2 . Lego is considering a brick rental scheme in an attempt to cut down on plastic waste. The Danish toymaker has promised to make all its bricks from sustainable （可持续的） sources by 2030 and is ploughing significant resources into finding alternatives.

Tim Brooks, vice-president responsible for sustainability, said the company was "totally open" to the idea of a product rental scheme but acknowledged that lost pieces could cause a significant problem. He said the rental scheme was "possible" but admitted there were some "technical barriers", one of which is the complexity of some Lego kits （配套元件），many of which contain thousands of pieces.

" What are the chances of giving them to an eight-year-old child and getting them all back again?” Mr Brooks added. "There is a lot of technical thinking that needs to be done.

We are right at beginning of that.” Mr Brooks said Lego was exploring several ideas with a view to producing the highest value from products while consuming the least amount of resources. He said many would "probably never see the light of day” and there was no current plan to try a rental scheme.

Lego has come under increasing pressure to reduce its carbon footprint amid growing international alarm about the impact of plastic waste on the environment. It manufactures 19 billion pieces per year—36,000 a minute——that are made only of plastic while much of the internal packaging is also plastic.

So far, the only breakthrough has been the development of a line of bricks made from plant-based plastic sourced from sugarcane. The green trees, plants and flowers were first included in Lego sets late last year but account for only one-two percent of the total amount of plastic elements produced. Henrik Ostergaard Nielson, a production supervisor in Lego's factory in Billund, told the New York Times last year： "We need to learn again how to do this”

3 . At the age of seven, while his friends were spending their allowances on candy and toys, Jose Adolfo Quisocola, from Peru, came up with the creative idea of an eco-bank, which allows kids of all ages to become economically independent and financially wise while also helping the environment.

Established in 2012, The Bartselana Student Bank is the world’s first cooperative bank for kids. Whoever wants to join has to bring in at least 5 kilograms(11 pounds) of solid waste(paper or plastic) and establish a savings goal. Once accepted, all bank “partners” are required to deposit at least one additional kilogram(2.2 pounds) of recyclables on a monthly basis and obey other requirements, such as attending financial education and environmental management workshops. The waste accumulated is sold to local recycling companies, who, thanks to some clever negotiation by Jose, pay a higher-than-market rate for everything brought in by Bartselana Student Bank members. The funds received are placed in the individual’s account where they collect until his／her savings goal is reached. The account holder can then withdraw his／her money, or choose to leave it and continue to grow for a bigger target.

“At the beginning, my teachers thought I was crazy or that a child could not undertake this type of project, ” Jose recalls. “They did not understand that we are not the future of the country but its present. Luckily, I had the support of the school principal and an assistant in my classroom.”

The youngster’s persistence paid off. Today, the eco-bank, which now has the support of several local institutions, has ten educational centers and begins accepting applications from kids all across Peru. On November 20, 2018, the young boy was awarded the famous Children’s Climate Prize (CCP). “Jose’s eco-bank is a brilliant way of linking economy and climate impact, both in thought and practice. The potential impact is amazing,” a judge said.

Hopefully, Jose’s success will inspire more kids and adults to come up with new ideas that create value while helping the environment. As the boy says,” Together we can change the world…we just need an opportunity…”

4 . To meet the global climate crisis that is approaching, big lifestyle changes are required of those of us. The good news is that our way of life can remain meaningful and worthy as our consumption becomes sustainable(可持续发展的).

    1     Eat less meat and move toward a plant-based diet. This is one of the most effective things we can do because the food we now produce and consume is destroying the very ecosystems that we depend upon for survival. Here are some of the grim facts.

The U. S. uses about one-half of its land for agriculture.     2    For example, the U. S. uses over 90 million acres of good agricultural land to produce corn, which is mostly fed to livestock(家畜).

With 7.6 billion people on earth, the demand for food is enormous and constantly on the rise. It’s easy to feel we can’t make a difference.     3    We should not ignore the power of the choices we make.

Even one person can make a big difference by eating less meat and moving toward a plant-based diet and make contributions to the health of the planet as well as your own. Recognize how the food we eat is connected to other living beings. It often helps us make much wiser buying choices.     4    This way, we will help people around the world enjoy more eco-friendly and nutritious foods.

    5    When you change your diet to be more sustainable, you become visible proof that changing our food habits is doable, healthy, and enjoyable.

6 . Illegally traded endangered species that escape, forming secondary populations, offer hope to their long-term survival, a study suggests. "This first came to my attention when I read a news story about the seizure of an illegal shipment of 23 yellow crested cockatoos (小葵花凤头鹦鹉),” said Luke Gibson, a college teacher. He learned that the species was critically endangered, which surprised him.

This encouraged Dr. Gibson and his colleague to investigate (调查) how a critically endangered species had become self-sustaining outside of its natural range. They discovered 49 cases of a globally threatened species becoming established as a separate population, which they hadn’t thought of, including the yellow-crested cockatoo in their city.

“This is a species which is primarily threatened by wildlife trade,” he told BBC News. “Poachers (偷猎者) go out into the forest in its native range in eastern Indonesia and capture the bird and then ship them off, usually up to our city where there is a strong demand for pet birds. This is what has fueled the decline of this species in its native range. But it’s really interesting because that same cause also had another effect: some of the people who were keeping this species here accidentally or intentionally released them.” As a result of enough of the birds set free, it allowed a new self-sustaining population to be established in this city.

The government in of Dr. Gibson’s city has made it illegal to capture the species, even though it is a non-native species. Because the city is affluent and relatively well educated, the cases of people breaking the law are extremely rare, explained Dr Gibson, unlike in its native range in Indonesia, where capturing birds form a major source of income.

However, there can be downsides (缺点) to the newly established population of endangered species, such as a limited genetic pool, and suffering from novel diseases. It did also present a possible “very interesting” opportunity for conservationists, Dr. Gibson suggested. This would involve “harvesting” some of the newly established secondary population, which may provide a way to help slow global biodiversity loss.

8 . In the United States，a company is working on a project that could change the way we think about public transportation.Its planned system would move people around in steel tubes.Those passengers would be traveling at speeds of up to 1,200 kilometers per hour.

The futuristic steel tube transportation system is called Hyper1oop.Workers plan to test the system next year in a specially built community called Quay Valley.The town will be powered entirely by energy from the sun.

The Hyperloop transport system is the idea of businessman Elon Musk.Dirk Ahlborn is head of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies.He says his company has taken Mr.Musk’s idea and is developing a system that will be safe，environmentally friendly and fast.

“It’s 100 percent solar powered…we’re not going to get up to 760 miles per hour，but we believe we can actually break the records that are existing right now.”

This means that a four-hour drive from Los Angeles，California to Las Vegas，Nevada，could someday take only 30 minutes by Hyperloop.The system involves a series of capsules that float inside a long tube.These containers would not need to travel along a pathway or track.The system has been designed to operate above or below ground.

“Inside the tube you create a low pressure environment very similar to an airplane that’s at high altitudes.So now the capsule travelling inside the tube doesn’t come up against as much resistance，and therefore can travel really fast with very little energy.”

Dick Ahlborn and his company will use an eight—kilometer track in Quay Valley to find the best way to set up passenger traffic and repair capsules.A larger system will cost an estimated six to $10 billion to build.If Mr.Ahlborn and his company succeed，we may one day see these very fast Hyperloop capsules speeding through tubes around the world.

9 . Sometimes we may find that every week there are a lot of new stories about how climate change is affecting the planet, or new plans to battle its effects. But the concept itself isn't new at all --- in fact, scientists have been exploring questions about climate change for almost 200 years.

The idea of “greenhouse gases” goes back to 1824, when Joseph Fourier wondered what was regulating the earth's temperature. Fourier concluded that the atmosphere must be responsible for containing the heat absorbed from the sun and described it as a box with a glass lid: As light shines through the glass, the inside gets warmer as the lid traps the heat. As Fourier's ideas spread, it came to be called “the greenhouse effect”.

Scientists continued to study the greenhouse effect. Not until a Swedish chemist named Svante Arrhenius came along, did scientists understand how global warming actually works. After years of work, Arrhenius determined that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere did in fact have a direct effect on global temperatures.

Arrhenius found that CO₂, and other gases trap radiation, which warms the atmosphere. Arrhenius was the first to suspect that burning coal could contribute to the greenhouse effect. But Arrhenius welcomed the warming effect on the planet. At a lecture later that year, Arrhenius noted that creatures of a warmer earth “might live under a milder sky and in less barren surroundings”.

While Arrhenius' findings won him the 1903 Nobel Prize in chemistry, scientists kept debating whether the greenhouse effect was increasing until 1950, when researchers finally began to find strong data supporting it. By the end of the 1950s, American scientists had been sounding the alarm on the long-term consequences of climate change. Climate change research has come a long way since Fourier first described the greenhouse effect – still, maybe Arrhenius should have been more careful of what he wished for.

10 .

Climate change may make parts of the Middle East too hot for human beings, according to a new study.

Researchers have been studying weather conditions in the Middle East since 1970. They say “very hot” days in the area have doubled over that period. They say temperatures in summer in the Middle East and North Africa will continue rising. They believe by 2050, temperatures will not fall below 30 degrees Celsius at night in the hottest part of summer, and day-time temperatures could rise to 46 degrees Celsius. Temperatures at noon could reach as high as 50 Celsius. Heat waves are likely to last longer.

“If mankind continues to release carbon dioxide as it does now, people living in the Middle East and North Africa will have to expect about 200 unusually hot days,” says Panos Hadjinicolaou, a climate change expert with the Cyprus Institute.

The researchers also looked at the amount of “fine particulate (颗粒) air pollution” in the Middle East. They found that the amount of dust in the atmosphere over Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria jumped 70 percent since the start of the century. This, they say, could have resulted from an increase in the number of sand storms caused by climate change.

The researchers created two models. In one model, rising temperatures are limited because of reductions in greenhouse gases. The other model is said to be a “business as usual” model where nothing is done to stop climate change. Under both models, the future of the Middle East is not good, the researchers say. They added that climate change can result in a slow worsening of living conditions for people in North Africa and the Middle East and in time many people may have to leave the regions.