1 . Last weekend, I said goodbye to another dear old friend. We had 12 fine years together, but our relationship was becoming dysfunctional(不正常的). Unwanted emissions and serious health problems were the final straw, leaving me with no choice but to make a trip to the knacker’s(收废汽车者的)yard.
I am now car-free for the first time in 20 years, and it feels strange. When I gave up meat, I did so mainly for environmental reasons, and I didn’t miss it at all. I would like to say the same about my car, but I can’t. It was first and foremost a financial decision: keeping the old car on the road was getting too expensive.
But doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing — I now have a chance to rethink how I move myself and my family around, and can try to find a more environmentally friendly means of transport.
Going car-free is, I think, a lifestyle change that many of us are going to make over the next few years, as car ownership becomes increasingly unnecessary, expensive and socially unacceptable. However, it is easier said than done. Now my car is gone. I still need to get around. But how? I already cycle to work and use public transport when appropriate. But there are some occasions when a car seems to be the only way.
I won’t buy one: I have joined a car-share program and will use taxis more often. I will hire a car if I need to drive a long distance. But then I am still travelling in fossil-fuelled cars(燃油汽车), like when I quit meat and ended up eating more cheese. I fear I may have swapped one environmental problem for another.
I am also afraid to think about the ultimate fate of my car. I have just offloaded more than a ton of metal, plastic, rubber, fabric, electronics, oil and petrol that will end up in a landfill. There are millions of similar vehicles in the UK alone that will have to go somewhere.
Maybe I am overthinking it. According to Charlie Wilson, a climate scientist at the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, getting rid of a private car is no doubt a positive step to reduce CO2 emissions.
He points to research by the OECD’s International Transport Forum. “They showed that moving from a private vehicle fleet(车队)to a shared vehicle fleet can greatly cut the number of vehicles you need to deliver the mobility that we need and want. If that vehicle fleet is electrified, you can also bring CO2 emissions close to zero.”
So in other words, just get rid of your car.
1. What do we know about the author’s car?| A．It was old. | B．It was green. |
| C．It was his first car. | D．It was a second-hand car. |
| A．He did both for the wrong reasons. | B．He thinks both help him save money. |
| C．He considers both are right decisions. | D．He did both out of concern for the environment. |
| A．He may have to spend more on travel. |
| B．His lifestyle might be changed completely. |
| C．He might get bored with public transportation. |
| D．His decision may fail to help the environment. |
| A．It is wise to do away with old private cars. |
| B．It is very easy to deal with old private cars. |
| C．Electric cars are the solution to traffic problems. |
| D．The OECD plays a key role in promoting car-sharing. |
2020 Singles’ Day (Nov 11), the
It’s estimated (估计) that more than 9 million tons of paper waste
According
Using reusable packaging
In terms of the types of packaging recycled, the delivery companies
In June, the State Post Bureau released a guideline
3 . Overweight people produce more greenhouse gases, researchers say. Therefore, watching your weight does more than protect your health. It also may help fight climate change.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine say that because food production is a major source of greenhouse gases, a population with normal weight, such as in Vietnam, consumes about 20 percent less food and produces fewer greenhouse gases than a population in which 40 percent of people are too heavy and fat, a rate close to that of the United States.
Also, less energy is required to transport slim people. say Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts, the lead researchers of the study.
They found that a physically fit population of a billion people would give off 1,000 million tons less transportationrelated wastes a year than an overweight population would give off. “When it comes to food consumption (消耗), moving about in a heavy body is like driving around in a car that burns a lot of gas,” the researchers said. “The heavier our bodies become, the harder and more unpleasant it is to move about in them, and the more dependent we become on our cars. Staying slim is good for health and for the environment.”
“We need to do a lot more to stop the global trend toward fatness and recognize it as a key factor in the battle to reduce greenhouse gases and control climate change, ” they said.
However, they noted that the trend is in the opposite direction. The number of overweight people is increasing in nearly every country. The male who were overweight in England, for example, increased from 20 percent to 27.3 percent between 1999 and 2009, while the female increased from 25.8 percent to 29.6 percent.
1. According to Phil Edwards, slim people________.| A．produce no transportationrelated wastes |
| B．care more about environment protection |
| C．contribute to green transportation |
| D．use green transportation |
| A．seldom depend on cars |
| B．often drive around in energy-saving cars |
| C．exercise more |
| D．realize the importance of reducing greenhouse gases |
| A．more greenhouse gases are being produced by overweight people |
| B．the global trend toward fatness has been effectively controlled |
| C．the overweight population in England increases fastest |
| D．women are more likely to get overweight than men |
| A．Controlling population growth is good for climate change. |
| B．Staying slim is good for public transportation. |
| C．Staying slim helps reduce food consumption. |
| D．Staying slim is good for the environment. |
4 . When you buy something for yourself, you probably spend hours shopping around for the best deal on the highest quality product. Some of you may even desire to know how a brand operates as a company. However, when we donate money to one of the countless charities out there, most of us don’t conduct such research. We have absolutely no idea about where that money goes to, what it buys or who it helps. At least that is the case for the majority of charities. Perhaps you should start to take a greater interest in the winding path that your charitable donations take, because many of them may lead to dead ends.
You really should ask the question: will my donation to this charity actually help the people or cause? Sometimes it makes matters worse. For example, many charities help African people install water pumps to deliver clean water to their communities. Money has been invested over the past 20 years to install a total of 60, 000 pumps across sub-Saharan Africa. However, today 40% of those have failed to work at some point. They have been left there, like expensive but useless decorations.
One of the least effective means of giving is when charity sends endless shipping containers full of material goods to underdeveloped nations. For instance, Kenya imports more than 100, 000 tons of clothes from global charities each year. The issue is that these mountains of regularly imported clothes have completely destroyed local textile industries, which have previously supported local economies.
Ultimately, to whom and how much you give is your choice. It is important to provide highly specialized services instead of material goods. As a general rule of thumb, the more your donation matches the need of the receivers, the better it will be for the long-term prosperity of those you want to help.
1. What do most people do when they donate?| A．They keep track of their donations. |
| B．They neglect the process of charities. |
| C．They select products of highest quality. |
| D．They do research on application of funds. |
| A．To stress effective giving. | B．To illustrate a fault investment. |
| C．To confirm a charitable failure. | D．To complain the pumps' quality. |
| A．Donations should meet local demands. |
| B．Ineffective charities must be abandoned. |
| C．Material goods can boost textile industry. |
| D．Specialized services turn out satisfactory. |
| A．Has your donation hit a dead end? |
| B．Why should you make a donation? |
| C．Where does my donation take its way? |
| D．Will my donation to charity really help? |
5 . Back in the 1980s when monkeypox(猴痘)was still an extremely rare disease, scientists kept warning: Over time, the monkeypox outbreaks will increase. At that time, there were only about 50 monkeypox cases a year in West and Central Africa where people caught the disease mainly from direct contact with wild animals. Infection between humans was very limited. But in 2022, the world is facing the first international outbreak, with more than 5,000 cases reported in 44 countries within six months.
So how could the scientists know in the 1980s that monkeypox would grow in size and spread internationally?
Their warnings were based on the successful campaign against smallpox(天花), one of the deadliest diseases in human history, which killed up to 30% of the people infected. Thanks to a worldwide campaign, smallpox disappeared in the late 1970s. However, the end of smallpox opened the door for monkeypox to emerge.
Monkeypox, whose present version kills less than 1% of people infected, is closely related to smallpox. Having a smallpox infection-or a smallpox vaccine(疫苗)-offers really good protection against smallpox as well as monkeypox. Perhaps about 85% protection. But in the late 1970s, the world stopped vaccining people for smallpox. So over the past decades, human resistance to smallpox and monkeypox has dropped sharply.
“We’re actually at a point where our immunity against monkeypox is the lowest in thousands of years,” says Jo Walker of the Yale School of Public Health. Without some resistance against the disease, people are more likely to catch monkeypox from animals and spread it to someone else. So it is time that people who might come into contact with infected people were vaccined for monkeypox. Otherwise, it could become a permanent presence in the world, since every time there’s an outbreak the virus has a chance to figure out how to spread more quickly among people.
Indeed, this new outbreak in Europe may be a sign that the virus has changed-even if just a bit-and may be increasing its ability to spread among people.
1. What can be learned about monkeypox?| A．It can be more dangerous than smallpox. | B．It rarely spread from animals to humans. |
| C．The outbreaks were not serious in the 1980s. | D．Scientists are surprised by the present outbreaks. |
| A．The cause of the present outbreaks. | B．The disappearance of smallpox. |
| C．The potential danger of smallpox. | D．The treatment of monkeypox. |
| A．Kill all the infected wild animals. | B．Develop a special vaccine for treatment. |
| C．Lock down the infected countries. | D．Vaccine those in possible contact with the infected. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Worried. | C．Overjoyed. | D．Uncaring. |
6 . The China State Council issued a document in early August, suggesting employers across the country make flexible working arrangements and give their workers Friday afternoons off during hot summer days in order to boost tourism and consumption.
Online surveys have shown that most correspondents are in favor of the State Council’s proposal for longer weekends, as two and a half days are enough even for one to plan a short journey. People will have more time to be together with their families.
However, there are doubts as to whether this well-intentioned initiative can be put into practice.
Obviously, the only way out is to implement policies concerning paid annual leave in a realistic manner so that the working people can make arrangements for their days off work. As a result, holidaymakers don’t need to all rush to the same scenic spots during the same period of time, which would be beneficial to the protection and operation of these spots.
| A．Also, this is an effective way to increase consumer spending. |
| B．The right of workers to rest and paid annual leave are protected under the law. |
| C．A larger number of workers, if not all, will benefit from official holiday arrangements. |
| D．Most people think that they will actually not be able to enjoy the benefits of such a scheme. |
| E．After rest and relaxation, employees will become more energetic when they come back to work. |
| F．Another worry is that this measure will finally be exclusively (专有地) enjoyed by a limited number of employees. |
| G．As long as paid annual leave remains unrealistic in most industrial sectors, the two-and-half-day weekend seems pointless. |
7 . Before you worry about bacon and how much it may cost when new animal welfare laws go into effect next year, let’s talk about the pigs that gave their lives for it.
California has been on the forefront of protecting animals who live short lives on factory farms either to produce food for us or to be slaughtered and sold as food. The latest advance came in November 2018, when 62.7% of the state’s voters supported Proposition 12, the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act. The law began going into effect last year, requiring hens and veal calves to be given more space to live in. Starting on Jan. 1st, the law will require that all eggs sold in California come from cage-free hens and that pork sold in the state come from breeding pigs that are not held in cages. These are humane steps designed to lift these animals out of structures that barely allow them to move.
Pork producers have had the longest time to comply (遵守). Some big companies like Hormel Foods have pledged to do so fully, but others have spent the last few years fighting the law rather than figuring out how to put it into practice. They say that the law will significantly raise the price of pork and that it violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress sole power over interstate business activity. So far, that fight has been a waste of time that pork producers could have better spent figuring out how to retrofit (翻新)their farms.
They also complain that the regulations on the law are not set. But the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which has yet to finalize the regulations, says that the delay should not have prevented producers from retrofitting their housing for breeding pigs. The agency has publicly posted draft regulations, which mostly concern record-keeping, certification and definitions of terms.
For fans of bacon and other pork, any rise in cost is the price of not having a pig suffer before it’s killed for food. It’s a price the animals shouldn’t have to pay.
1. What do we know about Proposition 12?| A．The law will come into force next year. |
| B．More space is required for raising hens and pigs. |
| C．Raising hens and pigs in limited space is humane. |
| D．Half of the state’s voters subscribed to Proposition 12. |
| A．Suspect. | B．Refuse. | C．Promise. | D．Hesitate. |
| A．Some pork producers have raised the price of pork. |
| B．All the pork producers don’t comply with the law. |
| C．Pork producers have wasted a lot of time retrofitting their farms. |
| D．Pork producers resist the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Conservative | C．Tolerant. | D．Favorable. |
8 . A boy shivered in the harsh Oslo winter, pathetically wrapping his arms around himself on a bus stop bench. He wasn’t wearing a coat and temperatures in the Norwegian capital regularly plunge to -10C during winter.
A heartbreaking scene, but the actions of the ordinary people who witnessed the difficult situation of 11-year-old Johanne Linnestad Flaaten were both joyous and inspiring.
A young woman sat next to the boy and noticed him rubbing his arms. She immediately asked him, “Don’t you have a jacket?”
“No, someone stole,” he replied. She questioned him and discovered he was on a school trip and was told to meet his teacher at the bus stop. She asked him the name of his school and where he was from as she selflessly covered her own coat around his shoulders.
Later, another older woman at first gave him her scarf, and then wrapped him in her large padded jacket.
Throughout the day, more and more people offered Johanne their gloves and even the coats off their backs as they waited for their bus.
Johanne’s predicament was a hidden camera experiment by Norwegian charity SOS Children’s Village as part of their winter campaign to gather donations to send much-needed coats and blankets to help Syrian children get through the winter. Many of the refugees have left their homes without winter clothing.
“People should care as much about children in Syria as they care about this boy,” Synne Runnine th information head of SOS Children’s Villages Norway, told The Local. She also noted that the child was a volunteer who was never in any danger during the filming.
1. Why did Johanne Linnestad Flaaten shiver on the bus stop bench?| A．His parents couldn’t afford him a warm coat |
| B．Someone stole his jacket. |
| C．He was a volunteer to do an experiment. |
| D．He was doing an experiment of cold resista |
| A．difficult situation | B．miserable life |
| C．inspiring courage | D．selfless spirit |
| A．People’s care about Johanne is enough. |
| B．People’s care about children in Syria is not enough. |
| C．People should care more about children in Syria than they care about Johanne. |
| D．People should care more about Johanne than they care about children in Syria. |
| A．When You Have No Coat in a Harsh Winter |
| B．When You Face Refugees Crowding into Your Country |
| C．When You Help Syrian Children without Winter Clothing |
| D．When You Meet a Boy Wearing No Coat |
9 . One of the most important sections of the Human Development Report is the Human Development Index. The Index
| A．develops | B．measures | C．pollutes | D．educates |
| A．index | B．similarity | C．charity | D．transport |
| A．similar to | B．close to | C．at the top of | D．at the bottom of |
| A．income | B．development | C．tourism | D．industry |
| A．location | B．position | C．pollution | D．poverty |
| A．polluted | B．developing | C．developed | D．industrial |
| A．homeless | B．poor | C．hungry | D．unfortunate |
| A．educated | B．smart | C．similar | D．crowded |
| A．similarly | B．unfortunately | C．interestingly | D．though |
| A．efforts | B．progress | C．fortune | D．goals |
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