A measure in the House’s $ 2 trillion economic bill would require states to cut greenhouse gas emissions (排放) promising rewards for transportation departments that post reductions and “consequences” for those that don’t.

Peter A. DeFazio, chairman of the Transportation Committee, said the proposal is designed to push states to act. “We’re going to give them very large motivation to actually make those meaningful targets and deliver on those targets,” he said. According to the proposal, states that cut emissions could get a $ 1 billion pot of money and potentially receive other bonus funding from the federal government. The bill doesn’t spell out potential consequences for not reducing emissions, leaving the decision to national transportation officials. Experts say they could include barriers to accessing highly prized grant funds (拨款).

Much of the attention on cutting emissions from the transport industry-the nation’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases-has focused on the adoption of electric vehicles by putting money in charging factories and supporting battery-powered cars. The new measure sides with environmental advocates who argue the nation can’t battle a changing climate without changing how Americans move around. Environmentalists say the nation’s changing to electric vehicles probably won’t happen quickly enough to limit temperature rises unless Americans can be convinced to drive less, and that would mean building new networks focused on walking, cycling and transit (运输).

Opposition to the emission measure is deep-seated. The heads of five western state transportation departments wrote a letter to Capitol’s committee last month saying the proposal would harm rural areas because options such as heavy-traffic pricing are not well-suited to places which are populated in few people, and it doesn’t make sense to target those state agencies when there are multiple reasons that influence emissions, including fuel economy standards for cars and local decisions about where to build stores and homes.

Kevin DeGood, a transportation researcher, said basic construction shape how people can get around. “It is funny that the state transportation departments suggest in the letter that they do not deeply influence greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation industry,” he said.

The 2020 summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo next year. Japan has made 5,000 medals for the winners. But this Olympic medals are more special than most----they are made entirely out of recycled electronics.

One new focus of the Tokyo Olympics is to make them “sustainable”----to avoid using too many natural resources, so that the games are environmentally friendly. As part of this goal, the organizers decided to make all of the Olympic medals out of metal recycled from old electronics. They needed gold for first place medals, silver for second, and bronze for third. You might not know it, but almost all electronics are made with small amounts of “precious” metals, like gold and silver. But collecting enough of these metals to make 5,000 medals is a huge challenge. That's because the amount of metal in each device is tiny. It would take about 20,000 cell phones to get just 2. 2 pounds (1kilogram) of gold.

Beginning in April 2017, organizers placed collection boxes around the country, and asked people to turn in their old electronic devices for the Olympic medals. Soon people began to fill up the boxes, turning in smart phones, digital cameras and laptops. By the end, 1,621 local governments had helped out with the collection process. The Japanese mobile phone company NTT Docomo collected 6.21 million used cell phones. In all, around 158,000,000 pounds (71,667,660 kilograms) of electronics were collected.

Then came the job of breaking those phones down into smaller pieces. This is a difficult job. It's also dangerous, because some of the metals and other things that go into electronics aren't safe for people to touch or breathe. That's why it's not a good idea to try something like this at home. Once the devices were broken down, the metals had to be carefully separated out. By the end of March, the organizers had hit their targets. The opening ceremony for the 2020 summer Olympics will take place in Tokyo on July 24,020.

“Most people don’t know anything about soil,” says Dominique Arrouays, a soil scientist in France. “In the city, they never see the soil, unless there’s construction. It’s all pavement. They don’t realize that everything depends on soils.”

Soils grow the food that provides an estimated 98.8 percent of our daily calories, according to a paper in Environment International, and house more than 25 percent of the world’s biodiversity. 【小题1】

Healthy soil is marked by its porous (多孔) structure, produced by root growth as well as the activities of earthworms and insects. 【小题2】 Healthy soils not only make farms more climate-resilient (气候适应力), but they can also help keep costs for farmers and taxpayers down.

According to a United Nations report, a third of the planet’s soil is highly degraded due to acidification, erosion (腐蚀), and other factors. Soils cannot be regenerated quickly. 【小题3】 And yet many people dismiss it as nothing more than dirt.

【小题4】 Erosion occurs when soil is displaced by wind or water—washed off farms and stored in ditches and streams, or blown across the landscape as dust. Healthy soil resists erosion well, especially if it is protected by plants above ground and roots below-ground. 【小题5】 The results can be disastrous. Even small changes year after year can gradually cause big problems.

Soil is the skin of the earth. We need to protect it. It’s in everybody’s interest to support farmers in rebuilding soil health and preventing erosion.