Tropical rainforests (热带雨林) are home to native peoples who rely on their surroundings for food, shelter, and medicines. Today very few forest people in many areas like the Philippines, Papua New Guinea live in traditional ways; most have been displaced by outside settlers or have been forced to give up their lifestyles by governments.
Of the remaining forest people, the Amazon supports the largest native or native populations, although these people, too, have been affected by the modern world. While they still depend on the forest for traditional hunting and gathering, most Amerindians, as American native people are called, grow crops, use western goods, and make regular trips to towns and cities to bring foods and products to market. In Africa there are native forest people sometimes known as pygmies. The tallest of these people, also called the Mbuti, are not more than 5 feet in height. Their small size enables them to move about the forest more quickly than taller people.
Tropical rainforests have supported humans since ancient times. Although forest life cannot be described as easy, these peoples have built their lives around the surrounding forest and its systems. Still, these forest people can teach us a lot about the rainforest. Their knowledge of medicinal plants used for treating illness is valuable, and they have a great understanding of the ecology (生态学) of the Amazon rainforest. As a result, they are a great storehouse of the knowledge about the forest. They know the medicinal functions of plants and understand the value of the forest as an undamaged ecosystem. As forests fall, these native peoples lose their homes and culture, resulting in the drop of the native population.
【小题1】Where do the greatest number of native rainforest peoples live today?A.In the Philippines . | B.In Africa. |
C.In the Amazon. | D.In Papua New Guinea. |
A.They know little about growing some crops. |
B.They make trips to towns and cities for trade. |
C.They would like to use eastern goods in daily life. |
D.They seldom know traditional hunting and gathering. |
A.Forest people can get benefits from rainforests. |
B.We can learn how to build storehouses from forest people . |
C.Forest people live an easy and comfortable life as we imagine. |
D.The knowledge of medicinal plants for treating illness can be ignored. |
A.To make an advertisement for tropical rainforests. |
B.To introduce the lifestyles of the native forest people. |
C.To spread the knowledge and value of the forest plants. |
D.To raise the awareness of protecting tropical rainforests. |
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.
【小题1】How does the government provide motivation?A.By praising. | B.By punishing. |
C.By financing. | D.By restricting. |
A.Greatly changed climate. | B.More convenient stores. |
C.Stable fuel economy standards. | D.Eco-friendly transport system. |
A.To oppose the emission measure. | B.To introduce solutions to emission. |
C.To call for attention to rural areas. | D.To list several reasons for emission. |
A.Supportive. | B.Disapproving. |
C.Shocked. | D.Confident. |
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.
【小题1】What's special about the 2020 summer Olympics medals?A.Shape. | B.Material. |
C.Meaning. | D.Weight. |
A.The Japanese people are unwilling to help. |
B.Companies are recycling metals for profit. |
C.The amount of metal in each device is small. |
D.The amount of device with metals is limited. |
A.The number of the used electronics is too large to deal with. |
B.People in Japan are eager to get rid of their used electronics. |
C.People in Japan are in great favor of the collecting process. |
D.A number of metals are wasted to produce electronics in Japan. |
A.The job of breaking down phones into pieces is tough. |
B.The targets of collecting metals are hard to achieve. |
C.The metals in the devices are easy to separate out. |
D.The opening for the 2020 summer Olympics falls in June. |
“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.
Healthy soil is marked by its porous (多孔) structure, produced by root growth as well as the activities of earthworms and insects.
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.
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.
A.But soils are in great trouble at present. |
B.Soil erosion is a particularly serious problem worldwide. |
C.This structure allows rainfall to sink in healthy soil deeply. |
D.Soils also store massive amounts of both fresh water and carbon. |
E.It may take up to 1,000 years to produce a couple centimeters of soil. |
F.But when soil is left bare, wind and water can more easily displace it. |
G.Soil is a living community to create a rich environment for food production. |
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