3 . It’s reported that about 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has disappeared during the past 50 years. Deforestation is not only threatening the millions of unique plant and animal species native to the Amazon River area, it’s affecting humans worldwide. When it comes to the protection of the Amazon, it’s hard for many people to relate because they don’t feel connected to the area. There are actually a lot of direct connections, no matter how far away we are.

A connection that affects everyone on the planet is climate (气候) change. Planting new trees in the forest is basically a way of removing CO₂ from the air. Rain forests have a carbon (碳) reduction nearly equal to half of what is in the air. About half of that is in the Amazon. Another case in point is a big snake called the bushmaster that lives in the Amazon. Today, millions of people use medicines made from its venom (毒液) to treat high blood pressure. So they have longer, fuller, and more productive lives.

In the 1960s, there was only one highway in the entire Amazon. That’s an area as large as the continental United States with one highway and three million people. Today, there are between 30 million to 40 million people, countless roads, and about 20 percent forests have been cut down. But on the plus side, 50 years ago there were only two national parks and a national forest and a reserve in Brazil. Today, more than 50 percent of the Amazon is under some form of protection.

“There’s been a lot of damage done and forest lost, but nothing is gone until it’s gone”, noted National Geographic explorer Dr. Thomas Lovejoy. “We want to see more shared planning between the departments of transportation, energy, agriculture, and the other industries in the area. We think Amazon cities can have higher quality of life and keep people in existing cities so there’s less reason to deforest.”

4 . Re-purposing diapers to make building materials would reduce the amount of garbage that goes to a landfill. It could also make homes more affordable. Maybe giving used diapers a new use could help tackle both problems.

Building material—especially those that are used for strengthening structures — are often expensive. They’re often the biggest hurdle to making homes affordable. So researchers have previously investigated unusual materials that could save costs. These materials included many that would otherwise pile up as waste, such as fly ash.

“There is a big need in developing countries such as the Southeast Asian nation, Indonesia. There, demand for low-cost housing outstrips what’s available. The number of people in Indonesia’s cities has climbed by about 4 percent per year in the last 30 years. By 2025, more than two-thirds of Indonesians are expected to live in urban areas. Indonesia’s population boom is intensifying the demand for housing,” says Siswanti Zuraida, an environmental engineer in Indonesia.

“Despite the need for more affordable housing, there are significant problems that stand in the way of adopting diapers,” Zuraida says. Used diapers contain wood pulp, cotton and plastic, which are potentially useful building materials. Diapers plastic components would have to be separated from the organic fibers, a complicated recycling process currently available only in developed nations. And Indonesia’s building regulations restrict together-materials to bricks, wood, steel and concrete (which is used to hold bricks together) — materials that also bear a high cost in terms of carbon emissions.

But reusing diapers might not be that environmentally friendly, especially on a large scale. “It’s tricky to separate dirty diapers from waste and disinfect them. So it would take a lot of energy to recycle diapers. It’s maybe worthwhile to start thinking about ways to replace single-use diapers with something less frequently thrown away,” says Christof Schrofl, a chemist who works at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany.

5 . According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), hundreds of marine (海洋的) species across the world come under endangered and critically endangered categories. Some of the endangered and recognizable marine species are named here.

Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle

The Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle, also known as the Atlantic Ridley Sea Turtle, is endangered as the rarest and smallest sea turtle.

Distributed throughout the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Atlantic seaboard, they gather off the coast in northeastern Mexico and come ashore in large groups to lay eggs every year. As marine reptiles (爬行动物), they are threatened by oil spills, lack of food and marine pollution.

Vaquita

As a rare marine mammal, Vaquita is on the edge of extinction only a half-century after its first sighting.

Extensive fishing in the Gulf of California has endangered this marine species, resulting in a gradual drop in population since the 1940s. According to reports, there are only a dozen of these marine mammals left in the world since the percentage of decline in their population was as much as 90% since 2011.

Whale

Fin Whale is the second-largest mammal on the planet after Blue Whale and it is also a victim of hunting. According to estimates, the global population of Fin Whale ranges from below 100,000 to around 119,000.

Humpback Whale, another whale species, has also been listed as an endangered marine species. Before the introduction of the whaling moratorium (暂停) in 1966, the species was hunted for its fur, while the population dropped by 90%. Currently, around 2,500 Humpback Whales survive in the world.

Hawaiian Monk Seal

A native of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian Monk Seal is one of the earless seals who live on warm beaches, unlike other seals.

According to recent research, only 1,400 Hawaiian Monk Seals remain on the Islands. These seals are mainly threatened by predators like tiger sharks. Besides, other reasons like habitat loss and food limitation also contribute to their critical situation.

7 . In a small tea shop located in Bisalpur, Uttar Pradesh, one can spot unique furniture like stools (凳子) and tables made of bricks and recycled plastic. Other than customers, tourists who come to visit the nearby Jawai Dam often stop by here to hand plastic waste over to the shopkeeper. Run by Kana Ram Mewada, the shop not only sells tea and snacks, but also leads a campaign to reduce the use of single-use plastic in the village.

According to a report of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2019—2020, 3. 5million metric tons (公吨) of plastic waste is annually generated in India, and will remain in landfills (垃圾填埋场) for the upcoming hundreds of years.

Kana was deeply disturbed after reading that report on the Internet and began thinking about ways to raise the villagers’ awareness and make his village free of plastic.

He started a campaign by collecting plastic waste from his own shop and roadside. Whenever customers came, he explained the campaign. In order to attract more people, he started giving something in return for the waste they brought. Sometimes, he purchased a few things made of recycled waste to show the villagers and told them they were created from their plastic waste contribution. He also made decorative items out of the waste and placed them around the shop.

As a result, people from the village became curious about his campaign. Even tourists began participating in the exchange. And today, the forest, rivers and public spaces that were once filled with plastic waste are cleaner than before.

He hopes that he can also help the neighboring villages recycle plastic waste and make the whole area plastic-free. “When an ordinary person like me decided to start a cause, it was inspiring that a whole village stood by me and supported me. We can all become torchbearers (启蒙者) for a better tomorrow. What we have to do is take a step forward,” he said.

8 . Scientists have determined that July 2023 was the hottest month on record and that the Earth’s average surface temperature is the highest it’s been in at least 120,000 years.

There’s no shortage of advice for people in hotter-than-normal regions. They can wear a sun hat or stay in the shade (阴凉处). And when all else fails, go inside and turn the air conditioning on.

But wild creatures can’t enjoy the cool air indoors. Many people assume that wild species must have some ways of dealing with these unusually high temperatures. However, most of them can’t. If their body temperatures go too high or too low, they will die. So in addition to finding food and avoiding enemies, every wild creature must continually engage in an ongoing exchange of energy with their environments to ensure survival.

Birds do this by getting out of the direct sun, sitting still, and breathing shallow breaths. In short, they do nothing but breathe in the shade. This behavior is usually successful because it enables most birds to survive most of the very hot days. But it wrecks their schedule. Many birds no longer have enough time in their days to find enough food to remain healthy, especially the extra food needed to raise their young.

It’s not only birds that are suffering from heat, nor is it only land species: animals in the ocean are also suffering. The largest analysis (分析) of coral reef (珊瑚礁) health found that 14% of the world’s coral reefs had been lost in the previous decade due to heat. Another recent study predicts (预测) that over 99% of coral reefs will experience heat that they cannot recover from if the global average temperature increases by just 1.5 degrees Celsius, which, unless we massively reduce our carbon emissions, is likely to happen in the next decades.

Heat is damaging ecosystems everywhere, and we’re just in the early stages of climate breakdown. Humans are highly adaptable. The vast majority of wild species, however, can’t simply pack up and go someplace else. By continuing to pollute the atmosphere, we’re damaging their worlds and pushing ever-greater numbers of them into extinction.

9 . Do you know cultivated meat? Typically, making this sort of meat starts with cells from domestic animals. The cells are grown in bioreactors full of nutrient-rich liquid, and then harvested, and eventually become products such as steak or chicken. In a homely kitchen of Eat Just, a startup, a slice of such meat was fried and then served with peppers. The first mouthful of it was extraordinary because the meat was grown in a lab, rather than on an animal. Meanwhile, it was also dull, because the texture, taste, look and smell of the meat was almost identical to that of chicken.

In June, Eat Just and Upside Foods became the first two companies to win regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat in America. A handful of other firms are trying to bring cultivated meat to market. But the hope is fading owing to continued high costs and troubles with mass production.

The UN reports meat and dairy production already accounts for 12% of humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions, Demand for meat is skyrocketing among the growing middle classes of Africa and Asia. Lab-grown meat could help meet that demand without the world breaking its carbon budget. By contrast, two-fifths of Americans claim to restrict their meat consumption either for ethical(伦理的) reasons or environmental ones. Lab-grown meat may seem less ethically worrisome than eating animals. And the early success of plant-based meat alternatives gave investors hope. Beyond Meat, one such firm, went public in 2019, and saw its value shoot to $14 billion.

Though lab-grown meat offers an alternative to farm-grown meat, questions have been raised about how climate-friendly it can be. A study published earlier this year found that in some circumstances cultivated meat could be more polluting than the conventional stuff because the bioreactor is in great need of power to control its temperature. Consequently, only if renewable energy is used in the production process will cultivated meat cut the carbon footprint of the meat industry.

Whether this effort can make lab-grown meat attractive and cheap enough to attract consumers remains to be seen.

10 . We breathe, eat and drink tiny particles of plastic. But are these in the body harmless. dangerous or somewhere in between? A small study published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine raises more questions than it answers about how these hits might affect the heart.

The study involved 257 people who had surgery to clear blocked blood vessels in their necks. Using two methods, researchers found evidence of plastics-mostly invisible nanoplastics — in 150 patients and no evidence of plastics in 107 patients. They followed these people for three years. During that time, 30 or 20% of those with plastics had a heart attack, stroke or died from any cause, compared to 8 or about 8% of those with no evidence of plastics.

The researchers also found more evidence of inflammation (炎症) in the people with the plastic bits in their blood vessels. Inflammation is the body’s response to injury and is thought to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

“I hope that the alarming message will raise the consciousness of citizens, especially governments, to finally become aware of the importance of the health of our planet.” said Dr. Raffaele Marfella of the University of Campania in Italy.

Nevertheless, the study was very small and looked only at people with narrowed arteries (动脉), who were already at risk for heart attack and stroke. The patients with the plastics had more heart disease, diabetes and high cholesterol (胆固醇) than the patients without plastics. They were more likely to be men and more likely to be smokers. The researchers tried to adjust for these risk factors during their statistical analysis, but they may have missed important differences between the groups that could account for the results. This kind of study cannot prove that the plastics caused their problems.

“More research is needed and it is the first report suggesting a connection between microplastics and nanoplastics with disease in humans,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan of Boston College. Other scientists have found plastic bits in the lungs, liver, blood, and breast milk, “It does not prove cause and effect, but it suggests cause and effect,” he said, “And it needs urgently to be either confirmed or disproven (反驳) by other studies done by other investigators in other populations.”