1 . If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal (夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences -- called light pollution -- whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels -- and light rhythms -- to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life is affected.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night -- dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth -- is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet (磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage-the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way -- the edge of our galaxy -- arching overhead.
1. According to the passage, human beings ________.| A．prefer to live in the darkness |
| B．are used to living in the day light |
| C．were curious about the midnight world |
| D．had to stay at home with the light of the moon |
| A．provide examples of animal protection |
| B．show how light pollution affects animals |
| C．compare the living habits of both species |
| D．explain why the number of certain species has declined |
| A．light pollution does harm to the eyesight of animals |
| B．light pollution has destroyed some of the world heritages |
| C．human beings cannot go to the outer space |
| D．human beings should reflect on their position in the universe |
| A．The Magic Light | B．The Orange Haze |
| C．The Disappearing Night | D．The Rhythms of Nature |
A BBC film crew was working on the remote Lord Howe Island for a new wildlife documentary called Drowning in Plastic. They filmed many birds that
3 . We are what we eat, and what we eat reveals something about what we are in return. So it shouldn’t be all that surprising that humans are now apparently eating plastic.
A small trial at the Medical University of Vienna found tiny pieces of it in the digestive systems of people from eight different countries. The study involved just eight people and doesn’t tell us what if any effect eating plastic was having on their bodies. We already knew fish were eating plastic. Did we really think it wouldn’t reach back up to the top of the food chain, that the consequences of our own actions couldn’t return to us?
This goes beyond cleaning up the oceans. Six of the eight subjects of the study ate sea not all of them did. Other possible theories involve drinking out of plastic bottle. eating food that’s been wrapped in plastic, or tiny plastic pieces floating in the air which then land on our food. But our environment is so filled now with plastic that it seems that we were going to absorb it somehow.
Does it actually matter? This study can’t answer that question, because all it tells us is that microplastics were found in human wastes. If it’s just passing through the body, then perhaps there’s no damage done. However, if there were evidence of plastics being absorbed and gathering in our internal organs, as some animal studies have suggested, that would potentially be a red flag.
Solving plastic pollution is nowhere near as simple as some campaigners make it sound. Switching away from plastic packaging to other materials would create other environmental dilemmas. Bottling liquids in glass rather than plastic makes them heavier which potentially means more trips to transport them, paper production has a bigger carbon footprint. Even if it were possible to stop using the stuff tomorrow, it would take up to 1,000 years for some of what’s being produced right now to break down.
But just because it’s difficult, it doesn’t mean we shrug our shoulders and do nothing. There is something genuinely mad about a society that is on the one hand crazy about the quality of the food we put in our mouths, and yet also mindlessly eats its own garbage. The war on plastic, it seems, just got personal.
1. What does the study show?| A．Food chain is damaged by plastic. |
| B．Eating plastic affects human greatly. |
| C．Plastic is discovered in human bodies. |
| D．Sea fish are the victim of plastic pollution. |
| A．A final result. | B．A warning sign. |
| C．An expected finding. | D．A similar situation. |
| A．It’s impossible to stop using plastic. |
| B．It’s challenging to deal with plastic issue. |
| C．It’s urgent to choose different wrappings. |
| D．It takes time to improve the environment. |
| A．Plastic should be replaced by other materials. |
| B．The damage towards food chain is long lasting. |
| C．The effect of plastic pollution isn’t fully recognized |
| D．The causes of environmental issues are complicated |
Your writing should include the following three aspects:
| 1. description of the picture; 2. analysis of the picture; 3. lessons from the picture. |
The opening part of the writing is given below.
Save Us, Please!
As can be seen from the picture, ...
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5 . The online takeaway industry is growing in China along with the rapid development of the Internet economy. But environmental activists complain that the huge volume of plastic utensils (用具), wrapping and containers presents a great challenge to the environment, and that the heavy use of throwaway wooden chopsticks is reducing natural resources.
On September 1, the Beijing No.4 Intermediate People’s Court accepted a lawsuit filed by the Chongqing Green Volunteer League, an environmental non-government organization (NGO), against the country’s three largest food delivery platforms—Baidu Waimai, Ele.me and Meituan. The NGO stated that the companies failed to provide customers with the choice to not receive throwaway plastic utensils along with their food deliveries. Meanwhile, these utensils have created large amounts of rubbish and caused serious ecological damage.
In response, both Meituan and Ele.me, which acquired Baidu Waimai in August, have promised to take measures to reduce plastic waste. Meituan announced that it would appoint a chief environmental officer to oversee environmental issues from plastic waste and upgrade its smartphone app to provide consumers with the option of ordering food without single-use chopsticks, spoons or napkins. Ele.me followed by offering a similar choice and putting forward a plan to introduce suppliers of degradable (可降解的) plastic utensils to restaurants in the long term.
Is there a possible way out? Combined efforts by delivery platforms, consumers, restaurants and government departments are required to address plastic waste pollution.
For platforms, promoting environmental protection and introducing this idea to consumers are a meaningful move. Moreover, in the future, they should also make strict rules on the use of plastic utensils. For example, no more than one plastic bag should be used to wrap soup dishes, and all plastic products should be degradable. It is a long and difficult task for them, and the recent reactions from Ele.me and Meituan are just beginnings.
Considering most takeout food packaging is thrown into garbage bins and then taken away along with other household garbage, sorting of waste also becomes more important. Government departments could play a major role in this, and by recycling some materials, waste pollution could be reduced and resources saved. Furthermore, there have been growing calls that the government should also invest more in developing degradable plastic products or environmentally friendly alternatives.
Though consumers enjoy the convenience yet also suffer exposure to the pollution, many of them have paid little attention to the plastic waste problem. Environmental groups suggest that consumers change their habits a little by using their own utensils and dishes and refusing unnecessary plastic containers.
1. The Chongqing Green Volunteer League accused the three food delivery platforms of ________.| A．causing damage to people’s health |
| B．violating environmental standards |
| C．using many wooden chopsticks |
| D．offering no utensil option |
| A．raise people’s awareness | B．research possible alternatives |
| C．upgrade their application design | D．hire a chief environmental officer |
| A．Government departments. | B．Food delivery platforms. |
| C．Environmental groups. | D．Fast food restaurants. |
| A．why environmental problems arise |
| B．who food delivery platforms affect most |
| C．how plastic utensil pollution can be solved |
| D．what efforts environmental groups have made |
