A.The pollution in the air. |
B.Smoke coming from the school. |
C.Measures taken by the school. |
A.The sea is getting smaller. |
B.The sea is being polluted. |
C.The sea is getting cleaner. |
3 . Plastic, once seen as a revolutionary material for its wide application and convenience, has become a global environmental crisis because it is non-biodegradable. The ubiquity (无处不在) of plastic in our daily lives has led to an increasing amount of plastic waste, causing great harm.
One of the most alarming examples of this crisis is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating mass of plastic waste in the North Pacific Ocean. It is estimated to be twice the size of Texas and consists of everything from microplastics to abandoned fishing nets. Marine life often mistakes plastic particles for food, leading to ingestion and death. Additionally, the chemicals used in plastic production can pollute water and soil, and finally threaten marine ecosystems.
Plastic waste is not limited to the oceans; it also impacts the land. Landfills overflow with plastic waste, emitting (排放) harmful greenhouse gases as plastics break down slowly over time. The production of plastics is highly energy-intensive and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbating climate change. Furthermore, plastic litter is evident in urban and rural landscapes, destroying the natural beauty of our planet.
Beyond its environmental impact, plastic poses serious health risks to humans. Many plastics contain harmful chemicals, which can be found in food and drinks when plastic containers are used for storage and heating. These chemicals have been linked to a range of health problems, including developmental issues and cancer.
In conclusion, the problem of plastic pollution demands urgent action. A comprehensive strategy for cutting down on plastic is essential to tackle these challenges and safeguard the well-being of our planet and its inhabitants.
While reducing the consumption of plastic may seem challenging, it is achievable through a combination of policy measures, technological innovations and changes in consumer behavior. Governments must issue laws to ban or heavily regulate single-use plastics and promote alternatives. Businesses should adopt sustainable packaging practices, and individuals can reduce plastic consumption by making conscious choices.
1. What does the example of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch show?A.Animals rely on plastic waste to survive. |
B.Plastic is too widespread to remove. |
C.Plastic waste is harming the oceans. |
D.Plastic poses health risks to humans. |
A.Worsening. | B.Controlling. | C.Recording. | D.Evaluating. |
A.Ways to cut plastic consumption. |
B.Problems of handling plastic. |
C.Alternatives for plastic products. |
D.Some benefits of banning plastic. |
A.Plastic Packaging Is Everywhere |
B.Plastic Consumption Should Be Reduced |
C.How Should Plastic Be Used |
D.How Plastic Products Affect People |
Imagine you are out fishing on the high seas - the wind and water are clean and comfortable and you begin bringing up your first catch of the day. That's when everything goes wrong. Your fishing nets are tangled up (缠成一团) in older, abandoned fishing tool, and you're unable to untangle them. Your equipment
Ghost fishing is what abandoned fishing tool does. It still catches fish, but no one benefits. Trapped fish die and attract scavengers (清道夫)
Environmental agencies estimate that 10 percent of all seawater litter is lost or deserted fishing tool
It's not the intention of the majority of fishermen to lose their tool. In most circumstances bad weather is to blame. But in other cases fishermen throw their tool in the ocean on purpose, risking expensive fines. But to them, it's worth the risk
By marking tool with electronic tags and utilizing GPS technology, owners are more likely to recover lost tool and less likely to abandon it. Currently, ownership regulations are reportedly very weak. Leading the effort for tagging fishing tool and creating accountability is the GGTI (Global Ghost Tool Initiative).
Ghost fishing poses a serious threat to the fishing industry worldwide, and a global effort is needed to solve it.
5 . As cultural symbols go, the American car is quite young. The Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Plant in Michigan a century ago, with the first rolling off the assembly line (装配线) on September 27, 1908. Only eleven cars were produced the next month. But eventually Henry Ford would build fifteen million of them.
Modern America was born on the road, behind a wheel. The car shaped some of the most lasting aspects of American culture: the roadside diner, the billboard, the motel, even the hamburger. For most of the last century, the car represented what it meant to be American—going forward at high speed to find new worlds. The road novel, the road movie, these are the most typical American ideas, born of abundant petrol, cheap cars and a never-ending interstate highway system, the largest public works project in history.
In 1928 Herbert Hoover imagined an America with “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Since then, this society has moved onward, never looking back, as the car transformed America from a farm-based society into an industrial
The cars that drove the American Dream have helped to create a global ecological disaster. In America the demand for oil has grown by 22 percent since 1990.
The problems of excessive (过度的) energy consumption, climate change and population growth have been described in a book by the American writer Thomas L. Friedman. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best.
Friedman points out that the green economy (经济) is a chance to keep American strength. “The ability to design, build and export green technologies for producing clean water, clean air and healthy and abundant food is going to be the currency of power in the new century.”
What has the use of cars in America led to?
A.Decline of economy. |
B.Environmental problems. |
C.A shortage of oil supply. |
D.A farm-based society. |
6 . New research links outdoor air pollution — even at levels considered safe — to an increased risk of diabetes (糖尿病) globally, according to a study from the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The findings raise the possibility that reducing pollution may lead to a drop in diabetes cases in heavily polluted countries such as India and less polluted ones such as the United States.
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. The main drivers of diabetes include eating an unhealthy diet, having a sedentary lifestyle and obesity, but the new research indicates the extent to which outdoor air pollution plays a role.
“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”
While growing evidence has suggested a link between air pollution and diabetes, researchers have not attempted to quantify that burden until now. “Over the past two decades, there have been bits of research about diabetes and pollution,” said Al-Aly. “We wanted to thread together the pieces for a broader, more solid understanding.”
The researchers also found that the overall risk of pollution-related diabetes tilted (倾斜) more toward lower-income countries such as India that lack the resources for environmental mitigation systems and clean-air policies. For instance, poverty-stricken countries facing a higher diabetes-pollution risk include Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, while richer countries such as France, Finland and Iceland experience a lower risk. The US experiences a medium risk of pollution-related diabetes.
What’s the purpose of Al-Aly’s team?A.To identify the causes of diabetes. |
B.To make better air pollution control policies. |
C.To lead the study of diabetes and air pollution. |
D.To figure out the link between pollution and diabetes. |
7 . New research links outdoor air pollution — even at levels considered safe — to an increased risk of diabetes (糖尿病) globally, according to a study from the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The findings raise the possibility that reducing pollution may lead to a drop in diabetes cases in heavily polluted countries such as India and less polluted ones such as the United States.
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. The main drivers of diabetes include eating an unhealthy diet, having a sedentary lifestyle and obesity, but the new research indicates the extent to which outdoor air pollution plays a role.
“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”
While growing evidence has suggested a link between air pollution and diabetes, researchers have not attempted to quantify that burden until now. “Over the past two decades, there have been bits of research about diabetes and pollution,” said Al-Aly. “We wanted to thread together the pieces for a broader, more solid understanding.”
The researchers also found that the overall risk of pollution-related diabetes tilted (倾斜) more toward lower-income countries such as India that lack the resources for environmental mitigation systems and clean-air policies. For instance, poverty-stricken countries facing a higher diabetes-pollution risk include Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, while richer countries such as France, Finland and Iceland experience a lower risk. The US experiences a medium risk of pollution-related diabetes.
What can be the best title for the text?A.Current pollution control levels need to be tightened |
B.Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases globally |
C.Air pollution contributes significantly to diabetes globally |
D.Poverty-stricken countries face a higher diabetes-pollution risk |
8 . “Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”
What does the underlined word “stringent” in paragraph 3 mean?A.Strict. | B.Slight. |
C.Bright. | D.Ordinary. |
9 . The oil and gas industry may be emitting about three-times the amount of climate-warming methane than government estimates show, according to a new study from Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other organizations in Nature. Methane (甲烷) is the main component of natural gas and among the greenhouse gases heating the planet, which is produced when extracting crude oil.
Specific measurements varied from a low of less than 1%, or about what the Environmental Protection Agency estimates, at a site in Pennsylvania to a high of nearly 10% in New Mexico. Researchers found the higher percentages of methane released generally had something in common. “These are places where production is mostly focusing on oil,” says Evan Sherwin, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who conducted the research as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. But oil and gas often come out of the ground together, and if there wasn’t a way to transport the less-valuable gas to where it could be sold, leaks were higher.
In Pennsylvania, by contrast, drillers are focused on producing natural gas, and there, very little of the methane was wasted. That complicates an argument many in the industry have made, generally in opposition to tighter government regulations on methane. They say drillers have the incentive to capture gas leaks so they can sell the fossil fuel. But that’s not always possible, if industry hasn’t built the pipelines and other infrastructure to get the gas to consumers. In this study, researchers estimate the industry releases about 6.2 million tons of methane a year, valued at $1.08 billion.
“Emissions of methane from fossil fuel operations remain unacceptably high,” said Tim Gould, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, during a Tuesday call with reporters. The organization’s Global Methane Tracker shows methane from the energy sector was near the record high level in 2023.
Despite that, the IEA concludes that if countries fully implement existing pledges on methane reductions, that would make significant progress toward achieving global climate goals. “2024 could mark a turning point and policies are starting to be put into place. Greater transparency is coming. Awareness is spreading and we have enhanced ability to track large leaks and act quickly to shut them down,” Gould said. Gould said he hopes to have good news to share, about a reduction in methane emissions, next year.
1. What can we infer from paragraph 2?A.Various measures are taken to restrict the release of methane. |
B.The low value of the gas in part leads to the high leak of the methane. |
C.The more focused on the production of the gas, the higher the methane release |
D.The percentage of methane in developing countries is higher than in developed countries |
A.Equipment. | B.Productivity. | C.Drive. | D.Assessment. |
A.Caution: Methane emission gives rise to serious global warming. |
B.Methane emissions: Oil and gas industry’s hidden impact. |
C.Measures taken to cut back on methane emissions. |
D.Methane is to blame for the climate change. |
A.Critical. | B.Dismissive. | C.Doubtful. | D.Optimistic. |
10 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.
At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.
In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.
Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.
1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?A.Beautifying the city he lives in. |
B.Introducing eco-friendly products. |
C.Drawing public attention to plastic waste. |
D.Reducing garbage on the beach. |
A.To show the difficulty of their recycling. |
B.To explain why they are useful. |
C.To voice his views on modern art. |
D.To find a substitute for them. |