1 . Conservationists go to war over whether humans are the measure of nature’s value. New Conservationists argue such trade-offs are necessary in this human dominated epoch. And they support “re-wilding”, a concept originally proposed by Soule where people curtail economic growth and withdraw from landscapes, which then return to nature.
New Conservationists believe the withdrawal could happen together with economic growth. The California-based Breakthrough Institute believes in a future where most people live in cities and rely less on natural resources for economic growth.
They would get food from industrial agriculture, including genetically modified foods, desalination intensified meat production and aquaculture, all of which have a smaller land footprint. And they would get their energy from renewables and natural gas.
Driving these profound shifts would be greater efficiency of production, where more products could be manufactured from fewer inputs. And some unsustainable commodities would be replaced in the market by other, greener ones — natural gas for coal, for instance, explained Michael Heisenberg, president of the Breakthrough Institute. Nature would, in essence, be decoupled from the economy.
And then he added a caveat: We are not suggesting decoupling as the paradigm to save the world, or that it solves all the problems or eliminates all the trade-offs.
Cynics (悲观者) may say all this sounds too utopian, but Breakthrough maintains the world is already on this path toward decoupling. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United Sates, according to Iddo Wernick, a research scholar at the Rockefeller University, who has examined the nation’s use of 100 main commodities.
Wenick and his colleagues looked at data carefully from the U.S. Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center, which keeps a record of commodities used from 1900 through the present day. They found that the use of 36 commodities (sand, iron ore, cotton etc.) in the U. S. Economy had peaked.
Another 53 commodities (nitrogen, timber, beef, etc.) are being used more efficiently per dollar value of gross domestic product than in the pre-1970s era. Their use would peak soon, Wernick said.
Only 11 commodities (industrial diamond, indium, chicken, etc.) are increasing in use (Greenwire, Nov.6), and most of these are employed by industries in small quantities to improve systems processes. Chicken use is rising because people are eating less beef, a desirable development since poultry cultivation has a smaller environmental footprint.
The numbers show the United States has not intensified resource consumption since the 1970s even while increasing its GDP and population, said Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University.
“It seems like the 20th-century expectation we had, we were always assuming the future entailed greater consumption of resources,” Ausubel said. “But what we are seeing in the developed countries is, of course, peaks.”
1. What does the underlined word “trade-offs” refer to in the first paragraph?A.The balance between human development and natural ecology. |
B.The profitability of import and export trade. |
C.The consumption of natural resources by industrial development. |
D.The difficult plight of economies growth. |
A.They believe that mankind should live in forests with rich vegetation. |
B.They believe that mankind will need more natural resources in the future. |
C.They believe that mankind is the master of the whole universe. |
D.They believe that mankind should limit economic growth. |
A.Natural resources cannot support economic development. |
B.More resource consumption will not occur in a certain period of time. |
C.Excessive resource consumption will not affect the ecological environment. |
D.All resource consumption in developed countries has reached a peak. |
A.Urbanization and re-wildness. |
B.Human existence and industrial development. |
C.Socioeconomic development and resource consumption. |
D.Commodity trading and raw material development. |
2 . A major new facility to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere has started operating in Iceland, which is a boost to an emerging technology that experts say could eventually play an important role in reducing greenhouse gases.
The plant in southwest Iceland is the biggest of its kind, its builder says. It is able to capture 900 tons of CO2 every year but it needs heat and electricity to work. It is using energy produced from waste and is built on the roof of a waste incineration plant, and through the burning of rubbish, energy is generated.
Human-sized fans are built into a series of boxes. They take CO2 out of the air, catching it in spongelike filters (过滤器). The filters are blasted with heat, freeing the gas, which is then mixed with water and pumped deep into deep underground basalt caves, where over time it turns into dark-gray stone. Pumping CO2 into the ground is just one way to deal with it. The makers are also selling the gas to be used again. The CO2 can be captured just a few 100 miles away. It is pumped through an underground pipeline directly into a greenhouse. Vegetables and plants love CO2 and higher concentrations of the gas within the greenhouse improve the growth of plants.
By 2050, humanity will need to pull nearly a billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year through direct air capture technology to achieve carbon neutral goals, according to International Energy Agency recommendations. The plant in Iceland will be able to capture 4000 metric tons annually — just a small amount of what will be necessary, but an engineer in Climeworks, the company that built it, says it can grow rapidly as efficiency improves and costs decrease.
“This is a market that does not yet exist, but a market that urgently needs to be built,” said Christoph Gebald who co-founded Climeworks. “This plant that we have here is really the blueprint to further increase the size and really industrialize.”
1. What do we know about the carbon capture facility from paragraph 2?A.It is built at high altitudes. | B.It uses waste to produce power. |
C.It makes Iceland free of air pollution. | D.lt produces lots of heat during operation. |
A.The methods of breaking down CO2. |
B.The approaches to reusing waste gas. |
C.The necessity of building greenhouses. |
D.The workings of the carbon-catching plant. |
A.It will decrease the cost of energy production. |
B.It can help reach the carbon neutral goals in advance. |
C.It will speed up the reduction of CO2 levels in the air. |
D.It may replace the traditional carbon storage system. |
A.The capture of CO2 in the atmosphere is able to kill many birds with one stone. |
B.CO2 will be delivered to greenhouses after being turned into dark-gray stones. |
C.A major new market to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere has started operating. |
D.The plants in Iceland greenhouses can capture a small amount of CO2. |
A.Ambiguous. | B.Neutral. |
C.Disapproving. | D.Supportive. |
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(3)号召全校同学行动起来贡献自己的一份力量。
注意:
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Good morning, everyone. It is my great pleasure to give a lecture here on “Clear Waters and Lush Mountains Are as Valuable as Gold and Silver”.
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4 . Great Barrier Reef Choking on Pollutants
Attempts to protect the Great Barrier Reef are failing. A report released Monday by the government in Australia says water quality in the Great Barrier Reef is far below what it should be. It showed that pollution have decreased, but not enough to reach environmental targets.
Sediment (沉淀物) and chemicals can weaken coral, hurting its ability to feed and grow. Coral are live animals that take root in the ocean floor, but they are not plants. Reefs are the hard skeletons (骨架) left at the bottom of the sea by small marine creatures called polyps (珊瑚虫). The polyps then form the larger structure of a reef. Corals also are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the entire planet. They can make a home for invertebrates, crustaceans, fish, and sea snakes.
Steve Miles is Queensland’s environment minister. He says the research shows the Reef needs more protection. “Over that five-year period, we did see some progress towards our targets. Sediment is down 12 percent and pesticides (杀虫剂) loads are down 30 percent. But what is most disturbing is that these results are far from our targets. Progress towards these targets flat-lined in the period 2013-2014. If one of my kids came home with a report card like this, I would be a bit disappointed. There is more bad news here than good news. ” said Steve Miles.
The report also found that fewer than one-third of Queensland’s sugar plantations used techniques to reduce the use of pesticides. Only 28 percent of land managers managed their land properly. They had reduced harmful water run off to protect the health of the Reef. The official target is a 90 percent reduction in pesticide use within three years.
Scientists at the University of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences published their findings Wednesday, July 18 in the journal Science Advances. It found between 1992 and 2010, the recovery rate dropped by an average of 84 percent. But there is hope. The study also found some corals can recover quickly if “acute and chronic stressors” are lessened.
Meanwhile, the Australian government released its updated reef protection plan Friday. It clearly states global temperatures must be stopped from rising in order to save the world’s largest living structure.
1. What does the underlined word “They” in Paragraph 2 refer to?A.Diverse ecosystems. | B.Sediment and chemicals. |
C.Reefs and corals. | D.Small sea creatures. |
A.He is satisfied with the protection of the Reef. |
B.He thinks that the Reef needs more protection. |
C.He feels angry with what his children did. |
D.He is very happy about the Reef progress protection. |
A.Not increase significantly. | B.Disappear. |
C.Speed up. | D.Miss the chance. |
A.were tough to deal with | B.failed to manage their land properly |
C.reduced the amount of harmful water | D.were eager to quit pesticide soon |
A.A news report. | B.A science fiction. |
C.A book review. | D.A guide book. |
5 . Each year, backed up by a growing anti-consumerist movement, people are using the holiday season to call on us all to shop less.
Driven by concerns about resource exhaustion, over recent years environmentalists have increasingly turned their sights on our “consumer culture”. Groups such as The Story of Stuff and Buy Nothing New Day are growing as a movement that increasingly blames all our ills on our desire to shop.
We clearly have a growing resource problem. The produces we make, buy, and use are often linked to the destruction of our waterways, biodiversity, climate and the land on which millions of people live. But to blame these issues on Christmas shoppers is misguided, and puts us in the old trap of blaming individuals for what is a systematic problem.
While we complain about environmental destruction over Christmas, environmentalists often forget what the holiday season actually means for many people. For most, Christmas isn’t an add-on to an already heavy shopping year. In fact, it is likely the only time of year many have the opportunity to spend on friends and family, or even just to buy the necessities needed for modern life.
This is particularly, true for Boxing Day, often the target of the strongest derision(嘲弄) by anti-consumerists. While we may laugh at the queues in front of the shops, for many, those sales provide the one chance to buy items they’ve needed all year. As Leigh Phillips argues, “this is one of the few times of the year that people can even hope to afford such ‘luxuries’, the Christmas presents their kids are asking for, or just an appliance that works.”
Indeed, the richest 7% of people are responsible for 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. This becomes particularly harmful when you take into account that those shopping on Boxing Day are only a small part of our consumption “problem” anyway. Why are environmentalists attacking these individuals, while ignoring such people as Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has his own£1.5bn yacht with a missile defence system?
Anyway, anti-consumerism has become a movement of wealthy people talking down to the working class about their life choices, while ignoring the real cause of our environmental problems. It is no wonder one is changing their behaviours—or that environmental destruction continues without any reduction in intensity.
1. It is indicated in the 1st paragraph that during the holiday season, many consumers .A.ignore resource problems |
B.are fascinated with presents |
C.are encouraged to spend less |
D.show great interest in the movement. |
A.has targeted the wrong persons |
B.has achieved its intended purposes |
C.has taken environment-friendly measures |
D.has benefited both consumers and producers |
A.madness about life choices |
B.discontent with rich lifestyle |
C.ignorance about the real cause |
D.disrespect for holiday shoppers |
A.anything less than a responsibility | B.nothing more than a bias |
C.indicative of environmental awareness | D.unacceptable to ordinary people |