1 . Don’t call Madison Stewart an environmentalist. She sees herself simply as an individual taking action in defense of something she loves that’s in need of protection.

Despite her youth, the 24-year-old is an undersea veteran (老手). She grew up sailing around the Great Barrier Reef on her parents’ boat and spent her early life free diving while patiently waiting for the day when she could get her scuba diving (水肺潜水) certification, aged 12. Already impressed by sharks, Madison was now pleased to be able to observe them in their own world. “I got to know the sharks...I could recognize them by sight,” Madison says. “Other people had dogs around them growing up. I had sharks.”

But within a couple of years, she saw a great reduction in shark numbers on the reef. “One day I went in the water and couldn’t find my sharks anywhere, sharks I’d spent my childhood with,” she says. “They’d been caught and killed.” It was a great moment for Madison.

She left school at 14 to be homeschooled so she could spend more time in the ocean. She taught herself to shoot underwater video to document sharks in their own world and share her sense of wonder with others. She launched a YouTube channel and built a huge following for her documentaries where she focuses on issues like inadequate protection for some shark species and the global shark fin (鳍) industry.

In 2014 Madison was the subject of the encouraging documentary Shark Girl, which introduced her to a global audience. In 2017 she appeared as an “Ocean Guardian” in the documentary Blue that explored a lot of threats to the world’s marine environments, including the damaging effect of the global shark fishery. The film encourages viewers to get involved and includes practical steps to guide them to do so. It shows Madison’s philosophy that the power of the individual to make a difference by their own direct action should never be underestimated.

What Can We Do for the Environment in Our School

Hello, everyone.

Thank you for your listening.

I am a 22-year-old artist. My journey through art led me to being an environmentalist.

    1    we consider waste may be useful when we think about it in a different light. Although largely    2     (ignore), materials thrown away provide plenty of resources for us artists to give them a second life. In my hands, glass bottles, plastic bags, and other waste    3    (item) become a form of sustainable art. I want to motivate the people who buy this type of art to contribute to the planet’s welfare.

The day starts early for Shi Xiaogang, a wildlife ranger (护林员) at the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Southwest China’s Sichuan province. He monitors the population of giant pandas and conducts long-range patrols (巡逻) in some of the most extreme environments,     1     is a challenging and, often, dangerous job.

    2     (cover) about 200,000 hectares, Wolong National Nature Reserve is home to one of the largest remaining giant panda populations in China. Thanks to the rangers’ like Shi’s efforts,     3     number of wild giant pandas in the reserve has increased from 104, in 2015, to 149 today. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature     4     (announce) that the giant panda’s status had been changed from “endangered” to “vulnerable” on its Red List of Threatened Species.

As well as “the home of giant pandas”, the reserve is     5     (wide) known as a “bio-gene bank”. It features a great number of threatened species of plants and animals, including other famous     6     (creature), such as the red panda, snow leopard and clouded leopard among the 121 species of mammals (哺乳动物)     7     (record). There are also 392 bird species.

To mark the rangers’ hard work and contribution to wildlife     8     (protect) in the reserve, last year, 20 rangers     9     (recognize) with special commendations (表扬) at an online award ceremony for the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas’ International Ranger Awards.

The commission speaks highly of their work, saying that they help stop biodiversity loss and protect the important ecosystems that serve     10     natural solutions to climate change and other global challenges.

5 . In a small, rough shipyard on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, a small team is building what they say will be the world’s largest ocean-going clean cargo ship.

Ceiba is the first ship built by Sailcargo, a company trying to prove that zero-carbon shipping is possible, and commercially available. Made largely of wood, Ceiba combines both very old and very new technology: sailing masts stand alongside solar panels, a uniquely designed electric engine and batteries. Once on the water, she will be capable of crossing oceans entirely without the use of fossil fuels, which sets her apart.

“The thing that is striking is the fact that she’ll have one of the largest marine electric engines of her kind in the world,” Danielle Doggett said. The system also has the means to capture energy from underwater propellers (螺旋桨) as well as solar power, so electricity will be available for the engine when needed. “Really, the only limit on how long she can stay at sea is water and food on board for the crew.”

Despite some hold-ups due to the global disaster, the team hopes to get her on the water by the end of 2024 and operating by 2025, when she will begin transporting cargo between Costa Rica and Canada.

“There are actually loads of innovations happening that could transform shipping emissions, but few companies are willing to apply them to building ships like Ceiba.” says Lucy Gilliam. “So it’s not that we don’t have great ideas. The problem that we have is that fossil fuels are still too cheap. And we don’t have the rules to force people to take up the new technology.”

When it comes to promoting this kind of boat, it has to be said that Ceiba is small for a cargo ship — tiny in fact. She will carry around nine standard shipping containers. She is also relatively slow. Being a world-first, there are some aspects of Ceiba’s design that have yet to be proven at sea.

Traditionally, livestreamers(主播)sell delicious snacks or local goodies. But a recent livestream event in Tibet autonomous region did something different. Waste plastic bottles,       1     are regarded as a great damage to the local environment, were sold for 0.5 yuan each, with the     2     (intend)of raising people's awareness of Tibet's pollution issue.

According to the Sohu website, in 2019, about 40 million tourists visited Tibet, which     3     consequence left about 360 million plastic bottles     4     (abandon)in branches, on cliffs and in rivers. The white pollution causes serious threat to the delicate ecosystem     5     the death of local animals, such as yaks.

Over the past few years, more than 5,000 volunteers of different ages and from all walks of life     6     (participate)in the anti-white pollution campaign. They carry out over 2,000 clean-ups to collect 200, 000 bottles left by tourists each year. Then the bottles     7     (sort)by color and shipped inland     8     (make)raw materials. Roughly, each bottle costs about 0.5 yuan.

The livestream has successfully involved more people in the anti-white pollution campaign. People can scan QR code and donate money to encourage more people to collect bottles. It's really a meaningful event and helps to make     9     possible for us human beings to coexist with nature     10     (harmonious).