3 . Tips for Green Travel with Kids

Travelling doesn’t mean letting go of all the eco-friendly choices we work so hard to achieve in our daily life. Here are a few tips for green travel with kids.

Booking nonstop flights whenever possible will reduce carbon emissions (碳排放). If the closest local airport doesn’t have nonstop flights to a certain place, check with other local airports to see if nonstop flights are available.     1    

It’s easy when travelling to pull in to fast food restaurants for snacks.     2     My kids love to help plan snacks. I let them create their own snacks for the trip at home.

    3     At the airport, keep your reusable bottles empty until you have passed through the security (机场安检区). Fill them up on the other side of the security checkpoint. Single-use plastic water bottles create unnecessary waste and the plastic can be harmful to your health.

    4     In addition, opening a few windows and turning off the air conditioner (空调) are also good ways to save energy. You should also help your children keep their good, green habits while travelling. Sometimes vacation can mean more than one shower each day-once in the morning and again after getting out of the pool. Pay attention to the number of showers (淋浴) and the length of showers.     5    

Our world has been greatly affected by global warming and it is critical (关键的) that people, young and old, join hands to fight it. Most     1     (important), children today should learn to be eco-friendly at a young age.

It is believed that the nation should ask schools to have     2     educational class about “Green Living”. Every school should teach students     3     (know) about global warming and what they can do to reduce their carbon footprints. In the classes, students could be assigned to find several solutions to energy problems while learning about their effects     4     the earth. Students also should     5     (encourage) to use what they learned in class at home.

Too many people think that global warming is not a threat, but it is one of our     6     (big) problems. Steps taken to be “green” in the school     7     (be) so effective. What would children be learning if the school’s lights were always left on and there were no recycling bins?

Green living and green schools are part of a new wave     8     (sweep) over the nation. How will our future leaders respond after years of living in a community     9     protecting our world’s natural environment just isn’t considered important? Schools and the government should teach young people to devote     10     (they) to dealing with global warming.

7 . Four Environmentalists You Should Know

George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver is one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century, not to mention a famous painter. He was an educator at the Tuskegee Institute and an inventor known for making plastics, fuel, and more out of peanut. He created a list of 300 uses for peanuts, and many more for soybeans and sweet potatoes, in an effort to increase financial gains for Southern farmers.

Julia Hill

After a serious auto accident in 1996, Julia Hill devoted her life to environmental causes. For two years, Hill lived in the branches of an ancient redwood tree which she named Luna in northern California to save it from being cut down. She eventually vacated (搬离) the 200-foot-tall tree after striking a deal with the Pacific Lumber Company. The tree was saved finally. Her tree-sit became an international cause.

Theodore Roosevelt

Though he was a known big-game hunter, Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most active champions of wilderness preservation in history. As governor of New York, he outlawed the use of feathers as clothing decorations in order to prevent the killing of some birds. While he was president (1901-1909), he set aside hundreds of millions of wilderness acres, which actively protected soil and water.

Chico Mendes

Chico Mendes is best known for his efforts to save the rainforests of his home Brazil from being cut down. Mendes came from a family of rubber harvesters who supplemented (补贴) their income by sustainably gathering nuts and other rainforest products. Alarmed at the damage of the Amazon, he helped to encourage international support for its protection. His activism drew the anger of powerful ranching (牧业) and timber interests, and he was murdered by cattle ranchers at age 44.

10 . China and India are leaders in improving global tree cover, a new study based on NASA research showed.

They took a 31.8 percent part together of the total global new leaf area between 2000 and 2017. China played a major role, adding 25 percent to this increase, and India added 6.8 percent, followed by Canada and Russia.

The study in the Nature Sustainability journal shows that more than 5.5 million square kilometers of green leaf area was added globally. Since 2000, there has been a 5 percent increase in global green cover, it said.

“The greening over the last twenty years shows an increase in leaf area on plants and trees which is as large as the area of the entire Amazon rainforest,” Chi Chen, a Boston University researcher and leader of the study told Nature Sustainability. Large plantation activities to protect forests in China contributed nearly 42 percent to the country’s green cover, and agriculture (农业) added another 32 percent. In India, 82 percent of the increase in leaf area was because of agriculture.

“China and India take up one-third of the greening, but hold only nine percent of the planet’s land area covered in green plants,” Chi Chen told NASA Earth Observatory. “That is a surprising finding, considering the land degradation (退化) in countries with large populations.”

Boston University’s research team first detected an increase in global green cover in the 1990s but were unsure what contributed to the increase. Finally, with the help of NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites research, they managed to find out the increase in leaf cover from different areas and places.