2 . Leading a sustainable(不破坏环境的)lifestyle doesn’t require you to have to make great changes to your home, and this kind of transformation doesn’t have to be an exhausting exercise.     1     Here are three of them.

    2     By using solar energy, you will make your home far more sustainable. So long as there is the sun in the sky, the solar panels atop your house will catch the rays and then transform them into electricity.

Make changes to your water drinking habits. Have you ever thought about how many single-use plastic bottles you use a year? If you should ever perform such a count, you’d find yourself well into three figures, or maybe even four.     3     To be truly sustainable, you have to change your water drinking habits.

    4     More often than not, these types of straws are used only once before being got rid of and taking up valuable landfill space.

Reduce your transport emission. If you want to be a more sustainable traveler, you should seek to reduce the carbon emissions you produce by avoiding driving. Of course, avoiding motor vehicles entirely isn’t always going to be a practical choice for you. There’re, however, still things you can do to be more sustainable.     5    

You have the power to make a sustainable change to your lifestyle—take the above advice and don’t waste it

3 . On a sunny afternoon, Andreas Fath climbed out of a river in Paducah. A small crowd was on hand to witness his setting a new world record. This man had just finished swimming the entire length of the Tennessee River—1,049 kilometers. And he did it in just 34 days!

As a chemist from Hochshule Furtwangen University, the 52-year-old man had taken on this swim for science. His primary goal was not to get his name into Guinness World Records. What really drove this swim was a desire to make people aware of the seriousness of water pollution.

Fath’s crew included his family. Martin Knoll, who helped organize Fath’s swim, also took par t. Knoll is an environmental scientist at the University of the South. He describes this swim as a vehicle for getting people interested in water quality and how we pollute water without realizing it.

It took Fath 34 days to swim the river’s length. Along the way, his crew took measurements of the water’s temperature and pH. They also recorded weather and the speed of the river’s currents (涌流). As for the Tennessee River, they collected daily water samples. A small plastic device attached to one leg of Fath’s wet suit sampled the chemical pollutants (污染物) through which he swam. Finally, Fath’s goal is to use such data to know what on earth results in water pollution. Then he wants to find ways to keep those chemicals out of the water.

Back in Germany, Fath and his students have finished examining their data. They plan to publish their findings soon. Identifying materials that hide in the river isn’t only important for the animals that live there. “It’s also a way to protect human health,” says Fath.

5 . Nearly 40 years ago, Peter Harrison, a marine ecologist witnessed the first recorded large-scale coral bleaching（珊瑚白化）event. Diving in the Great Barrier Reef（大堡礁）, he was shocked by the scene before him. "The reef was made up of healthy corals and badly bleached white corals, like the beginnings of a ghost city," he says. Just months before, the same site was filled with colorful tropical life.

"Many of the hundreds of corals that I'd carefully tagged and monitored finally died," he says. "It was shocking and made me aware of just how weak these corals really are.”

Coral exists together with photosynthetic algae（藻类）, which live in its tissues and provide essential nutrition（and coloration）. But high temperatures and other stresses can turn algae poisonous. When this occurs, the algae may die or be removed by the coral, a process known as bleaching because the coral's clear tissue and white calcium carbonate skeleton（碳酸钙骨骼）are exposed. If the coral can't reestablish its link with algae, it will starve or become ill.

The widespread destruction Harrison saw in 1982 was repeated on many other Pacific Ocean reefs that year and the next. In 1997 and 1998 the phenomenon went global, killing some 16 percent of the world's corals. With rising temperatures, pollution, disease, increased ocean acidity, invasive species, and other dangers, Harrison's ghost cities are expanding

Scientists suppose that about four decades ago severe bleaching occurred roughly every 25 years, giving corals time to recover. But bleaching events are coming faster now—about every six years—and in some places soon they could begin to happen annually.

"The absolute key is dealing with global warming," says marine biologist Terry Hughes. "No matter how much we clean up the water, the reefs will die." In 2016, a record-hot year in a string of them, 91 percent of the reefs that consist of the Great Barrier Reef bleached.

Over the last 200 years, humans have become the dominant species on earth. As a result, the natural world     1    （suffer）greatly. Today, almost half of the planet’s land is used for agriculture and food     2     （produce）, forcing our wide spaces into dramatic retreat(消退). The global rate of extinction is     3     （high）than it’s ever been, while the climate crisis continues to speed up.

Therefore, many environmentalists are turning to “rewilding”,     4     is aimed at saving our disappearing biodiversity. So, what     5     （exact）is rewilding? In theory, the concept is simple: restore(修复)land,     6     let nature take back control. Currently, there are hundreds of rewilding projects taking place across Europe,     7     （spread）from the UK all the way down to the eastern Balkans.

For these projects to succeed, they need     8     special sort of person——highly skilled, and fiercely passionate individuals, or groups, willing to devote     9     （they）to the restoration of the wild. Because humans are responsible     10     the terrible state of the natural world, only significant human effort will make positive changes to the damage done.