1 . According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, the number of solar panels installed(安装)has grown rapidly in the past decade, and it has to grow even faster to meet climate goals. But all of that growth will take up a lot of space, and though more and more people accept the concept of solar energy, few like large solar panels to be installed near them.

Solar developers want to put up panels as quickly and cheaply as possible, so they haven’t given much thought to what they put under them. Often, they’ll end up filling the area with small stones and using chemicals to control weeds. The result is that many communities, especially in farming regions, see solar farms as destroyers of the soil.

“Solar projects need to be good neighbors,” says Jordan Macknick, the head of the Innovative Site Preparation and Impact Reductions on the Environment(InSPIRE)project. “They need to be protectors of the land and contribute to the agricultural economy.” InSPIRE is investigating practical approaches to “low-impact” solar development, which focuses on establishing and operating solar farms in a way that is kinder to the land. One of the easiest low-impact solar strategies is providing habitat for pollinators(传粉昆虫).

Habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change have caused dramatic declines in pollinator populations over the past couple of decades, which has damaged the U.S. agricultural economy. Over 28 states have passed laws related to pollinator habitat protection and pesticide use. Conservation organizations put out pollinator-friendliness guidelines for home gardens, businesses, schools, cities—and now there are guidelines for solar farms.

Over the past few years, many solar farm developers have transformed the space under their solar panels into a shelter for various kinds of pollinators, resulting in soil improvement and carbon reduction. “These pollinator-friendly solar farms can have a valuable impact on everything that’s going on in the landscape,” says Macknick.

I've always loved the ocean. In the    1     (seven) grade,I started volunteering at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. I was upset to learn that many sea animals eat plastic garbage,     2     (think)it is food.

I decided to do something     3     (educate) people about this problem. I held presentations at schools to teach kids about plastic waste. I wanted to reach businesses too. I decided that if I learned of a company    4     used a lot of plastic, I'd send it an email urging it to cut back.

One day, I saw a commercial for a health-care company. People in the ad were using plastic straws （吸管）.   I found the contact information of the company    5     emailed its president. I told him how     6     (harm) plastic could be to the environment and asked him to consider using more eco-friendly options. I was so    7     (excite) when he wrote back to me.He said he would make sure that the company cut its use of plastic straws in half.

I kept going. Whenever I heard of businesses using plastic, I'd send an email. One of the biggest companies I wrote to     8     (be) Alaska Airlines Paris. A company     9     (represent) wrote back and told me the airline was switching over     10     plastic to paper cups on all of its 1,200 daily flights.

6 . Sammie Vance approached her principal at Haley Elementary with the idea of installing “buddy benches” into her school playground to help others feel less lonely. The principal _________ of the idea. But wooden benches are _________. Just one would be worth nearly a thousand dollars. However, a bench made of _________ bottle caps would only be around $250. So Sammie _________ others in her community to collect enough caps to make one bench. _________, she managed to get bottle caps from 50 states. And thus, the initiative of “Sammie’s Buddy Bench Project” was _________.

Pretty soon, Sammie’s Buddy Bench Project began commanding the _________ of several news media. For her amazing efforts, Sammie has been chosen the receiver of several _________ and was _________ one of People magazine’s “Girls Changing the World”. And __________, more than 200 bottle cap buddy benches have been around at schools and parks across the country, plus Mexico and Australia.

This is, of course, not just a beautiful story about helping others. It’s also a major win for __________. It is reported that 1.3 billion bottle caps are used each year. These caps cannot be recycled in the same way along with plastic bottles __________ each has a different melting point, and when they are __________ in, it can ruin an entire batch (一批). And that’s when they get discarded. Millions of caps have been found in our __________ alone, which can be devastating to marine life. In fact, it’s one of the leading __________ of death. It’s big caring hearts like Sammie’s that help our planet heal against damage.

8 . Back in 2007, Uruguay had a serious problem with no obvious answer: The economy was growing very fast, but there wasn’t enough energy to power the rapid _________.

Then Ramón Méndez Galain, a physicist, started _________ different potential paths for Uruguay’s energy future. Finally, he wrote a plan that Uruguay could almost entirely _________ renewable energy. There would be less _________ and it would be the most economical choice Uruguay could make in the long run.

Méndez Galain’s plan was built around two simple _________ about his country. First, while there wasn’t a domestic (国内的) supply of coal or oil, there was a great deal of _________. Second, that wind blew over a country that was known for _________ grassland. His plan for Uruguay’s energy future was to _________ the empty grassland into hundreds of wind farms.

To solve the problem of how to pay for all those wind farms, Méndez Galain came up with a variation on a(n) _________ used by some electric plants in neighboring Brazil, in which state owned power plants handled energy generation, while __________ companies were in charge of power distribution and customer service. Méndez Galain’s plan changed the relationship to the __________, so that private companies would be in charge of setting up and __________ the wind farms, while the state-owned power companies would distribute that energy to its customers.

The strategy worked __________ well. Just within a few years, Méndez Galain had __________ what he had set out to do: 98% of Uruguay’s __________ comes from renewable sources.

9 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well underway. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.

Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles reveals a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries, containing almost 300 pounds of lead in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leak into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable but deadly business.

Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an extraordinary scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world — and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare — causes one of the biggest environmental crises in the world yet receives little attention.

The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5. 5 million people per year, which would make it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is extraordinary, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.

But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that is fixable with some attention and a relatively modest financial investment. Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the dreadful effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.