1 . Most of the efforts aimed at reducing climate change focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels (矿物燃料). But a new study warns that pollution caused by the world’s food production system is also a major driver of rising temperatures on the planet. The study found that if the world food system stays on its current growth path, it will produce nearly 1.4 trillion metric tons of greenhouse gases over the next 80 years.
That pollution is expected to come from fertilizers used in agriculture, mismanaged soil and food waste. Other causes include landclearing operations and deforestation (森林采伐). Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Oxford in Britain led the study, which recently appeared in the publication Science.
The researchers predict that even if fossil fuel emissions (排放) were stopped now, emissions from the world food system would make it impossible to reach current international climate change targets. They say that emissions from food production alone could push world temperatures past 1.5 degrees Celsius by the middle of this century and above 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. A main goal of the 2015 United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change is to keep rises in the Earth’s temperature during this century to between 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. The U. N. has said that in order to stay below the 1.5 Celsius level, emissions must fall at least 7.6 percent each year through 2030.
The new study calls for immediate “improvements in farming practices, as well as changes in what we eat and how much food we waste,” to help reach the Paris Agreement goals. Jason Hill is a professor of biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota. He helped lead the study. He said in a statement that the research clearly shows that food has a much greater effect on climate change than is widely known.
1. What’s the finding of the new study?| A．Fossil fuels are overused. |
| B．The use of fossil fuels causes climate change. |
| C．The use of fossil fuels is a major driver of rising temperatures. |
| D．The world’s food production system leads to rising temperatures. |
①Fertilizers ②Food waste ③Landclearing operations ④Mismanaged soil
| A．①② | B．①③ | C．①②④ | D．①②③④ |
| A．Changing what we eat is important for our health. |
| B．It’s hard to reach international climate change targets. |
| C．Farming practices contribute to food waste. |
| D．Food has a much bigger impact on the environment than we expected. |
| A．Climate change mainly results from fossil fuels. |
| B．World food production has effects on climate change. |
| C．It’s of great Importance to reduce world food production. |
| D．Several ways are taken to reduce environmental pollution. |
2 . Johan Ernst Nilson is an explorer. His 32 expeditions in 100 countries include biking from northern Europe to Africa, hiking across Alaska and climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. This summer, Nilson completed his most challenging journey the Pole to Pole Expedition. He travelled about 21,750 miles through 17 countries, from the North Pole to the South Pole. “I go to remote areas where no person has ever set foot,” Nilson told TFK.
Nilson walked, sailed, skied, biked, and took a dogsled. Known as the “environmental explorer”, Nilson used forms of transportation that are not harmful to the environment. Nilson hopes the expedition, which will be featured in a movie and a book, both due out this winter, will inspire others to protect the planet.
It took Nilson about 18 months to complete the expedition. He faced dangerous situations, just as the early polar explorers did. He travelled through hurricanes. He endured extreme heat and cold. He fell through ice. He suffered cracked ribs and frostbite(冻伤). He was even chased by bears.
Eating properly was a constant challenge. The explorer, who covered about 60 miles a day, ate a variety of foods, such as fruit, meat, fish and vegetables. At one point, Nilson ran out of food. He wrote on his blog: “The North Pole is a different story. On an expedition on the ice, you have to eat anything you can find.”
In spite of the many challenges, Nilson insists that the expedition was well worth it. He was able to visit with groups such as UNICEF and the American Red Cross, to take part in the work that they do to help people all over the world. He is hopeful that his adventure will inspire others to take action to protect the planet.
Nilson says his big expedition days are now over, but he will continue to explore in other ways. “Exploration is reaching for the unknown, learning how to play the piano, learning a new language,” he says. Are you an explorer, too?
1. What does Nilson do besides expeditions?| A．He likes playing the piano. | B．He helps those who need help. |
| C．He likes learning foreign languages. | D．He likes visiting people. |
| A．become famous | B．attract people’s attention |
| C．inspire people to explore | D．protect the environment |
| A．Nilson suffered a lot and was in great danger. | B．Nilson liked travelling through hurricanes. |
| C．Nilson stood extreme heat and cold. | D．Nilson suffered freezing. |
3 . Chemists have spent the past century trying to make plastics break down in seawater. Most plastics take centuries to fully break down in the ocean.
Timo Rhein Berger is a PhD student at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
When the researchers weakened 15% of PLA’s monomer links, the PLA broke down entirely within just two weeks. When they weakened only 3% of the links, the breakdown took about two years.
| A．Plastics are useful. |
| B．Scientists created the now-popular plastic in the1930s. |
| C．So researchers have much confidence in their efforts. |
| D．That’s why plastics make up 80% of ocean trash. |
| E．His work has focused on speeding PLA’s breakdown. |
| F．This means the team can design how quickly PLA breaks down in seawater. |
| G．The more breaking points researchers added, the faster the PLA broke down. |
4 . Desertification, the process by which fertile (肥沃的) land becomes desert, has severe impacts on food production and is worsened by climate change.
Africa’s Great Green Wall is a project to build an 8,000- kilometre-long forest across 11 of the continent s countries. The project is meant to contain the growing Sahara Desert and fight climate change.
First proposed in 2005, the project aims to plant a forest from Senegal on the Atlantic Ocean in western Africa to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti in the east.
| A．But the project faces many problems. |
| B．That is only 4 percent of the programme’s goal. |
| C．However, it is difficult to work on the Great Green Wall. |
| D．A quarter of Africa is under threat of food shortage. |
| E．Some progress has been made in recent years in the east of the continent. |
| F．Supporters hope that the project will create millions of green jobs in rural Africa. |
| G．The U.N. says up to 45 percent of Africa’s land is impacted by desertification, worse than any other continent. |
5 . Heavy traffic doesn’t stop big mammals like bears from crossing highways — nor does it keep smaller creatures from being squished (压扁) by cars. In just two years along one highway in Utah, more than 100 animals were killed in traffic accidents. In the United States, there are 21 endangered species whose survival is threatened by traffic accidents.
However, there’s one way to reduce crashes between cars and animals crossing the road: wildlife under and overpasses. Looking much like a regular overpass for cars, but decorated with native plants, they aren’t particularly noticeable unless you know what you’re looking for. The drivers may not be able to see the under crossings. But they’re helping countless species to pass the highways, from gold monkeys in Brazil to water voles in London.
Washington State is one of the latest to join in. Building its first wildlife bridge began in 2015 over Interstate 90(1-90), which runs from Seattle to Boston. Though it’s just a bare set of arches now, with native plants to be planted next year, deer and wolves are already using it. Along with six underpasses built since 2013, these crossings are the first in a set of 20 along a 15-mile stretch of highway on I-90. These passes will allow black bears and mountain lions to pass through what was once an impenetrable road.
These wildlife crossings aren’t just about saving individual animals —they’re about species survival, too. I-90 is an economically important east-west lifeline in the state. But many of the animals mostly want to move from north to south. Those animals on the south of the highway got trapped in an island. Inbreeding (近亲繁殖) became a potential problem. Localized extinction happens if they don’t have genetic variability (变化). The Snoqualmie overpass helps reconnect these isolated (隔绝的) populations. I-90’s underpasses are important in connecting waterways and species.
1. Why does the author talk about the heavy traffic in Paragraph 1?| A．To show the results of wildlife protection. |
| B．To indicate its serious threat of over speeding. |
| C．To raise people’s awareness of the behavior of wildlife. |
| D．To introduce the following way to protect wild animals. |
| A．Letting drivers see highways. | B．Building highway crossing for animals. |
| C．Decorating busy roads with native plants. | D．Noticing under and overpasses while driving. |
| A．Unavoidable. | B．Untouchable. | C．Undesirable. | D．Uncrossable. |
| A．Isolated Wildlife: A Potential Problem |
| B．Highway Accidents: A Killer of Wild Animals |
| C．Wildlife Bridges: A Solution to Wildlife Protection |
| D．Wildlife Crossing: A Regular Overpass for Wildlife |
6 . Human activities have caused severe narrowness in over half of the world’s largest lakes in the past 30 years, causing risks to health, economies, and the environment, according to a study in the journal Science. The global decline in water storage equals to 17 times the capacity of Lake Mead, the largest lake in the U.S. Overuse of water for agriculture, development, and human-caused climate change are the main factors driving the decline, particularly in natural lakes. The accumulation of dirt and sand behind dams also contributes to the fall of water levels in lakes.
The findings showed “significant declines,” stated Fangfang Yao, the lead author of the study. “Roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in a basin with a drying lake,” Yao said. “So the potential impact could be significant.”
At least half of the decline in natural lakes was driven by human-caused climate change and overconsumption, which should remind water managers to improve protection and water efficiency, according to Yao. “If you know a lake is falling and that loss resulted from human activities, can we attach more importance to protection and improving water efficiency?” she said.
A climate change-driven drought and an ever-growing human thirst have continued to consume the two largest lakes in the U.S. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which the Colorado River feeds. Lake Chad, one of Africa’s largest freshwater lakes which supplies nearly 40 million people with water, has shrunk (收缩) by an estimated 90% since the 1960s.
The United Nations regards access to safe drinking water as a universal human right, yet around 2 billion people lack access to it, and half of the global population experiences severe water shortage annually.
“Uncertainties are increasing,” said Richard Connor, the editor-in-chief of a U.N. water report published earlier this year at a press conference in late March, where world leaders met to try and find better strategies for managing the planet’s rare freshwater. “If we don’t address it, there will definitely be a global disaster.”
1. What can we learn about lakes from paragraph 1?| A．They are being developed. | B．They are becoming smaller. |
| C．They are causing climate change. | D．They are damaged by human activities. |
| A．Severe environmental problems. | B．Ever-increasing world’s population. |
| C．Climate change and overuse of water. | D．Drought and an ever-growing human thirst. |
| A．Unique. | B．Normal. | C．Particular. | D．Common. |
| A．To warn people to save water. | B．To call on people to protect the environment. |
| C．To tell people water shortage in the world. | D．To find better ways of managing freshwater. |
7 . “It is necessary for us to go to places that still look like the ocean as it was 500 years ago,” says Enric Sala, former professor at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. However, in most parts of the world, marine conservation is stymied by opposition from fishing, oil, and mining interests. A mere 7 percent of the world’s ocean has protection—mostly weak rules, and only 2.5 percent is highly protected. Outside of these zones, the ocean’s story is a continuing failure.
A few remaining parts of the ocean are the last wild places of the sea—the marine equivalent of the remotest old-growth forest in the Amazon—still unaffected by overfishing, pollution and climate change. Enric is working with the National Geographic Society and together launched the Pristine Seas project in 2008. Over the past 14 years, Pristine Seas has helped create 28 marine reserves, making up two-thirds of the world’s fully protected marine areas—covering more than two million square miles in all.
Now Sala and his team have set an even more ambitious goal: to see more than a third of the world’s ocean conserved for the purpose not just of sustaining biodiversity but also of replenishing(补充)fish stocks and storing carbon.
Pristine Seas worked with native Palauans(帕劳人)to give an ancient conservation tradition a modern change. For centuries, Palauans have used what they all “buls”, a Palauan word which means closure, to preserve and rebuild their reef fish stocks. Over the years they have created 35 reserves to protect marine life around their islands, some of which ban fishing permanently.
Sala and his team calculate that a 14-fold expansion of the fully protected part of the ocean, from 2.5 percent to 35 percent, would provide 64 percent of the biodiversity benefits while increasing the global fish catch by almost 10 million metric tons. Even that may sound impossible, but the alternative is awful. For now, we still get to choose.
1. What does the underlined word “stymied” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Frustrated. | B．Supported. |
| C．Accelerated. | D．Overestimated. |
| A．Protecting the ocean influences mining most. |
| B．Ocean protection has achieved great progress. |
| C．Few oceans have been properly protected so far. |
| D．Current rules have been enough for ocean protection. |
| A．It has protected two-thirds of the world’s ocean. |
| B．It sets unrealistic goals when protecting the ocean. |
| C．It asks to prohibit fishing in the 35 created reserves. |
| D．It has made some advances in maintaining biodiversity. |
| A．www.newsflash.com. |
| B．www.worldissues.com. |
| C．www.scienceforkds.com. |
| D．www.eco-conservation.com. |
8 . How to go for a greener drive
Buying green things can produce great benefits and so can small changes in your driving behavior.
Avoid aggressive driving. A sudden start and aggressive driving can waste your gas.
Pay attention at the gas station. Don’t overfill your gas tank or try to top the oil up because spilled gas changes into the mixture of fog and smoke and can pollute groundwater. When you finish filling the car up, be sure to tighten your gas cap.
Park smartly. Parking your car in the shade not only helps you avoid feeling very hot in your car, but helps minimize evaporation(蒸发) of fuel.
| A．Slow down. |
| B．Change the oil. |
| C．Leave your car at home. |
| D．And this type of driving behavior adds to pollution. |
| E．In this way you can save as much as 30 gallons a year. |
| F．The following advice can help you save gas and contribute to the well-being of our planet. |
| G．Parking in your garage when possible to cut down on summer heat and keep off frost in the winter. |
9 . For every goal that Lesein Mutunkei scores, trees get planted. It’s a simple yet effective message that appeals, and leads to a satisfying way of motivating us to promote environmentalism in our own way.
Born in Nairobi, Lesein is in his late teens, and his Trees4Goals is the means with which he intends to make the world greener. It unites two of his passions in life: love of the outdoors and love of football. Lesein enjoyed walking in the forest. He recognised his country was experiencing a serious loss of tree cover. Between 2001 and 2020, Kenya lost an estimated 11% of trees, releasing 176 million tons of CO2.
In a blog post for WWF Kenya, Lesein revealed that, once he started the Trees4Goals initiative, he originally planned to plant one tree per goal. In 2020, he wanted to take his efforts even further. What started as one tree planted per goal mushroomed into 11 trees planted per goal. Explaining the reason behind expanding the tree-planting, he said, “It represents team efforts in football and the contribution by my team. I have planted over 1,000 trees in the last two years.”
While it’s something of an own goal to destroy the forests and jungles providing enormous biodiversity, initiatives like Trees4Goals are an assured way to score an environmentalist hat-trick. Sports such as football are popular with the booming Kenyan population and have the ability to cut through cultural barriers regardless of the countries they are played in. Sports have the power to unify and excite large audiences. Lesein Mutunkei has taken this strategy and scored a winning goal of his own.
Like a seed, best ideas start small and change into something that can become far larger than anticipated. While Lesein continues planting 11 trees per goal, the Kenyan government is aiming to plant 1.8 billion trees to reach a point where 10 per cent of the country is covered by trees. The science behind is clear; a report in 2019 claimed that if 900 million hectares were devoted to additional tree planting of half a trillion trees, the world could offset (抵消) half of all carbon emissions produced since 1960.
1. What gave Lesein the idea of launching the project?| A．Release of too much CO2. | B．His dream of motivating others. |
| C．His passion for sports and nature. | D．Habit of exercising in the woods. |
| A．He created a blog for WWF. | B．He set a higher aim. |
| C．He planted one tree for each goal. | D．He extended his work to other teams. |
| A．The aim that is intended to achieve. | B．Action that harms one’s own interests. |
| C．Pursuit of one’s personal success. | D．The goal that is scored for the opposing team. |
| A．United, we win. | B．No pains, no gains. |
| C．Love me, love my dog. | D．Small deeds, big difference. |
10 . The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on Earth, is of great importance to African ecosystem(生态系统). Unlike other animals, the African elephant is to a great extent the builder of its environment.As a big plant-eater,it largely shapes the forest-and-savanna(稀树草原) surroundings in which it lives, therefore setting the terms of existence for millions of other animals that live in its habitat.
It is the elephant’s great desire for food that makes it a disturber of the environment and an important builder of its habitat. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbrushes, and pulls branches off big trees. This results in numerous open spaces in both deep tropical forests and in the woodlands that cover part of the African savannas. In these open spaces are numerous plants in various stages of growth that attract a variety of other plant-eaters.
Take the rain forests for example. In their natural state, the spreading branches overhead shut out sunlight and prevent the growth of plants on the forest floor. By pulling down trees and eating plants, elephants make open spaces, allowing new plants to grow on the forest floor. In such situations, the forests become suitable for large hoofed plant-eaters to move around and for small plant-eaters to get their food as well.
What worries scientists now is that the African elephant has become an endangered species. If the elephant disappears, scientists say, many other animals will also disappear from vast areas of forest and savanna, greatly changing and worsening the whole ecosystem.
1. What is the passage mainly about?| A．Disappearance of African elephants. |
| B．Forests and savannas as habitats for African elephants. |
| C．The effect of African elephants’ search for food. |
| D．The eating habit of African elephants. |
| A．Fixing the time. |
| B．Worsening the state. |
| C．Improving the quality. |
| D．Deciding the conditions. |
| A．They result from the destruction of rain forests. |
| B．They provide food mainly for African elephants. |
| C．They are home to many endangered animals. |
| D．They are attractive to plant-eating animals of different kinds. |
| A．The African elephant is the largest animal on Earth. |
| B．African elephants have 300 pounds of plants every day, including small trees and underbrushes. |
| C．The African elephant is in a way the builder of the environment like other land animals. |
| D．If the African elephant disappears, the whole ecosystem won’t be affected. |
