1 . What to do about climate change?
With scientists warning that 2023 could be the warmest ever, and destructive wildfires tearing through communities, the climate crisis is no longer a distant threat. Listed below are 3 things you cm do to reduce your carbon footprint and save yourself from climate despair (绝望).
Avoid the skies. Aviation (航空) brings a significant challenge in achieving net-zero emissions (排放). Despite accounting for just three percent of global emissions, it is a rapidly growing source and difficult to decarbonize (碳减排).
| A．Grow your own |
| B．Use energy widely |
| C．Use energy wisely |
| D．Cultivating a garden to absorb carbon |
| E．Sure, cultivating a garden isn’t going to absorb much carbon |
| F．It’s not just about how much energy you use, but when you use it |
| G．Reducing air travel is recommended until battery and hydrogen planes become practical |
Located in Ordos, North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Kubuqi Desert (库布齐沙漠) is the closest desert to China’s capital Beijing. It was once known as the “sea of death”. However, in the past 30 years, the government, social organizations and local farmers
Historically, Kubuqi was a rich city filled with water and grass. But due
The 102,000 residents in the desert have enjoyed the benefits of managing with desertification. Meng Keda,
3 . It turns out that plants are getting help from their friends underground—quite a bit more than scientists had realized. A global team of researchers has calculated that around 36% of the carbon released into the atmosphere each year from the burning of fossil fuels is captured and delivered to a complicated system of fungi that lives beneath our feet.
Plants take carbon dioxide from the air and use it to make sugars and fats. These are sent down to their roots, where they are taken up by so-called mycorrhizal (菌根) fungi. In exchange, the fungi provide the plants with water and essential nutrients from the soil. The more carbon these fungi are able to draw in， the more carbon dioxide gets captured by plants.
Mycorrhizal fungi helped plants get established on land several hundred millions of years ago, and today’s plants would have a hard time functioning without their partners under the ground. Yet “mycorrhizal fungi have been largely overlooked,” said To by Kiers, executive director of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. “They represent an incredibly important part of the carbon cycle, and we are only just beginning to understand how they work,” she said. “The urgency to understand that and link it to biodiversity belowground is the most important.”
The researchers also said that plants associated with mycorrhizal fungi can take in eight times more carbon than plants that are not. Stephanie Kivlin, an ecologist at University of Tennessee, said the study is a crucial step toward improving our understanding of the plant-fungi duo’s role in reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “These mutualisms (互利共栖) can act as a critical carbon sink in many ecosystems on the land,” she said.
Not only do the fungi take in carbon from plants, they also help keep that carbon safely belowground by creating a sticky compound that holds the soil together. Although mycorrhizal fungi have short life spans-only a few years—their usefulness doesn’t end after death. “This is my favorite part,” Kiers said. “After they die, they make a dead underground network that acts as a scaffolding to hold the soil together, locking the carbon in place. ”
1. What do the researchers find?| A．Fungi absorb carbon from plants. | B．Carbon is essential to plants. |
| C．Carbon is released into the air. | D．Plants exchange food with fungi. |
| A．Carbon sink reduces carbon dioxide. | B．Carbon cycle is linked to biodiversity. |
| C．Plants nowadays take in carbon as usual. | D．Plant-fungi system functions efficiently. |
| A．They become sticky scaffolding. | B．They help prevent carbon release. |
| C．They provide vital nutrients. | D．They change into fossil fuels. |
| A．A complicated problem. | B．An overlooked plant. |
| C．An underground green guard. | D．A useful ecosystem. |
4 . Cristina Mittermeier is a marine (海洋的) biologist and multi-award-winning photographer who has devoted her life to ocean conservation. Recognised as being one of the world’s most influential conservation photographers, Cristina has travelled to 132 countries to communicate the urgent need to protect wild places.
She began her career as a marine biologist, but soon realised that she could better protect the oceans and the planet through her camera. “Science is important to understand what is happening to our planet, but it fails to convey the emotions that make us care. Photography allows us to humanise stories and create something meaningful, and I had an urgent need to share the difficult situation of the planet. I love creating photographs that engage people in conversations and makes them stop and think.”Cristina said.
Making a successful career as a photographer has not been an easy journey. Cristina worked hard at teaching herself the basics of photography and then she went back to school to learn more. “I studied the work of people I admire, and I tried to be creative in the way I expressed the purpose of my photography. I didn’t just want to take pictures; I wanted to make images of such power and purpose that they would inspire others to give meaning to their life’s work and move people to action.”
She founded the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) in 2014, and today she is the co-founder and president of Only One Collective, which includes Sea Legacy, a story telling studio that creates powerful visual content to move people from unconcern to action. Having a big following isn’t enough when it comes to reaching a large audience. Motivating people and making them to act voluntarily is an interesting challenge, but actions need to be informed by science.
1. Why did Cristina preferred becoming a conservation photographer?| A．Photography contributes to her dream. | B．She loves photographing. |
| C．Science fails to interest her. | D．She is keen on traveling. |
| A．The photographs to inspire people. | B．The efforts to be a photographer. |
| C．The reasons for being a photographer. | D．The measures to protect the planet. |
| A．Her goal is to reach a large audience. | B．Her studio attracts few followers. |
| C．Her job is challenging and far-reaching. | D．Her career still involves science. |
| A．To demonstrate Cristina’s two identities. |
| B．To discuss the ways of protecting the oceans. |
| C．To illustrate Cristina’s role in ocean conservation. |
| D．To reveal Cristina’s determination as a pholographer. |
5 . Our planet is an amazing place, but it needs our help to thrive! That’s why each year on April 22, more than a billion people celebrate Earth Day to protect the planet from things like pollution and deforestation. You can celebrate and protect the planet at the same time.
Become a waste warrior
The number of garbage trucks Americans fill each year would stretch halfway to the moon. Toilet paper tubes, made from cardboard, take two months to decompose in a landfill. A plastic bottle sticks around for way longer and
Plant a tree
It might seem like it’s everywhere, but clean, drinkable water is a limited resource. In fact, less than one percent of the water on Earth can be used by humans. (The rest is either too salt y or too difficult to access. ) Turning off the faucet when you brush your teeth can conserve up to eight gallons of water a day.
Offer your time
With a parent’s permission, volunteer to pick up trash at a nearby park, start a collection drive for recyclable items, or organize a screening of an environmentally themed movie.
The more people do, the better off our planet will be!
| A．Turn off the light |
| B．By getting involved and working with others |
| C．it can take over 450 years to break down |
| D．Limit your water usage |
| E．To help save even more water, challenge yourself to take a shorter shower |
| F．Check out these Earth Day ideas to help save the planet any time of year |
| G．Researchers estimate roughly 15 billion trees in the world are cut down each year |
6 . Begun 30 years ago, the Kubuqi desert greening project has succeeded in not only controlling the fast growth of the seventh-largest desert in China, about the size of Kuwait, but also turning about 6, 000 square kilometers of the desert — one-third of it — green.
The desert lies about 800 kilometers to the west of Beijing in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region (自治区) and the greening efforts have also controlled desertification (沙漠化) in the rest of the area.
The project, which began about 30 years ago, can be looked to as an example of efforts to advance green development, in order to create harmony between humans and nature, and leave a better environment for future generations.
The success of the project, which has been praised by the UN Environment Programme as an “eco-pioneer”, sets an example for successful desertification control and ecosystem improvement based on effective government policies, supported by investment (投资) in the eco industry and combined with the efforts of local farmers. These three aspects are key to the success of the “Kubuqi model”.
Elion, a private ecology (生态) and investment company, has invested about 38 billion yuan($5. 82 billion)in the Kubuqi desert-greening project since 1988 helping to lift about 102, 000 local farmers out of poverty. For example, the locals grow a drought-tolerant (耐旱) plant, Chinese licorice, which is the most used herb in traditional Chinese medicine. The plant helps enrich the desert soil, with the bacteria around the roots of the plants producing nitrogen (氮气). Besides, Cistanche, another type of drought-tolerant herb, was introduced after the successful planting of licorice. Under the company’s guidance and with the local government’s support, the local people benefit from the “environmental wealth”.
More companies should be encouraged to apply the “Kubuqi model” in other desert control projects in Inner Mongolia and neighboring Gansu province, where the climate conditions are similar but not quite the same, so as to further gain experience and enrich the model in practice. Showing it can be successfully applied in other areas will help promote the model worldwide.
1. What do we know about the Kubuqi greening project?| A．It increases the areas of desert. |
| B．It has turned all of the desert green. |
| C．It has achieved satisfying results. |
| D．It is applied all over the world. |
| A．Efforts of local farmers. |
| B．Government policies’ support. |
| C．Investment in the eco-industry. |
| D．Help from the UN Environment Programme. |
| A．Negative. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Air pollution. | B．Garbage sorting. | C．Endangered species. |
8 . When scientists talk about recent extinctions, birds and mammals (哺乳动物) get most of the attention. But the first global analysis of its kind finds it is twice as many plants that have disappeared as birds, mammals, and amphibians (两栖动物) combined.
Researchers reviewed published research, international databases, and museum specimens such as grasses from Madagascar, finding that 571 plants species have gone extinct in the past 250 years. One reason why the total is higher than that of the well-studied animals is that there are simply more species of plants. Looking at percentages, the situation is worse for mammals and birds. An estimated 5% of those species have gone extinct, compared with 0.2% of plants.
The loss includes the Chile sandalwood tree in the South Pacific, which was cut down for its fragrant (芳香的) wood. It was last seen on Robinson Crusoe Island in 1908. The extinction rates among plants have been highest for trees and shrubs on islands, which often have species that occur nowhere else, and in regions with rich diversity, especially the tropics and in Mediterranean climates.
Just a few years later, the world lost the banded Trinity (Thismia americana), a leafless plant that grew entirely underground except for its flowers. Most species of this kind of plant grow in rainforests, but this plant was first described in 1912 in a sandy wetland in Chicago, Illinois, and was wiped out by development.
According to the team’s report in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the total of 571 extinct plant species is four times higher than the official listing kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Even so, it is probably still an underestimate (低估), as less is known about the status of plants in Africa and South America than on other continents. Many of these species may disappear, too. A major review of the status of global biodiversity recently estimated that more than a million species, including 14% of plant and animal diversity, are threatened with extinction.
1. What caused the extinction of the Chile sandalwood tree?| A．Climate change. | B．The market demand. |
| C．Environmental pollution. | D．The decline of the habitat. |
| A．It flowered without bearing seeds. |
| B．It disappeared during the 19th century. |
| C．It was a flowering plant without leaves. |
| D．It was a rare plant growing underground. |
| A．Their current situation is more worrying. |
| B．About one plant species dies out every year. |
| C．More plant species will keep alive in the reserve. |
| D．They would be replaced by other new species soon. |
| A．Sports. | B．Nature. | C．Entertainment. | D．Figures. |
9 . Finding low-cost sustainable building materials is important for the environment and in providing access to affordable housing. Researchers have created a composite (复合的) building material by replacing sand in building materials with a common, non-degradable (不可降解的) waste product: used disposable diapers (一次性尿布).
Driven by a desire to solve Indonesia’s significant population growth and demand for low-cost housing, researchers looked for a way of maintaining the benefits of building materials but making it more environmentally friendly and cheaper to produce. Building material samples containing different proportions (比例) of disposable diaper waste were tested. Then the researchers calculated the maximum amount of sand that could be replaced with diaper waste, finding that up to 8% of the sand could be replaced to safely construct a house with 36 square meters. 10% of the sand could be replaced in a three-story house and 27% in a single- story house. In terms of the materials used to create partition walls (隔断墙), the researchers said they could replace up to 40% of sand.
“This research has concluded that adding used diapers to building materials does not significantly weaken its strength, ” the team stated. “It proves using diapers to create composite materials is feasible, particularly concerning the development of environmentally friendly and cost-effective materials. ”
Indonesia is ranked sixth globally for disposable diaper usage. Many used diapers are thrown away in the country’s rivers and waterways, causing pollution. In 2019, the total waste in Indonesia was 29. 21 million tons. This figure rose to 32. 76 million tons in 2020.
However, the researchers know the current limitations of using waste diapers as a construction material. For one thing, it would require engagement with waste treatment facilities to collect used diapers from households and deal with them. Secondly, machines that cut up the used diapers would be needed on a large scale.
Nonetheless, the research highlights the potential for using non-degradable waste, addressing sustainability issues and providing low-cost housing.
1. Which is an advantage of replacing sand with used disposable diapers?| A．Lowering carbon footprint. | B．Speeding up the construction of housing. |
| C．Increasing the weight of building materials. | D．Improving the quality of building materials. |
| A．Enormous. | B．Conservative. | C．Practical. | D．Urgent. |
| A．To introduce a topic. | B．To attract the readers. |
| C．To draw a conclusion. | D．To provide background information. |
| A．Building Materials Are in Great Demand |
| B．Indonesia’s Awareness of Environmental Protection |
| C．A Further Study on Materials of Disposable Diapers |
| D．Waste Disposable Diapers Lay the Foundation for Future Homes |
10 . I grew up in a remote mountain town in the Philippines. My family led a fairly idyllic life, raising goats and growing vegetables and fruits. My brothers and I would play in the nearby river and mountains, reading and doing all the fun things in the nature without worries.
Later I went to college abroad, and I would go back about once a year to visit. That’s when I started to notice changes in my hometown. I watched the river turn from clear to brown to black. Houses and farms replaced the trees. There was smog, and plastic garbage piled up. Seeing my childhood home go from a clean mountain town to a deforested, polluted, and overcrowded place really impacted me. Over time, I began to see my hometown as a place of unsustainable development.
While I worked on addressing deforestation with the United Nations in Indonesia, I vividly remembered seeing forests burned into black landscapes as far as the eye could see. Experiences like that have both terrified me and lit a fire within me to work harder. Thankfully, I began to see that there is another path. I saw success stories in places I worked-Indonesia, Costa Rica, Ecuador-places that are investing in nature and changing the culture and the mindset of what development looks like. I saw places realizing not only economic benefits-from, say, tourism—but also more benefits of ecosystem services.
The work of WWF and other organizations is critical in promoting success stories according to their local context. Each community, region, and country is different, so solutions must meet their different needs. Coming from a rural community in a developing country gave me a clear outlook on addressing ecology and sustainability issues and is something I carry with me in my work.
1. What does the underlined word “idyllic” in paragraph I mean?| A．Simple and peaceful. | B．Busy and noisy. |
| C．Quiet and boring. | D．Tough and tiring. |
| A．Smog and garbage in the city. |
| B．Beautiful rivers in different colors. |
| C．Houses and farms in foreign countries. |
| D．Damaged environment in his hometown. |
| A．Success stories he learned. | B．Economic benefits from tourism. |
| C．Some disasters he witnessed. | D．Slow development of his hometown. |
| A．Communities are faced with common challenges. |
| B．People have different outlooks on rural development. |
| C．Ecology issues should be addressed locally and differently. |
| D．Organizations play the most important role in sustainability. |
