2 . Trees are symbols of hope, life and transformation. They are also increasingly labeled as a straightforward, relatively inexpensive, and best solution to climate change. Lately, society has been putting a lot of pressure on trees to get the whole world out of the climate change emergency. Accordingly, enthusiasm is worldwide popular among governments, businesses and individuals for ambitious projects to plant billions, even a trillion more, so as to help cut current emission (排放).

“Trees are having a bit of a moment right now,” says Joe Fargione, an ecologist with The Nature Conservancy based in Minneapolis. “There’s no anti-tree lobby. Trees have lots of benefits for people. Not only do they store carbon, they help provide clean air, prevent soil erosion, shade and shelter homes to reduce energy costs and give people a sense of well-being.”

Yet, as global eagerness for adding more trees grows, some scientists are urging caution. Before moving forward, they say, such massive tree projects must address a range of scientific, social and economic concerns. Poorly designed projects that don’t address these issues could do more harm than good, the researchers say, wasting money as well as public goodwill. “There’s a real feeling that forests and trees are just the idea we can use to get some unspeakable support for many, perhaps more complicated, types of landscape restoration initiatives”, says ecologist Joseph Veldmanan.

The concerns are myriad: There’s too much focus on numbers of seedlings planted, and too little time spent on how to keep the trees alive in the long term, or in working with local communities. And there’s not enough emphasis on how different types of forests store very different amounts of carbon. There’s too much talk about trees, and not enough about other carbon-storing ecosystems. And over the last decade, a diverse garden of tree-centric proposal has spread across the globe. That can lead to all kinds of problems, Joseph adds. “For me, the devil is in the details.”

1. According to Paragraph 1, what is the global fever?

A．Getting rid of the air pressure of the earth.

B．Launching environment-based movements.

C．Spending more time on global tree projects.

D．Planting more trees to handle climate change.

2. What can be inferred from Paragraph 3?

A．Tree-planting projects might be wrongly used.

B．There’s no scientific basis for planting programs.

C．Growing mere trees is just a waste of money.

D．Public goodwill is surely abused to a certain degree.

3. What does the underlined word “myriad" in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Unique.

B．Precise.

C．Many.

D．Reliable.

4. How does the author like the tree-based idea to solve climate change?

A．Positive.

B．Doubtful.

C．Neutral.

D．Unclear.

3 . Songs of Disappearance is a 24-minute album of endangered birdcalls recorded by Australia’s best wildlife sound recordist, David Stewart. It sold over 2,000 copies and shows the love of Australians who want to help their native species — with all proceeds (收益) going to conservation of our feathered friends.

Its genesis came when Stephen Garnett, a conservation professor at Charles Darwin University, finished the2020 Action Plan for Australian Birds, a set of recommendations that found 1 in 6 native species are threatened with extinction. He had a conversation with his Ph.D. student Anthony Albrecht, a classical cellist (大提琴手) and one-half of a two-person multimedia company called the Bowerbird Collective.

Albrecht asked his advisor if there was anything Bowerbird Collective could do to make people aware of the action plan. That was when they discussed the idea of an album. “I knew it was an ambitious thing to suggest and — I don’t know — Stephen’s a little bit crazy like me, and he said, let's do this,” Albrecht tells NPR. The other half of Bowerbird, the violinist Simone Slattery, arranged a musical collage (拼贴) of all 53 birds on the record, while the remaining tracks are each bird’s individual songs recorded by Stewart.

“We did it! Thanks to your incredible support we reached Number 3 in the ARIA charts, ahead of Taylor Swift, ABBA, Mariah Carey and Michael Buble,” the organizers wrote on their website, noting the Christmas-time bump given to the latter.

All proceeds of the album were donated to BirdLife Australia, which helped in production.

Some of the singing comes from birds that are Critically-Endangered, and one bird, the Night Parrot, wasn’t even known to science until 2013. “The golden bowerbird sounds like a death ray from some cheesy 70s sci-fi series,” says Sean Dooley, the national public affairs manager at BirdLife Australia.

1. What does the underlined word “genesis” in paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Conversation.

B．Change.

C．Record.

D．Beginning

2. Who is good at playing the violin?

A．David Stewart.

B．Anthony Albrecht.

C．Simone Slattery.

D．Sean Dooley.

3. Why did the organizers mention Taylor Swift in paragraph 4?

A．To state the popularity of the album.

B．To compare different musical styles.

C．To stress the influence of the album.

D．To show Taylor Swift’s love for the album.

4. What was the money from album sales used to do?

A．To record a new album.

B．To preserve endangered birds.

C．To donate to charity organizations.

D．To expand the multimedia company.

4 . 世界环境日（6月5日）即将到来，为了提升你校学生对环境问题的认识与态度，学校英语社团将举办关于爱护环境的征文比赛，请你以“爱护环境从身边做起”为题写一篇英语稿件参赛，内容如下：1. 介绍世界环境日；2. 保护环境的行为；3. 建设最美校园。
要求：1. 词数80左右；
2. 适当增加内容，以使行文顺畅。

Caring for the Environment Starts from Ourselves

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