1 . Billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn expects the greatest “demand disruption (中断)” for oil since the 1970s shock to cause an increase in renewable energy investment.
He said high oil prices are “a positive thing” for the climate as the energy crisis results in a “dramatic speed-up” in decarbonisation (碳减排). “The whole world should now be focused on seeking alternatives, whether they’re renewables or hydrogen fuels. All of these things are far more economic.”
He pointed to the recent boost of EU (欧盟) for renewable energy funding, as part of a plan to reduce imports of gas. Even as oil and gas companies obtain record profits from the high prices at present, Hohn said climate-focused investors will ultimately benefit from the energy price shock.
“The oil price increase leads to plans for accelerated decarbonisation,” said Hohn. “I personally believe that we’ll have demand disruption as we had in the 70s, and that there will be a dramatic acceleration in decarbonisation. I actually view it as a positive thing.”
Hohn has pressured companies to give shareholders a vote on their climate plans. Spanish airport operator Aena and aircraft manufacturer Airbus improved their emissions (排放) tar-gets as a result. Hohn has also pushed for stricter regulation on corporate climate promises. “Corporate decarbonisation isn’t going to happen through voluntary methods,” Hohn said.
Hohn is also backing a new rating agency that will grade company emissions strategies, through his charity, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. The Climate Action-plan Rating Centre (Climate-Arc) will analyse public company data and publish climate plan ratings.
Investors often struggle to analyse corporate climate plans. “Because though some organizations declare their commitment to environmental protection, they actually do the opposite,” Hohn said, “I expect a large proportion of companies will get graded F if they’re not doing enough. Even companies with net zero emissions targets have failed to set out plans about how to reach those goals. The impact is going to be a bit like, ‘the emperor has no clothes’.”
1. Why are high oil prices a positive thing according to Hohn?| A．They will reduce energy demand. |
| B．They will bring economic benefits. |
| C．There will be a shift to clean energy. |
| D．There will be a reduction in energy imports. |
| A．Climate regulation should be stricter. |
| B．Decarbonisation should be voluntary. |
| C．Emissions targets should be debated. |
| D．Climate plans should be informed to the public. |
| A．The method of avoiding being graded F. |
| B．The suggestion about helping investors. |
| C．The method of reaching zero emissions targets. |
| D．The suggestion about reducing carbon emissions. |
| A．Energy crisis—a hard nut |
| B．Energy crisis—a wake up call |
| C．Energy crisis—a cruel circle |
| D．Energy crisis—a cause of economic depression |
2 . A handful of healthy soil could contain great numbers of living organisms. However, poisonous pesticides (杀虫剂) are causing harm and destruction to them, according to a recent analysis.
For the analysis, researchers looked through nearly 400 published studies including over 2,800 experiments on how pesticides affect soil organisms. They found that pesticides harmed organisms critical to maintaining healthy soils, but these harms have never been considered in the safety reviews of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).Poisonous pesticides are driving factors in the sharp decline of many soil organisms, such as ground beetles. They have been identified as the most significant driver of soil biodiversity loss in the last ten years.
However, that research has always been ignored. The EPA, which is responsible for pesticide supervision(监管)in the country, openly acknowledges that somewhere between 50 and 100 percent of all agriculturally applied pesticides end up on the soil. Yet, to assess pesticides’ harms to soil species, the agency just uses a single test species, the European honeybee, to estimate risk to all soil organisms. It spends its entire life above ground in artificial boxes.
Worse still, as soil health gain popularity globally, pesticide companies have jumped up to green wash and promote their products. Every major company is now advertising its role in improving soil health, such as advocating planting cover crops. As general beliefs, these practices are indeed good for soil health and, if adopted responsibly, are a great step to take. But companies know that these practices are often accompanied by increased pesticide use. Chemicals and pesticides have to be applied more frequently to kill weeds before crops are planted.
The long-term environmental cost can no longer be overlooked. Soils are some of the most complex ecosystems on Earth, containing nearly a quarter of the planet’s biodiversity. Protecting them should be a priority, not an afterthought.
1. What does the underlined word “They” refer to in Paragraph 2?| A．Soil organisms. | B．Ground beetles. |
| C．Artificial boxes. | D．Poisonous pesticides. |
| A．The honeybee is a typical species living in nature. |
| B．The assessment of pesticides’ harms is one-sided. |
| C．Less than half of applied pesticide go to the soil eventually. |
| D．The EPA attaches great importance to pesticide inspection. |
| A．To obey the EPA’s rules. |
| B．To increase their product sales. |
| C．To protect the environment. |
| D．To shoulder their social responsibility. |
| A．Soil: essential to agriculture. |
| B．Pesticides: harmful to soil health. |
| C．Organisms: significant to harvest. |
| D．Pollution: destructive to biodiversity. |
3 . Wildlife populations around the world are facing dramatic declines, according to new figures that have led environmental campaigners to call for urgent action to rescue the natural world. The 2022 Living Planet Index (LPI), produced by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), reveals that studied populations of mammals, birds, reptiles (爬行动物) and fish have seen an average decline of 69 per cent since 1970, faster than previous predictions. The LPI tracked global biodiversity between 1970 and 2018, based on the monitoring of 31,821 populations of 5230 vertebrate (脊椎动物) species. Mark Wright of WWF says the degree of decline is destructive and continues to worsen. “We are not seeing any really positive signs that we are beginning to bend the curve of nature,” he says.
Freshwater vertebrates have been among the hardest-hit populations, with monitored populations showing an average decline of 83 per cent since 1970. The Amazon pink river dolphin, for example, has experienced a 65 per cent decline in its population between 1994 and 2016. Meanwhile, some of the most biodiverse regions of the world are seeing the steepest falls in wildlife, with the Caribbean and central and south America seeing average wildlife population declined by 94 per cent since 1970. Habitat loss and reduction is the largest driver of wildlife loss in all regions around the world, followed by species overexploitation by hunting, fishing or poaching (偷猎).
In December, governments from around the world will gather in Montreal, Canada, for the COP15 Biodiversity Framework, a much-delayed summit that aims to agree on a set of new targets intended to prevent the loss of animals, plants and habitats globally by 2030. “This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity that’s coming up,” says Robin Freeman of ZSL. He says it is vital that governments use the summit to agree on “meaningful, well measurable targets and goals”. “We need governments to take action to ensure that those goals deal with the complicated combined threats of climate change and biodiversity, in order for us to see a meaningful action,” says Freeman. But some researchers are critical of the LPI’s use of a headline figure of decline, warning it is easy to be misunderstood.
The findings don’t mean all species or populations worldwide are in decline. In fact, approximately half the populations show a stable or increasing trend, and half show a declining trend. “I think a more appropriate and useful way to look at it is to focus on specific species or populations,” says Hannah Ritchie at Our World in Data. But Wright says the LPI is a useful tool that reflects the findings of other biodiversity indicators. “All of those show they all scream there is something going really very badly wrong,” says Wright.
1. What does the underlined phrase in the first paragraph mean?| A．Loving and protecting nature. | B．Preserving the diversity of nature. |
| C．Underestimating the benefits of nature. | D．Destroying and changing nature. |
| A．the number of Amazon dolphins is on the rise |
| B．freshwater vertebrates are at risk of extinction |
| C．there are no positive measures to protect nature |
| D．some of the world’s wild animals are in decline |
| A．It makes sense to focus on a particular species. |
| B．Preventing the loss of habitats by 2030 is certain to happen. |
| C．New agreement on the prevention of habitat loss will be in vain. |
| D．The Caribbean wildlife has been well protected in recent decades. |
| A．The COP15 Biodiversity Framework |
| B．Wildlife Population Declining Sharply |
| C．Urgent Action to Save the Earth |
| D．Correct Interpretation of LPI |
4 . Have you heard of the save soil movement? It was
The efforts of Sadhguru have
The movement aims to
The main motive of the campaign was to bring together people from all around the world to protect the soil’s health. Sadhguru has become
Sadhguru is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy. He has been a(n)
| A．launched | B．sponsored | C．experienced | D．commanded |
| A．resulted in | B．originated from | C．paid back | D．reacted to |
| A．airports | B．companies | C．conferences | D．locations |
| A．abilities | B．struggles | C．characters | D．requests |
| A．transform | B．address | C．drag | D．confirm |
| A．messages | B．responses | C．proposals | D．positions |
| A．exhausted | B．ambitious | C．successful | D．confident |
| A．improvement | B．awareness | C．imagination | D．standard |
| A．locally | B．individually | C．nationally | D．globally |
| A．urging | B．requiring | C．cheering | D．permitting |
| A．stable | B．ongoing | C．favorable | D．temporary |
| A．However | B．Besides | C．Therefore | D．Meanwhile |
| A．ensure | B．bring | C．affect | D．define |
| A．strong | B．pleasant | C．determined | D．influential |
| A．circumstance | B．lifestyle | C．atmosphere | D．soil |
Preserving more habitats for China’s giant pandas is providing a giant payoff.
The results,
Because of this, Chinese officials began making significant efforts to save the panda from
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1. What is the woman doing to help the environment?
| A．Joining a garden club. |
| B．Volunteering at a recycling center. |
| C．Starting a university club. |
| A．The university president. |
| B．Teachers who drive to campus. |
| C．The public transportation committee. |
| A．When it was less expensive. |
| B．When it was more convenient. |
| C．When it was required. |
| A．Many people care about the environment. |
| B．The man’s behavior is harmful to the environment. |
| C．Students don’t know much about the environment. |
7 . If you’re looking for something fun to do, pack a picnic dinner and take your family or friends to a beautiful place to eat. However, there’s a wrong trend to view picnics as an excuse to transport food in single-use plastic containers. Sure, it means the cleanup is easy at the moment, but it just puts it off to a later point, when it takes the form of volunteer cleanups and landfill management.
●Use food containers smartly
Using reusable containers is the easiest way to reduce waste.
●Choose real cutlery (餐具)
Using washable dishes and cutlery for a picnic does not require much more work than single-use ones.
You’d have to carry the waste out anyway in a trash bag, so why not pack your dirty plates and cutlery into a bag and put them in the dishwasher at home?
●Think about the drinks
Forget the single-use, single-serve drink bottles.
●Put cloth bags to good use
Cloth bags are amazing. I use them for so much more than just buying food at the store. They’re perfect for packing sandwiches, dried or whole fruit, and other snack foods. You can use them to pack glasses or plates to prevent breaking. They can also work as a napkin, tea towel, or trash bag if needed.
| A．Be sure to add a few to your picnic basket. |
| B．There are some healthy dishes you can make or buy. |
| C．To avoid this, a plastic-free picnic can be a brilliant idea. |
| D．If you’re worried about breaking, take some light camping plates. |
| E．Instead, just bring along a cloth tablecloth to spread on the ground. |
| F．These create a huge amount of waste, which can be easily avoided. |
| G．In addition, keep in mind that you don’t have to pre-pack everything. |
8 . 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. |
9 . From airplanes to apartments, most spaces are now designed with sound-absorbing materials that help decrease various sounds of everyday life. But most of the sound-absorbing materials that can cancel out human voices, traffic noise and music are made from plastic foams (泡沫) that aren’t easily recycled or degraded. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have created a biodegradable film (薄膜) obtained from seaweed, which effectively absorbs sounds in this range.
Controlling and optimizing the way sound moves throughout a room is the key to creating functional spaces. Foam sound-absorbing panels are a common solution, and they come in a variety of materials and thicknesses tailored to specific sound requirements. Most of these foams, however, are made from a type of plastic material and other chemical substances that are obtained from natural oil or petrol. To avoid petrochemicals, researchers have explored more renewable sources and biodegradable sound-absorbing alternatives. But many current options are made from plant fibers that don’t effectively decrease noises in the most useful range of sound frequencies, or they are too thick or difficult to produce. So, Chindam’s team wanted to develop a biodegradable material from a plant, which would be simple to produce and could absorb a range of sounds.
The team created films of agar (琼脂), a material that comes from seaweed, along with other additives developed from plants and varied the thickness of the films. After running the materials through a battery of tests, the researchers measured how well the films reduced sound across a range of frequencies. To do this, the team created a sound tube in which a speaker is placed at one end, and the test film is fitted over the other end. Microphones in the middle of the tube measured the amount of sound sent by the speaker and the amount of sound reflected off the film. These experiments showed that the films with many small holes made with the highest concentrations of agar had the greatest sound-absorbing qualities and performed similarly to traditional sound-absorbing foams. The researchers plan to explore ways to change the agar films to give them other desirable properties, such as flame resistance, and will explore other biologically obtained film materials.
1. What is the disadvantage of plastic foams?| A．They take up, too much space. | B．They cannot absorb sounds effectively. |
| C．They cannot meet specific sound requirements. | D．They have difficulty achieving sustainable use. |
| A．One obtained easily and effectively. | B．One produced toughly and tiredly. |
| C．One developed from petrochemicals. | D．One made from plant fibers. |
| A．The purpose of film research. | B．A series of tests on the new material. |
| C．A tool of measuring the film thickness. | D．The difficulty of searching the new material. |
| A．An Eco-friendly Sound-absorbing Material from Seaweed |
| B．Plastic Foams: the Worst Choice of Absorbing Sounds |
| C．A Tube for Measuring the Amount of Underwater Sounds |
| D．Seaweed: a Better Sound-absorbing Underwater Plant |
10 . To understand the effect of ice melting (融化) around the world we first have to understand what an ice sheet actually is. Covering 5. 4 million square miles in Antarctica (南极洲) and 656, 000 square miles in Greenland, an ice sheet is actually a huge land of ice from the Ice Age. These sheets form in areas where snow that falls in winter does not melt entirely over the summer. This ice, home to different species of animals, is now melting at a rate that cannot support the life it currently holds.
Many of these creatures rely on ice sheets as land for resting, hunting and protection, yet as the size decreases, they are forced out of their homeland in search of other land on which to live. Often this means journeys to search for food and an imbalanced ecosystem happens when different species are forced together onto the coast.
Since the 1990s, the deer population has dropped by 56 percent— climate change has caused warmer temperatures over winter setting off rainfall instead of snow, which freezes more quickly underfoot and makes it harder to walk and search for food. In the summer, frozen layers of land melts and releases trapped diseases which bring death to animals. A similar situation has fallen on the polar bears who suffered a 40 per cent population loss between 2001 and 2010.
Quite apart from these problems, the threat of sea levels rising if the ice caps were to disappear is approaching. If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, the sea level would rise around six meters, and if the Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea levels would rise by around 20 feet. As a matter of fact, sea levels have risen about eight inches since 1880, three of which were gained over the last 25 years. This seemingly small amount has already caused dangerous flooding, loss of farmland and more deadly storms.
While we’re still a long way from losing the ice sheets all together, we’ve already lost too much and if we don’t take climate change seriously now, we will certainly hit the point of no return.
1. What is an ice sheet according to the passage?| A．It is an area where ice never melts in summer. |
| B．It is a land of ice that covers all Greenland. |
| C．It is a large area of ice that exists for centuries. |
| D．It is an ice world for animals to live on. |
| A．It makes it easier to travel to other land. |
| B．It increases the population of sea animals. |
| C．It makes their surroundings more comfortable. |
| D．It causes hunger and illness among animals. |
| A．Ice sheet will soon disappear from the Earth. |
| B．Sea levels are rising faster in recent years. |
| C．Greenland will be the first to lose all its ice. |
| D．All natural disasters happen due to sea level rise. |
| A．Effect of Melting Ice Sheets | B．Ice, Sea and Animals |
| C．Cause of Melting Ice Sheets | D．Changes of Sea Levels |
