1 . With greater climate disasters lying ahead, it is natural for us to make every effort to stop a series of floods, unusual snowstorms, and alarming reports from scientists. For many of us, part of that means running out to buy reusable drinking tubes, organic cleaners, and packaging-free products.

However, before you are joyful of your “green” purchases, take a second to consider a principle that should be obvious: simply consuming less is better for the planet. After all, every new item a factory pumps out requires some resources to produce. But in the confusing stream of environmental news, this simple truth can get lost. Take plastic bag bans for instance. If your city is getting rid of single-use shopping bags, it can be tempting to pay for that fashionable organic cotton bag hanging in the check-outline of supermarkets. However, experts who have analyzed the data on environmental impact insist that growing cotton is actually no better for the Earth than producing the conventional plastic bag. Any bag you already own is your best bet for carrying your groceries if you care about sustainability.

It is not just the Earth that will be happier if you buy less. You will feel more contented too. There is a common view that green buying patterns mean people are going green. However, it doesn’t seem to be that way. Reduced consumption has positive effects on increased well-being, but you don’t see that with “green” consumption.

Many studies have shown that materialism in general makes us unhappy and lonely. It is perfectly possible to be a materialist and an environmentalist at the same time. Lusting (欲望) for every new “green” product on the market might make you feel good about yourself but it presents the same emotional traps as lusting for whatever the Joneses next door are buying. If you relieve yourself of that burden of ownership, most people report feeling a lot better and freer.

Should we be rewilding more land?

Every day in the US, 6,000 acres of open land are cleared for various purposes such as farming, housing, roads, and others. This has led to concerns among scientists     1     believe that losing more open land can harm the planet. Natural habitats such as untouched forests, grasslands, and waterways provide numerous benefits     2     wildlife habitats, clean water, and reduced air pollution. To counter this trend, efforts are underway     3     the world to return animals and plants to certain areas. However, some people argue that rewilding is     4     expensive and risky process that may not work and could cause harm.

Despite the potential risks, rewilding can help slow down climate change by restoring forests that absorb harmful gases like carbon dioxide. It can also prevent species from     5    (die) out and reset natural ecosystems. For example, gray wolves     6    (reintroduce) in Yellowstone National Park in 1995, after being hunted to extinction there. The wolves reduced the booming population of elks (麋鹿),     7     gave the plants the elks ate a chance to thrive and serve as habitat for animals like beavers and birds.

    8     its environmental benefits, rewilding can also provide jobs for workers and scientists and attract visitors to an area. Despite the potential concerns and risks     9    (associate) with rewilding, it is an important tool for protecting the planet and its diverse ecosystems. As such, efforts     10     be made to ensure that rewilding projects are conducted responsibly and with careful consideration of their potential impact on the environment.

5 . The number of fish caught just outside a recently expanded marine (海洋) protected area in Hawaii has risen. It is a sign that quadrupling (四倍) the size of the reserve in 2016 may have shored fish populations in the region.

When the Marine National Monument around Hawaii was enlarged to 1,510,000 square kilometers, marine conservationists around the world rejoiced.

Fishers may have felt differently, however, as fishing inside the area is not allowed. Yet by creating a space for dwindling tuna populations to recover, supporters argued, the reserve would benefit fisheries as well.

As populations inside the reserve boundaries steadily increased, they predicted, the fish would spill (溢出) over into the surrounding areas, increasing the amount of tuna available to catch.

Proving that is tricky, however, as tuna can’t be counted directly. Their numbers may rise or fall for a variety of reasons other than the expansion of a reserve. But the new study, published in Science this week, strongly suggests the number of fish caught just outside the MPA is higher now than it used to be.

Alan Friedlander, chief scientist for the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas project, calls the study a “very careful and strict test of spillover from marine protected areas.”

Importantly, says John Lynham, an environmental economist at the University of Hawaii and one of the study’s authors, the increase in tuna catches near the reserve held up even when looking at the average numbers caught by particular fishers. This shows the effect is not due to more effective crews now fishing local waters, he explains. To account for effort, catch numbers were divided by the ever-increasing number of fishing hooks in the area.

Lynham and colleagues found the catch per hook increased over the 10 years of the study. Fishers were catching on average six more yellowfin and five more bigeye tuna per year after the expansion than before.

“That last one, especially, was a surprise,” says Lynham, “because it is economically much more important, and there were fewer indications of an increase.”

6 . With climate change continuing to worsen, our situation is beginning to feel increasingly serious.     1     Is it right? Maybe not.

Techno-optimism is one of the greatest misconceptions when it comes to solutions to ensure our future. It can be defined as a belief that future technologies will solve all of our current problems. This definition reinforces (强化) the idea that there’s no reason to panic or change our current energy-intensive lifestyle. All society needs to do is look to green technology to work its magic.     2    

One of the best examples of this optimistic misconception is the electric car. Despite being highly regarded as an eco-friendly way to get around, electric cars are not the end for the future of transport. Batteries in electric cars use chemical elements which we could be seeing a shortage of by the midcentury.     3     Techno-optimism has led many to believe that if everyone just switched to driving electric vehicles, we would be making incredible steps towards sustainability. However, the reality is that the amount of resources and energy needed to produce enough electric vehicles for everyone is not even remotely sustainable.

    4     Investing in public transportation and moving away from individually owned vehicles. Producing fewer cars. Improving recycling practices of old batteries. The solutions we seek should not be rooted in new technology, but be about changing the way our society functions.

Techno-optimism puts too much emphasis on technology and not enough on what we can do right this minute. Unfortunately, people seem to like the picture that techno-optimism paints.     5     It is important to understand that the problem begins when we see those technologies as a way to make our current lifestyles eco-friendly. Until we are ready to face the need for a less complex life, we cannot make true progress towards sustainability.

7 . Slowness has been a sweeping trend in sustainability. Slow food celebrates local produce and traditional cooking methods; slow fashion is made with a focus on people and the planet. You may have even heard of the slow city, a campaign to restore local cultures and turn cities back to their natural environments.

Slow design developed from the larger slow movement. Although the term was only recently introduced, the idea of thoughtful design looks back to a time when buildings and furniture were made with great craftsmanship (手艺) and by hand-before the mass-produced throwaway furniture took over. You can think of the term “slow” as a celebration of timelessness: both the timelessness of a piece and the timelessness of the relationship between that piece and its owner.

One example of slow design today is what’s been dubbed the brown furniture revival (复兴). Brown furniture refers to the heavy wooden furnishings that were popular in your grandparents’ day but suddenly fell out of style at the turn of the century. Brown furniture is often associated with dark woods, such as trees like mahogany, walnut, and teak, that take decades to reach maturity and true craftsmanship to transform into functional pieces.

Today’s furniture industry is dominated by the $13.1 billion-and-growing global ready-to-assemble(RTA) furniture market. RTA furniture is usually constructed from low-quality fiberboard, which lasts a small part of traditional furniture’s lifespan (寿命).The weight of furniture landfilled in 2018 was 9. 7 million tons, 4. 5 times what was landfilled in 1960.

In a less direct way, the idea of timelessness also lends itself to a lower environmental impact. Besides their demonstrated physical durability, slow materials and design are meant to outlive trends and never be thrown out simply because they’re out of style.

As second-hand shopping becomes more appealing to today’s young generation-because of its low environmental impact and affordability-the brown furniture of yesteryear is making a comeback.

8 . Every spring, as the weather warms, trees up and down the East Coast explode in a display of bright green life as leaves fill their branches, and every fall, the same leaves provide one of nature’s great color displays of vivid yellow, orange and red.

Thanks to climate change, the timing of these events has shifted over the last two decades, Harvard scientists say.

Andrew Richardson, an associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, and research associate Trevor Keenan worked with colleagues from seven different institutions on a study which found that forests throughout the eastern United States are showing signs of spring growth dramatically earlier, and that the growing season in some areas extends further into the fall.

Richardson said, “Climate change isn’t just about warmer temperatures. It’s also about changes in precipitation (降水) patterns... so in the future, an earlier spring might not help forests take up more carbon dioxide if they end up running out of water in mid-summer.”

The research combined information from three sources. Using satellite data, Keenan tracked when forests across the region began to turn green in the spring, and when leaves began to turn yellow in the fall. Ground observations made every three to seven days at the Harvard Forest in Petersham and a long-term research site in New Hampshire provided information about the state of buds, leaves and branches. When combined with records from instrument towers, the data sets allowed the researchers to paint a richly detailed picture that shows spring starting earlier, and the growing season lasting longer than at any point in the past two decades.

Another important result, Richardson said, was the discovery of a significant source of error in existing computer models on how forest ecosystems work.

“This shows an opportunity to improve the models and how they simulate how forests will work under future climate scenarios forecast.” he said.

The real power of the findings, however, may be in helping to make the effects of climate change clearer to the public, the researchers said.

9 . 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’.”