2 . Earth Hour is organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature. It's a big event usually at the end of March every year. On this evening, people “go dark”.     1    

It's true that turning off lights for just one hour saves only a small amount of power.    2    On one level, joining in Earth Hour makes people think about the problem of climate change and what we can do in everyday life to protect nature.

But on another level, a large number of people’s acting together sends a powerful message to governments and companies.     3     They begin considering green issues when big decisions.

The logo(标识) of Earth Hour is “60+” .The number 60 is for the 60 minutes of Earth Hour.     4     In fact, people who join in Earth Hour say that taking part makes them want to do more for the environment.

    5     Musicians give concerts by playing acoustic(原声的) instruments instead of electric ones, and using candles instead of electric lights. Celebrity chefs have created special recipes for families to prepare and eat by candlelight. Tree-planting sessions, group walks and runs are also among the options.

China will build the world’s largest national park system, and a layout plan will be released soon. The plan is being drafted     1     (meet) the requirements of building a system with the largest scale of protection, the most diverse geographical features and the highest conservation value in the world. Under the plan, which     2     (launch) by the administration in 2019, about 50 areas have been selected as candidates for national parks. The parks are expected to cover 10 percent of the     3     (country) land area and preserve more than 80 percent of the key national     4     (protect) wild plant and animal species. In October, China announced its first group of five national parks, covering     5     total land area of more than 230,000 square kilometers. Since their establishment, the parks     6     (make) achievements in environmental and species protection. “At the same time, a new group of national parks are being established     7     an orderly manner and will be put into use as soon as possible,” emphasized Li,     8     was the National Forestry and Grassland Administration official. He also said at the news conference on Monday China’s planted forest conservation area has reached 87.6 million hectares,     9     (rank) No.1 in the world. “China is also one of the 12 countries with the     10     (rich) biodiversity in the world,” he added.

4 . Lisa Gautier receives nearly a dozen parcels of human hair every day. With her San-Francisco-based non-profit organization Matter of Trust, Gautier turns donated hair into mats used to soak up oil spills on land, and booms(long tubes)used for spills at sea.

A standard way to clean up oil from land is to use mats made from polypropylene(聚丙烯). But polypropylene is a non-biodegradable plastic, and producing it ultimately means more drilling for oil. Hair, by contrast, is an environmentally friendly resource that can soak up around five times its weight in oil, according to Matter of Trust, and it is abundant.

Oil spills can pollute drinking water, endanger public health, harm plants and wildlife, and damage the economy. According to Gautier, the spills that hit the headlines only make up 5% of global oil pollution.

Megan Murray, an environmental biologist at the University of Technology Sydney, develops sustainable technologies to tackle oil spills. Her research indicates that as well as being biodegradable, human hair is often just as effective as polypropylene, and in some circumstances even better. “The hair mats are very beneficial to land spills,” says Murray but adds that when raw oil is spilled on beach sand, it is very difficult to absorb it using any of the materials she has tested. Another advantage of hair is that it costs less than conventional materials and is “globally available as a recycled material,” she says.

However, Murray cautions that hair mats are not a perfect solution, because they are single-use, and can only be dealt with by burning or by burying into soil which then isn’t suitable for growing food. She is now researching methods to extract the oil from a used hair mat, meaning both can be reused.

As the hair mat designs aren’t under patent, other groups have begun producing their own mats and booms. Gautier is pleased to see the movement growing. “Anyone can make a hair mat,” she says. “It creates green jobs, it cleans water, it reduces waste in landfill, and it’s promoting renewable resources.”

Nowadays, the life of many people in the world     1     (affect) by global warming. For example, greenhouse gas has a bad effect     2    both people and environment. The earth’s surface temperature     3     (go) up by about 1 degrees centigrade in the past 100 years. As a matter of fact, we may feel that we can hardly put up with the extremely hot summer and we can’t get     4     (accustom) to warm winter. The rise of the earth’s surface temperature has affected human health, the existence of creatures     5    the balance of ecosystems. There is no doubt     6     it is human activities that result in the bad environment. As a     7    (consequent), conditions permitting, all countries in the world should spare no effort     8    (improve) our environment. Even if our effort is limited, it will     9     (eventual) make a great difference if we keep on     10     (work) together to deal with global warming. Without all people’s joint efforts, what would our future be like?

7 . With greater climate catastrophe (气候突变) on Earth, it is natural for us to make every effort to stop the potential floods, snowstorms, and alarming reports from scientists. For many of us (myself included), part of that means running out to buy reusable straws, organic cleaners, and packaging-free products.

However, before you are delighted at “green” purchases, take a second to consider the results of a new study from Arizona University. By comparing the shopping habits, mental health and environmental impact of young people, the researchers reconfirmed a principle: Buying less beats buying “green” stuff without effort. And that is true whether you are looking at the impact that your purchases have on the Earth or on your own happiness.

It should not come as a shock that simply consuming less is better for the planet. After all, every new item a factory yields requires some resources to produce. Take plastic bag bans for instance. If your city is getting rid of single-use shopping bags, it can be attractive to pay for a fashionable organic cotton bag hanging in the check-out line of your local supermarket. However, experts insist that growing cotton is actually no better for the Earth than producing the conventional plastic bags. Then what is your best bet for carrying your groceries if you care about sustainability? Any bag you already own.

It is not just the Earth that will be happier if you buy less. You will feel more contented too, according to the new study. “People believe that they might well be self-satisfied about becoming environmentally conscious through ‘green’ buying patterns, but it doesn’t seem to be that way”, said the lead researcher Sabrina Helm. “Reduced consumption has effects on increased well-being, but we don’t see that with ‘green’ consumption.”

“Owning every new ‘green’ product on the market might make you feel contented, but if you relieve yourself of that burden of ownership, most people report feeling a lot better,” said Helm.

8 . I looked out of the door of my 100-year-old house and saw my newly built garden. I realized nothing is rubbish. I was full of joy and ___________.

I ___________ to look at the things in a different perspective that we usually think of as _________ —plastic bags, polluted water, rubber bands, and newspapers, clothes and furniture we ___________. I also began to think, act and live according to the belief that all things have the _________ of being reused as long as we try to _________ it. And I explored the worth of ___________. I mean recycling isn’t just about _________ rubbish like putting glass and paper in _________ bins. It also requires creativity, commitment and even love.

My neighbors would put the autumn __________ by the roadside to be picked up by the garbage truck. This didn’t __________ with my newfound concept of recycling trash, so I made a new ____________ with branches for moving boxes and put up a __________, saying, “Dump (倾倒) leaves here”. I watched carefully through the autumn as my neighbors __________ the leaves in my new garden and I also watered the grass __________ with rainwater and collected dogs’ waste as fertilizer. Then I __________ flower seeds. Finally, I had a new ____________ garden, full of colorful flowers.

Nothing has to be really __________. I even used my bath water to water my flowers, though it might be a little   __________ for my friends. But I think if we all can turn waste, sometimes a little dirty, into __________, the world will be a much better place.

9 . In the blue-green depths of the sea off the coast of Tuscany, Italy, an unusual seafloor sculpture park is defending its watery setting.

Since fisherman Paolo Fanciulli’s teens, he has been heading out daily to fish in these coastal waters along the Maremma coastline. It was in the 1980s that he began to notice the clear signs: a seabed that was becoming barren (贫瘠的), with exhausted fish stocks. Until recently, he has been forced to share catches with a threatening part: illegal “bottom trawlers (拖网捕鱼的人)”, who randomly spoil a large quantity of ocean life as they fish, dragging a weighted net along the seafloor behind their boats.

Fanciulli’s style of artisanal fishing (手工捕鱼), in contrast, needs to be friendly to nature as damaging the ecosystem could reduce fishermen’s income. Fanciulli understood that the success of his fishing activity was linked to the good state of the environment. The underwater “House of Fish” sculpture park, which was started in 2015 was encouraged by this fisherman. “One of the most effective solutions is to physically prevent trawling through artificial reefs…so I started working on this project, trying to combine the protection of the seabed with something that could also give an added value to our environment, something as beautiful as a sculpture,” he said.

Rocks or sculptures can break weighted trawler nets. They can also play a role as artificial reefs, giving corals and other sea life a place to live. Thanks to the underwater sculptures, some species not seen in a long while such as groupers and lobsters have returned. The sculpture park represents both an artistic statement and a physical barrier to seafloor trawling.

Today, 39 huge stone sculptures dot the seabed along an area of Tuscan coastline near the town of Talamone. In the immediate future, Fanciulli hopes to continue his great solution in coastal waters. “Man is still destroying the seas,” he says, “and my task continues.”