1 . 假定你是李华，了解到某英文报社正在讨论“过度旅游”（over-tourism）在旅游高峰（seasonal tourism peaks）时期对景点、城市及居民造成的困扰。你决定给该报社写一封信参加讨论，内容包括：
1. 对环境的影响；
2. 对当地居民的影响；
3. 你的观点。
注意：1.发言稿必须包括所有要点，可以适当发挥；
2.发言稿的开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数；
3.字数100左右。
Dear Editor,
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Yours

Li Hua

3 . How to save planet earth

Have you ever held a product in your hands and considered the existential weight of your purchase? Beyond each price tag hides a ripple effect. It expands from soil to water ways, grocery aisle to kitchen plates, factories to fulfillment centers and mail slots to landfills. This global impact has become less hidden in the past decade, and ignoring the people downstream from us has grown increasingly difficult.

We’re more aware than ever of the mark our consumption leaves on planet Earth, which now sustains nearly 8 billion people. Somehow, humans are still pumping more than 30 gig a tons of carbon dioxide(CO₂)per year into the atmosphere, despite the mountain of evidence that CO₂ is the top contributor to greenhouse gases causing global warming.     1    We know we need to do better, but we feel helpless and overwhelmed. Let’s call this the eco-essential crisis; it applies on a deeply personal level for most environmentally aware humans, and on a global scale.

Climate journalist and author Tatiana Schlossberg says even a simple trip to the supermarket can feel paralyzing in 2021. “I want to buy the local thing, but it’s not organic. Or, maybe it’s in a plastic box,” she says. In her 2019 book Inconspicuous Consumption, she ventures way beyond the store aisle and into the web of less apparent ways that humans are damaging Earth. For example, your internet use is tied to extensive carbon emissions and energy consumption.     2     The world is more complicated than that.

In fact, being a good citizen on planet Earth with climate concerns, you’ve likely asked or agonized over this question: What should I do?     3     So, we took this question to five people who have immersed their careers, research and writing in the realities of climate science.

One of their most consistent insights may surprise you: Consumer responsibility misses the mark. “One of the major failings of the environmental movement is having everyone focus on these small things that everyone can do.” says Ayana Elizabeth Johnson-a marine biologist and co-host of the podcast How to Save a Planet.     4     There are just more meaningful and long-lasting ways to expend your energy in the climate fight. Most of them involve organization and collective action.

“Individuals join together to collectively have far more power changing the system than they can as individuals,” says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

A．That doesn’t mean it’s none of your business.

B．these experts propose other key steps that every human can take toward a better future.

C．Similar challenge apply to use of plastics and consumption of meat and other goods.

D．Part of the challenge with the environmental movement is the astonishing list of things we need to change.

E．The solution to this problem, however, is not for you to stop using the internet, according to Schlossberg.

F．It’s easy to get lost in the storm of supposed answers around social media, the latest data sets and “ego-friendly” marketing campaigns.

4 . The forest of today will not be the forests of tomorrow. Rising temperatures, trees being cut down, development and climate-change-caused disasters are changing the very makeup of the Earth’s forests, new research published in Science finds.

Older, bigger trees are being lost at an alarming rate, making the planet’s forests shorter and younger. The change is being driven at different rates by different causes in different places, the study’s authors say, but the consequences will be global.

Old growth forests absorb and store massive amounts of climate-warming CO₂. They provide habitats for rare and endangered species and promote rich biodiversity. Researchers found that the world lost roughly one-third of its old growth forests between 1900 and 2015. In North America and Europe, they found that tree mortality has doubled in the past 40 years.

“Warming temperatures, wildfires, logging and insect outbreaks were among the many causes of the decline,” says Nate McDowell, the study’s lead author. “What’s perhaps more concerning is that the trajectory of all these disturbances is generally increasing over time and is expected to continue increasing in the future.” he says.

McDowell’s focus is on how trees are affected by rising temperatures, arguably the biggest driver of forest change. To get a broader understanding of how forests are changing globally, he brought in more than 20 other researchers in different fields. Together, they examined more than 160 previous studies about tree mortality and its global causes, applying current satellite data and modeling to create a look at the Earth’s changing forests to date.

“It’s not a shock, but it’s very sad,” says Kristina, an ecologist and leader of the ForestGEO Ecosystems &Climate Program who helped with the research. “We as a human society are hitting these forests so rapidly with so many different changes that they can’t keep up.” she says.

1. What can we know from the figures in the paragraph 3?

A．More trees should be planted in no time.	B．We are losing old growth forests quickly.
C．Forests are important habitats for wildlife.	D．Different trees can absorb CO2 differently.

2. What can we say about McDowell’s research?

A．Timely and long-standing	B．All-sided and careful
C．Time-limited and regional	D．Traditional and extensive

3. What’s Kristina’s attitude towards the findings of the research?

A．Worried

B．Optimistic

C．Supportive

D．Indifferent

4. What’s the writer’s purpose of writing the passage?

A．To call on people to plant more trees.

B．To discuss the influence of climate change.

C．To warn against the loss of old growth forests.

D．To compare forests of today with those of the future.

5 . We’re shopping online more than ever now, including various personal care and food items. Of U.S. Internet users, one-third do it at least once a week. Seeing your limited toilet paper (TP), you might pull up your smartphone and after a few taps have a fresh order of TP set to arrive in a day, maybe even less, and all done right from the toilet seat.

But this type of shopping — numerous small, quick-to-ship orders placed through e-tailing companies like Amazon — might be the worst for the environment, according to a recent study in Environmental Science & Technology. With their current business model of free shipping and fast delivery, greenhouse gas emissions linked with transporting “fast consumer goods” are high. “The online-only retailers are growing rapidly,” says lead author Sadegh, a scientist at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Previous analyses haven’t agreed on whether online or in-store shopping is better. In fact, some studies have found that online shopping has a lower impact, because it saves the emissions associated with driving your car to the store (95 percent of Americans drive to go shopping). But this benefit can vary, or even disappear, depending on how fast we want that TP to arrive. And if you’re shopping in real life, factors like how you transport those items, how far you travel, and how much you buy at once all affect the carbon footprint of your purchase. “There have been some contradicting results, with some saying online shopping is better and some saying traditional shopping is better,” says Sadegh. So he tried to settle the debate with an approach that showed how likely one option was to be better than the other.

Sadegh and his team compared three shopping styles: traditional in-store shopping, online ordering from a physical store (which they called “bricks and clicks”), and ordering through an online-only retailer. Nearly two-thirds of the time, bricks and clicks shopping resulted in fewer emissions per item than in-store shopping — and was better than online shopping 97 percent of the time. In-store shopping had fewer emissions than online — only 81percent of the time.

1. Why was “ordering TP on the smartphone” mentioned in paragraph 1?

A．To state convenience of TV shopping.

B．To show importance of smartphones.

C．To encourage people to purchase TP online.

D．To stress people’s frequency of online shopping.

2. How does online shopping harm the environment?

A．It requires more energy to produce these products.

B．Its current business model generates more greenhouse gas.

C．It causes people not to care much about the environment.

D．Its packaging of goods produces numerous harmful waste.

3. Which way of shopping is more environmentally friendly?

A．Traditional in-store shopping.

B．Online ordering from a physical store.

C．Ordering through an online-only store.

D．Driving to shop in huge supermarkets.

4. How does Sadegh come to his conclusion?

A．By analyzing causes.	B．By listing theories.
C．By making comparison.	D．By giving examples.

6 . Commercial aviation (航空) alone contributes around three percent of total global carbon emissions (排放). But the industry is actively looking for green solutions in the form of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). In a study released this week, a team of researchers from the U. S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) details a method of transforming food waste into SAF that can be used in existing engines. Making SAF is a more complicated process—it’s got to be very similar to the petrol-based aviation fuel we use today in commercial flights.

The researchers use volatile fatty acids (挥发性脂肪酸)(VFAs) from smelly food waste and transform it into simple paraffin molecules (石蜡分子) that can be used in fuel and really aren’t all that chemically different from traditional emissions-heavy fuels. There are other renewable biofuels that have been made from biomass (生物质), specifically oil and fat from vegetables and animals, but using the ever-mounting pile of food waste to fuel flights broadens those possibilities.

Derek Vardon, a senior research engineer at NREL, says major companies are eager to get involved in SAF because some sustainable solutions, such as battery-operated commercial flights, just aren’t possible yet with current battery technology. A battery-powered plane would be too heavy to fly long distances—“So using SAF that works in the same way as the fuel we have is a simpler way to trade out traditional emissions-heavy fuels.” Vardon also says that “because the wet waste would normally go to a landfill and break down to release greenhouse gases, the process of making and using SAF could actually have a negative carbon footprint when it is dramatically used.”

A major question as the researchers move forward with this type of research is if it is possible to run an airplane engine on fully renewable biofuel. Rolls-Royce recently did a test on one of their engines with 100 percent SAF and it worked. “This fuel is not crazy and we can solve these problems,” Vardon says.

1. Which of the following is TRUE about SAF?

A．It can be used to reduce carbon emissions globally.

B．It’s less functional than the petrol-based aviation fuel.

C．It’s composed of VFAs and simple paraffin molecules.

D．It is virtually impossible to be made from biomass like oil and fat.

2. What is the focus of Vardon’s words in paragraph 3?

A．The benefits of food rubbish-generated SAF.	B．The environmental impacts of the wet waste.
C．The simple process of making and using SAF.	D．The future of battery-operated commercial flights.

3. What is the author’s purpose of referring to Rolls-Royce’s test in the last paragraph?

A．To promote its production.	B．To confirm the potential of SAF.
C．To show off its powerful airplane engines.	D．To express doubt about the research.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Natural emergence of renewable biofuels	B．Green alternative to emissions-heavy fuels
C．Unavoidable decline of commercial aviation	D．Gradual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions

9 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。请在答题卡指定区域作答。

The Sixth Extinction (灭绝)

Extinctions, where entire species are wiped out, are not unusual in our Earth’s history. In fact, over 90 percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct. In the last 500 million years, there have been five times when life on Earth has almost ended. These include the third mass extinction, known as the “Great Dying”, which killed 90% to 96% of all species. And the fifth event, which occurred 66 million years ago, caused the death of the dinosaurs. The reasons for extinctions are varied. According to scientists, they include volcanic eruptions, asteroids (小行星) hitting the Earth from space, changes in sea levels, the decrease of the oxygen content of the sea and global warming. Many scientists say we are now entering the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. This time, human activity will be to blame.

Although it is not unusual for species to die out naturally, the rate at which this is now happening is cause for concern. A 2015 study by scientists who were based at Brown University and Duke University in the US, looked at how quickly species die out due to natural causes, that is, the “background extinction rate”. They found that human activity is causing species to die out 1, 000 times faster than normal. There is a long list of reasons why so many species are dying out: air and water pollution, forests being destroyed, factory farming and overfishing. It is clear that human activity has negatively affected all other species on Earth, including animals and plants.

If a sixth mass extinction occurs, scientists who have studied the issue believe that up to three quarters of all species on Earth could die out. Of course, as we humans depend on so many species for our survival, we would also be at risk of dying out. Our world and our lives depend on the balance in nature between animals and plants. Without forests, we would have no air to breathe and without clean water we would be unable to survive.

Can a sixth extinction be avoided? Experts say that it is not yet too late, if we take action now. If we want to survive, we need to stop destroying the planet that we live on and start to protect it.

1. What are the reasons for extinction in the history?
2. Why does the writer believe we will probably die out if 3/4 of the Earth’s species die out?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
It is not unusual for species to die out naturally, so we human beings are not to blame.
4. What actions can we take to avoid the sixth extinction? (In about 40 words)