Eco-friendly Vauban, lied in the southwest part of Germany, has everything－tree-lined streets, perfect houses－but it’s missing one urban feature of the last 100 years or so: the car. And Vauban residents(居民) don’t mind one bit. Vauban doesn’t ban cars entirely. Rather, it just tries to reduce the use of cars by creating “parking-free” and “car-free” living. In Vauban, parking spots are a no-no private property(私人财产). Cars can only be parked in public parking lots, so living without a car saves residents the cost of parking in the public lot. Cars also are prevented from using certain roads and must stick to strict speed limits. With these limitations, fewer than 20 percent of residents own cars. Without cars, bikes are almost religion in this small town. Kids pick them up even before they can ride one. Vauban is about much more than just using two wheels instead of four. In Vauban , residents ride bikes and even receive money from the electric company for selling electricity back to the power grid (电网系统). It’s an environmentally-friendly city of the future, with organically grown food, renewable energy, and carbon-neutral homes. And now, with a population of 5,500, it’s attracting attention from around the world. Can an eco-friendly city like Vauban be a model for Americans to stop their over-reliance on the cars?

Sometimes when I watch a news report what’s in the back of my mind is what isn’t being reported or stressed. While this eco-friendly city is inspiring in that it shows residents getting exercise and fresh air through the majority use of bicycles, as well as good old fashioned walking, common sense would tell you that even for a place like Vauban, Germany, it owes its existence to the cars.

Do you think that bicycles were able to transport all the construction materials that were needed to build and maintain the eco-friendly homes and businesses in Vauban? It took cars to help build this utopia. It’s one of the paradoxes of life that sometimes in order to get away from relying on something like the car, you actually have to rely on that very thing at the beginning and into the foreseeable future to some degree.

I myself haven’t owned a car for more than 14 years, and mostly get around town running, walking, or using public transportation. There are times I wish I had one, since it would make many things easier, but overall I’m glad not to have to deal with the headaches of owning a car, which caused me to get rid of it in the first place. And all the walking and running has helped to keep me fit and healthy.

To get even close to being like eco-friendly Vauban, Americans will need to absolutely change the way they live. Commuting( 乘车上下班) patterns will have to change, public transportation will have to be invested in, and so on. And though ending our love affair with the car will be impossible during my lifetime, we may at least start to see more Vauban-like areas in the USA.

We can hope that Americans will consider using their feet more to get around, cutting down on pollution , and giving themselves some more exercise.

If all goes well, a balloon will soon rise from Space Center in Sweden. It will float high into the upper atmosphere, where nothing will happen, and then return to Earth. Nevertheless, a collection of environmental groups is trying to stop it.

The campaigners are against the flight because of what comes next. The balloon is a test flight for a research being run by the University of Harvard. The research aims to test an idea called SAI, in which fine dust is added into the upper atmosphere to boost the amount of sunlight reflected back into space. A future flight will release a small amount of calcium carbonate dust into the upper atmosphere, in order to help researchers learn more about solar geoengineering — an excellent but theoretical idea of deliberately adjusting the Earth's systems to prevent the bad effects of climate change.

Opponents worry about two things. The first is the moral issue. If solar geoengineering works, it could reduce pressure to deal with climate change at its source by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Furthermore, in order to keep temperatures low, the reflective particles (颗粒) would have to be topped up continuously. A sudden stop could result in very rapid wanning. Raymond Pierrehumbert, a physicist at the University of Oxford, says solar geoengineering is too risky even to research outside of computer simulations (模拟).

Not all environmentalists are opposed. The world is likely to miss the target, set in the Paris agreement, of keeping warming to 1.5℃."We're not well-served by not understanding what these technologies represent," says Steven Hamburg. Mr Hamburg favours small-scale geoengineering research. Other green organisations have also hesitantly approved of exploring the idea.

Exploration is likely to carry on in any case. Once a taboo, geoengineering is being taken increasingly seriously. A recent report on climate change suggested that SAI could help keep warming below 1.5℃ America has developed a research plan for solar geoengineering. Both China and India have launched research programmes of their own. Activists will continue to oppose experiments. But balloons will likely fly anyway.

In a partnership with the 5 Gyres Institute, Trash Free Maryland took to the Chesapeake Bay in November to study the presence of micropiastics in the water. Setting out from Deale, Md., the research team collected seven samples by dragging a trawl (拖网) for an hour at a time. The trawl was fitted with a cone-shaped (锥形的) net, whose holes measure 330 microns (微米) wide, about the width of two to three strands of human hair. Water flows through the main opening and the fine mesh (网眼) of net ensures anything suspended in the water is trapped behind.

In seven samples, the net picked up algae (海藻) trash, foam and plastic. According to the 5 Gyres Institute representative, the first sample collected contained almost 10 times the amount of plastic than would be collected in a typical ocean sample. The plastic found in the Chesapeake Bay samples included bits of bags, sheeting, fishing line and microbeads, which are small plastic scrubbers found in face wash, toothpaste and cleaning products. Microbeads in particular are a major source of microplastics pollution worldwide. They are small enough to bypass water treatment systems’ filters (过滤器) and end up in waterways. Scientists warn that chemicals and toxins (毒素) absorbed by microbeads and other microplastics could be passed on to organisms who mistake them for food and eat them, and could then be passed up higher and higher on the food chain, eventually reaching humans.