| B．Humans’ efforts can make a difference in rewilding. |
| C．Humans are to blame for the worsening environment. |
| D．It’s hard to humans and wildlife to live in harmony. |
| A．It is a big city crowded with tourists and bird species. |
| B．Tourists don’t show any interest in the quiet surroundings. |
| C．It’s turned into a place where people can get close to nature. |
| D．It’s become a center for those who study animals and plants. |
| A．Protect. | B．Expect. | C．Imagine. | D．Delay. |
