备战2024年中考英语阅读话题训练三 人与自然 主题16 环境保护

The music band Coldplay is taking actions to protect the environment. This includes using their fans' energy to help provide electricity for their performances. In this way, they use electricity without adding carbon gases (碳气体) to the air. The band hopes to cut the amount of CO₂ given out by its business activities by 50 percent.

The Coldplay stars have added special dance floors and energy-storing bicycles to their latest world tour performance. The purpose is to get fans to help produce electricity by dancing and riding. Each dance floor can support many people. It creates electricity when people move on it. Each of the bikes can create an average of 200 watts (瓦特) of electricity. In order to encourage fans to dance or ride more during the performance, they even have competitions to find out which group of fans can create the most electricity. 

"Being green is a good business model. That's what we'd like to show," said Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. "The changes will bring a sense of belonging to the fans. Everything in our show is planned to bring everyone into the same group, singing together. It makes us feel part of a community."

Coldplay has taken other steps to protect the environment. One of its tour stages (舞台) uses recycled steel. The band also hopes to set up the world's first tour battery (电池) system, made from 40 recycled electric car batteries. The hope is to power the whole show with batteries.

"It's very expensive to try these things for the first time," said Martin, "but we are very happy that we are changing."

Coldplay is just one music group working to help the environment. Some other famous bands are also taking such steps.

Scientists have long predicted that warmer temperatures caused by climate（气候）change will have the biggest influence on the world's poorest people. New research now suggests that has already happened over the past years. 

A study coming out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found that in most poor countries, higher temperatures are more than 90% likely to have resulted in a fall in economic output（经济产量），compared to a world without global（全球的）warming. The influence has been less big in richer countries—with some even benefiting（获益） from higher temperatures. 

"We're not saying that global warming created inequality（不公平），"says Noah S. Diffenbaugh，the writer of the study and a professor at Stanford University who studies climate change. But "global warming has slowed down the improvement". The poorest countries are facing the worst influence of rising temperatures—for which they are least responsible, he adds. 

The new study builds on past research. A 2015 study in the journal Nature predicted that the average income（平均收入）） in the poorest countries will be 25% lower by 2100 compared to a world without warming, while some of the richest countries—like the USA—could experience an increase in income. And a report from IPCC, the UN's climate science body, showed that if global temperatures rise more than 1. 5℃ by the end of the century, poor countries will likely face very serious challenges, including the disappearance of whole communities and millions of early deaths. "They will suffer the most, as they are already,"said Mary Robinson, who used to be a UN Special Envoy on Climate Change and a president of Ireland. 

The influence is greater elsewhere, especially in sub—Saharan, African countries including Sudan, Burkina Faso and Niger, where climate change has driven the average income more than 20% lower "There are a number of ways by which temperature influences economic activities,"says Diffenbaugh What's clear is that, for poor countries,the news is all bad. 

Have you ever noticed plastic waste everywhere in your community? Dr. Aboubacar Kampo has. He was living in Côte d'Ivoire, a country on the coast of West Africa, where plastic is a big environmental problem, compared with water and air pollution. Côte d'Ivoire's biggest city, Abidjan, produces more than 300 tons of plastic rubbish a day, and only about 5% is recycled. "How can we turn plastic into something useful?" Kampo wondered. 

So Kampo, who works for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, googled, researched, and then noticed a company in Colombia, a country in South America. Plastic pollution is a problem there, too. Conceptos Plásticos, the Colombian company that Kampo read about online, recycles plastic waste and turns it into big, Lego-like bricks（砖）for building schools and houses. 

Next, Kampo went to Colombia to learn about the company in person. He toured schools that were built with its bricks and the factory where the bricks were made. "Conceptos Plásticos gave us a solution." Kampo said. He thought it could help with more than just the plastic problem. It could also improve children's education. 

According to UNICEF, 1.6 million children in Côte d'Ivoire don't go to school. One reason is that there aren't enough classrooms. For kids who do go to school, classrooms are often very crowded. Kids often sit on the floor and can't stand up because there isn't room to move around. 

In 2018 UNICEF built its first classrooms in Abidjan, using bricks produced in Colombia by Conceptos Plásticos. Right away, the local education improved a lot. People couldn't believe it at the beginning, that the classrooms were made of plastic. But now all the parents want their children in these classrooms. By the end of 2021 UNICEF had built 528 classrooms in Côte d'Ivoire. The new Conceptos Plásticos factory in Abidjan will soon be producing bricks from rubbish collected in children's playgrounds and on the beach. 

The environmental influence is huge. Kampo says it takes about five and a half tons of plastic and just a few weeks to build a classroom. Unlike traditional building, no cement（水泥）is needed. "It's just a hammer（锤子）and those bricks." he added.

What do you do with a book once you've read it?Maybe you keep it for someone else in your family to read, or leave it on a bookshelf to read again another day?Maybe you can try recycling your books.

Recycling your old books means you give them to another person, family or group, instead of leaving them to take up space and get dusty（布满灰尘的）. This means that the books you love can be enjoyed by others, too.

Recycling and giving away your books can be helpful in lots of ways. People will discover new books and authors they didn't know about. Books can sometimes be expensive, so it also helps people and families who can't afford to buy them. When a person gets to read plenty of authors, styles and subjects, it can help them to develop a love of books, increase their confidence in reading and writing and improve their happiness.

If you take part in a book-recycling project, you can pick up new books, too. Find a comfortable place and take out the books to read. What a pleasant thing! It will help you forget about things that may be worrying you.

The Children's Book Project is a charity（慈善机构） that recycles books（in good condition）and passes them on to places like schools and children's centers. When you give away books, they are cleaned and divided into age groups and reading levels. Liberty Venn from the Children's Book Project says, "It's an amazing feeling to pass on your books and know that someone will enjoy them as much as you did. At the Children's Book Project we help to extend （延长） the life of over 250, 000 books each year. "

No matter where you look outdoors, spring seems to bring with it lots of wildflowers, which provides us with nice colors and sweet smells.

Joel Sartore, a photographer and an environmentalist, has made a point of planting native (本地的) wildflowers at home and at his office. He also encourages his neighbours to start their own gardens of native plants. Why? Wildflowers need our help. In the U.S., Great Plains alone, over 33 million acres of wildflowers and grasslands have been lost since 2009, according to WWF.

You've probably heard that wildflowers support insects like butterflies and bees, which play a huge role in pollinating crops (庄稼授粉) that we depend on for food. That's just one of many ways wildflowers and other native plants are important to our earth. Native flowers are part of a living network. They lock carbon(碳)within soil, an important part of mitigating (减缓) changes in weather. They store water and nutrients, which are good for forests. And, of course, they look beautiful, making them an attraction in any places.

"If we hope to encourage children to grow up fighting to save the planet, wildflowers are a perfect fit; they get kids thinking about nature with a sense of wonder," Sartore says. "These places serve as outdoor classrooms, plus they clean our air, soil, and water."

But what can we do? You don't have to be an eager gardener or have lots of land to put your effort into. If you live in a city, you can just plant flowers in a window box or on your rooftop.

Another way to get involved beyond your own space at home is to find out how public green spaces near you are managed. You can also volunteer at a local nature center, or community garden that is planting native plants. If you aren't sure what types of plants are native to your area, ask at a nearby garden center or search online.

"I believe that people want to help make the planet a better place, but they just don't know where to start," Sartore says. "Planting wildflowers and other plants is a great way."

Do you usually try to reduce waste by collecting objects that can be recycled? Do you often help people around you raise awareness（意识） about the environment?

Su Yige, a vlogger（视频博主） on Bilibili, is such a person. She tries her best to protect the environment in her daily life. Su always takes her own bag with her when she goes shopping. Most of the furniture（家具） in her Shanghai home was bought from second—hand store. One day, she got her clothes dirty by accident when eating out. She quickly took out a handkerchief（手帕） from her bag instead of reaching for a paper napkin on the table.

Su says her awareness of avoiding waste comes from her parents. Although they have little "green" knowledge, her parents live a green life. They won't throw away an object as long as it can still be used.

She hated to see the large number of waste that people around her created every day. She used to believe western people took better care of the environment. She was, then, surprised when she saw mountains of food waste being left outside of supermarkets in Canada seven years ago. She was a student at that time, but she decided to ""step in" and started environmental vlogger（视频博客）.

On Bilibili, Su shares her love for old things and things that can be recycled. She also teaches people to make natural washing powder（天然洗衣粉） and other environmental objects. Her videos has received up to 95.000 likes. Under her influence, many young people have changed their lifestyles. Ding Nan from Fujian province, for example, has said goodbye to all bottled drinks and has been carried a reusable plastic box with her wherever she goes.

Now, by exchanging suggestions with her fans and other environmental vloggers, Su has continued to avoid creating waste and has helped more people to do so as well. She wants people to know that a greener life can be enjoyable, too, once one has gotten used to it.

In China, each year we produce about 150 million tons of city waste according to a report. Where does the waste go? People usually burn or bury(埋)it. On the other hand, we receive waste from some developed countries. We get useful materials from it. What about the useless part? Still burned or buried. But is it a proper way?

Waste pollutes the environment, harms people's health and causes animals to die. It also gets in the way of green and sustainable development. We can't make money at the cost of the environment. We should leave clean water and green mountains to our next generations(一代人).

China is getting really serious about waste now.

We are taking less waste from developed countries. From January 2018, China started to stop24 kinds of waste coming into our country. And more laws and rules about dealing with waste have been made. Anyone who breaks the law will be punished.

China also tries to put waste into good use. One example is the waste electricity factories. They burn waste to make electricity in a green way. No harmful gases or water will get into the environment.

The Chinese government is encouraging people to do waste sorting(分类). Cities like Shanghai, Chongqing and Beijing have their own sorting systems. More will join them soon. As President Xi Jinping said during a visit to Shanghai, waste sorting is a new fashion(时尚). More and more people are forming the habit of separating their waste.

Several large companies have begun creating paper bottles to replace glass and plastic ones.

A company called Paboco has been working with many large companies to develop paper bottles. These companies are creating their own bottle designs.

Clearly, one of the biggest challenges is keeping a paper bottle from leaking (渗漏). The inside of the bottle needs a special liner (衬层) to make sure the liquid doesn't leak through. Many companies are lining their bottles with thin plastic.

Though bottle makers may say this liner can be removed and recycled, many recycling programs don't have the right machines to deal with these liners.

A Danish beer company called Carlsberg is working with Paboco on a paper bottle called the "Green Fiber Bottle". Now the bottle uses a plastic liner. In the future the company hopes to use a "bio-plastic (生物塑料)" that will break down naturally over time.

But even without the plastic, paper bottles aren't perfect. Most paper bottles use wood pulp (木浆). That could lead to the loss of forests.

Frugalpac, a company from the United Kingdom, has created bottles made of recycled paper, so no trees need to be cut down. Frugalpac still uses plastic liners, though.

But with so many companies working towards the same goal, we will see more paper bottles on store shelves in the near future.

However, these enjoyable photos and videos hide the damage(损害) that the online trade is doing to otters. In fact, wild otters are facing many threats—they have long been hunted(猎杀) for their coats in some places, fishermen have been killing otters in order to stop them from eating fish and now, the online pet trade has become another big problem for otters.

In the wild, baby otters usually stay with their mothers during their first year of life. According to a report, 70% of the otters sold online are under one year old. These baby otters have been stolen from their mothers. When they are kept as pets by humans, they do not live full and natural lives.

Otters are very social. They live in family groups of up to 15 in the wild. Keeping an otter as a pet can make it very sad and lonely. These animals also need enough space to swim. Their owners' bathtubs or pools are nowhere near as large as the bodies of water in the wild.

On the other hand, otters simply don't make good pets. They have a very special fishy smell. If they are kept indoors, they will leave a lot of waste around the house. This would make the smell even more unpleasant. Besides, when otters are unhappy, they will make loud noises and even attack(攻击) people. If a person is hurt by an otter, he or she needs to go to hospital at once. So, we should stop the otter pet trade and never share photos and videos about them online.

Think about what you like to wear on the weekend. There's a good chance that you like to put on a pair of blue jeans. At any moment, about half of the world's population is wearing jeans. But according to a new study, our love for jeans may be bad for Earth. Denim (牛仔布) might be putting some sea animals in danger.

You might wonder: Isn't denim made of cotton, a natural material? How can it become a danger to nature? Well, in the process of making jeans, cotton is treated with many types of man-made chemicals. Some improve the durability (耐用性) and feel; others give jeans their blue color. Every time we wash our jeans, tiny bits of denim come loose. They flow out of our washing machines, down the drain and into the world's rivers, lakes and oceans.

Scientists studied the Great Lakes in America and the Arctic Ocean in northern Canada. They found denim waste in all of the water they had collected. It is terrible that the harmful chemicals in denim have spread far and wide. Scientists aren't yet sure how these chemicals might harm animals.

In the study, the scientists also washed jeans to see how many bits of denim on average each pair would drop per wash. The answer was surprising: About 50,000. Not all of them make their way into the environment. Wastewater treatment plants(污水处理厂) hold back 83 to 99 percent of them. This may sound pretty good. However, one percent of 50,000 bits are still 500 per wash. Now think about the number of jeans around the world and the times each of them gets washed. As a result, a large amount of denim waste still gets into the environment.

Does this mean we shouldn't wear jeans? Probably not. "We need to buy fewer clothes and only wash them when we truly need to do it," says Sam Athey, one of the scientists. "You don't need to wash your jeans after having worn them only a couple of times."