1 . A project in Gambia is empowering women and reducing dangerous waste at the same time.
The Waste Innovation Center, funded by the European Union’s Global Climate Change Alliance，shows women in the Brikama area how to recycle waste into useful materials and products, which they can then sell in local markets.
Wood-like waste is recycled into charcoal (木炭)，for example，which can be used to supersede firewood and reduce the number of trees that are cut down for firewood. Food waste is recycled into compost(混合肥料）to function as environmentally friendly fertilizers and plastic is turned into many useful things.
Supported by WasteAid UK and the Gambia Women’s Initiative (GWI), among others, the project provides women with skills they can use to become self-sufficient (自给自足的). Women learning at the center come from five communities, and some of them travel as far as 12 miles to learn these important skills that will provide them with an income, according to The Guardian.
Isatou Ceesay, who now leads the GWI，highlighted the need to focus on economic equality in her country, telling The Guardian, “In terms of education, women are the ones who are always behind. Boys are chosen to go to school. When we conduct our training, we find women can do a lot，but don’t know who they are, or how to implement (实施）things. ”
According to the World Health Organization’s Country Cooperation Strategy 2008—2013 report, the main environmental issue facing Gambia is poor waste management in urban areas.
Ndey Sireng Bakurin, executive director of the National Environment Agency, has voiced concern over health and environmental risks, such as water pollution, the increase of insects as well as flooding that occur as a result of poor waste management.
1. What does the Waste Innovation Center try to do?| A．Develop local markets in Brikama. |
| B．Teach women how to invent new things. |
| C．Keep women away from dangerous waste. |
| D．Help women in Brikama benefit from waste. |
| A．Replace. | B．Transform. |
| C．Burn. | D．Reserve. |
| A．don’t learn new things fast |
| B．aren’t interested in education |
| C．really hope for economic equality |
| D．are not fairly treated in the country |
| A．To summarize the previous paragraphs. |
| B．To provide some advice for the readers. |
| C．To add some background information. |
| D．To introduce a new topic for discussion. |
2 . Tiny microbes(微生物) are at the heart of a new agricultural technique to manage harmful greenhouse gas. Scientists have discovered how microbes can be used to turn carbon dioxide into soil-enriching limestone(石灰石), with the help of a type of tree that grows in tropical areas, such as West Africa.
Researchers have found that when the Iroko tree is grown in dry, acidic soil and treated with a combination of natural fungi(霉菌) and other bacteria, not only does the tree grow well, it also produces the mineral limestone in the soil around its root.
The Iroko tree makes a mineral by combining Ca from the earth with CO2 from the atmosphere. The bacteria then create the conditions under which this mineral turns into limestone. The discovery offers a new way to lock carbon into the soil, keeping it out of the atmosphere. In addition to storing carbon in the trees’ leaves and in the form of limestone, the mineral in the soil makes it more suitable for agriculture.
The discovery could lead to reforestation(重新造林) projects in tropical countries, and help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the developing world. It has already been used in West Africa and is being tested in Bolivia, Haiti and India.
The findings were made in a three-year project involving researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Granada, Lausanne and Delft University of Technology. The project examined several microbiological methods of locking CO2 as limestone, and the Iroko-bacteria way showed best results. Work was funded by the European Commission under the Future&Emerging Technologies(FET) scheme.
Dr Bryne Ngwenya of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the research, said:“By taking advantage of this natural limestone-producing process, we have a low-tech, safe, readily employed and easily operating way to lock carbon out of the atmosphere, while improving farming conditions in tropical countries.”
1. The passage is mainly introducing ________.| A．some useful natural fungi and bacteria |
| B．a new way to deal with greenhouse gas |
| C．a newly-found tree in West Africa |
| D．the soil-enriching limestone created by scientists |
| A．Most tiny microbes like living in dry, acidic soil. |
| B．CO2 can be broken down by natural fungi and bacteria. |
| C．The more greenhouse gas is, the more active tiny microbes become. |
| D．Tiny microbes get along well with the Iroko tree in special soil. |
| A．Carbon dioxide. |
| B．Carbon. |
| C．Soil. |
| D．Limestone. |
| A．The action of the tiny microbes can increase the oxygen in the earth. |
| B．Researchers have done the experiment on trees in Africa for three years. |
| C．Researchers tend to use natural power to solve their problem. |
| D．West Africa is one of the most polluted areas all over the world. |
| A．can be used to improve the farming land |
| B．can save a lot of seriously destroyed woods |
| C．has been popularized in Bolivia, Haiti and India |
| D．should be spread all around the world in the future |
3 . We may think we're a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices(装置) well after they go out of style. That’s bad news for the environment — and our wallets — as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.
To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life — from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation — Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.
As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn't throw out our old ones. "The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids' room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house," said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We're not just keeping these old devices — we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt's team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions（排放）more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.
So what's the solution（解决方案）? The team's data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.
1. What does the author think of new devices?| A．They are environment-friendly. | B．They are no better than the old. |
| C．They cost more to use at home. | D．They go out of style quickly. |
| A．To reduce the cost of minerals. |
| B．To test the life cycle of a product. |
| C．To update consumers on new technology. |
| D．To find out electricity consumption of the devices. |
| A．The box-set TV. | B．The tablet. |
| C．The LCD TV. | D．The desktop computer. |
| A．Stop using them. | B．Take them apart. |
| C．Upgrade them. | D．Recycle them. |
4 . Old problem，new approaches
While clean energy is increasingly used in our daily life，global warming will continue for some decades after CO2 emissions (排放) peak. So even if emissions were to begin to decrease today，we would still face the challenge of adapting to climate change. Here I will stress some smarter and more creative examples of climate adaptation.
When it comes to adaptation，it is important to understand that climate change is a process. We are therefore not talking about adapting to a new standard，but to a constantly shifting set of conditions. This is why, in part at least，the US National Climate Assessment says that：“There is no ‘onesize fits all’ adaptation.” Nevertheless，there are some actions that offer much and carry little risk or cost.
Around the world, people are adapting in surprising ways，especially in some poor countries. Floods have become more damaging in Bangladesh in recent decades. Mohammed Rezwan saw opportunity where others saw only disaster. His notforprofit organization runs 100 river boats that serve as floating libraries，schools，and health clinics，and are equipped with solar panels and other communicating facilities. Rezwan is creating floating connectivity(连接) to replace flooded roads and highways. But he is also working at a far more fundamental level：his staff show people how to make floating gardens and fish ponds to prevent starvation during the wet season.
Elsewhere in Asia even more astonishing actions are being taken. Chewang Norphel lives in a mountainous region in India, where he is known as the Ice Man. The loss of glaciers (冰川) there due to global warming represents an enormous threat to agriculture. Without the glaciers, water will arrive in the rivers at times when it can damage crops. Norphel's inspiration came from seeing the waste of water over winter, when it was not needed. He directed the wasted water into shallow basins where it froze, and was stored until the spring. His fields of ice supply perfectly timed irrigation(灌溉) water. Having created nine such ice reserves, Norphel calculates that he has stored about 200，000m3 of water. Climate change is a continuing process, so Norphel's ice reserves will not last forever. Warming will overtake them. But he is providing a few years during which the farmers will, perhaps, be able to find other means of adapting.
Increasing Earth's reflectiveness can cool the planet. In southern Spain the sudden increase of greenhouses (which reflect light back to space) has changed the warming trend locally, and actually cooled the region. While Spain as a whole is heating up quickly, temperatures near the greenhouses have decreased. This example should act as an inspiration for all cities. By painting buildings white, cities may slow down the warming process.
In Peru, local farmers around a mountain with a glacier that has already fallen victim to climate change have begun painting the entire mountain peak white in the hope that the added reflectiveness will restore the lifegiving ice. The outcome is still far from clear. But the World Bank has included the project on its list of “100 ideas to save the planet”．
More ordinary forms of adaptation are happening everywhere. A friend of mine owns an area of land in western Victoria. Over five generations the land has been too wet for cropping. But during the past decade declining rainfall has allowed him to plant highly profitable crops. Farmers in many countries are also adapting like this—either by growing new produce, or by growing the same things differently. This is common sense. But some suggestions for adapting are not. When the polluting industries argue that we've lost the battle to control carbon pollution and have no choice but to adapt, it's a nonsense designed to make the case for business as usual.
Human beings will continue to adapt to the changing climate in both ordinary and astonishing ways. But the most sensible form of adaptation is surely to adapt our energy systems to emit less carbon pollution. After all, if we adapt in that way, we may avoid the need to change in so many others.
1. The underlined part in Paragraph 2 implies ________．| A．adaptation is an everchanging process |
| B．the cost of adaptation varies with time |
| C．global warming affects adaptation forms |
| D．adaptation to climate change is challenging |
| A．The project receives government support. |
| B．Different organizations work with each other. |
| C．His organization makes the best of a bad situation. |
| D．The project connects flooded roads and highways. |
| A．Storing ice for future use. |
| B．Protecting the glaciers from melting. |
| C．Changing the irrigation time. |
| D．Postponing the melting of the glaciers. |
| A．White paint is usually safe for buildings. |
| B．The global warming trend cannot be stopped. |
| C．This country is heating up too quickly. |
| D．Sunlight reflection may relieve global warming. |
| A．adapt to carbon pollution |
| B．plant highly profitable crops |
| C．leave carbon emission alone |
| D．fight against carbon pollution |
| A．Setting up a new standard. |
| B．Reducing carbon emission. |
| C．Adapting to climate change. |
| D．Monitoring polluting industries. |
