This book says our world is in danger. It describes the various threats to the environment. The situation is so serious that we must do something to save the Earth.

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The writers ask us to “imagine that the Earth is inside a kind of greenhouse with the atmosphere (大气层) around it. The atmosphere acts like the glass: It lets sunlight in and keeps warmth from getting out. The atmosphere is essential for all living things. Without it, the Earth would be as cold and lifeless as the surface of the moon.”

“The trouble is that our atmosphere is changing because we are polluting it with chemicals-in the form of gases-and it is keeping in too much heat!”

These gases, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) are produced by burning fuels such as petrol. The greenhouse effect may cause the level of the sea to rise and flood cities and even whole countries.

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The burning and cutting down of the forests is making the greenhouse effect worse because trees take in CO2. It also causes soil erosion and flooding, as well as destroying the homes of people and animals that live in the forests.

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Many of our habits cause pollution, especially our habit of using things once and then throwing them away. This creates massive mountains of rubbish. We do not know what to do with the rubbish and it pollutes our land and sea. For example, people throw away as many as seven billion drink cans in Britain each year. That is enough to reach from the Earth to the moon.

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The book is asking us to become “green consumers”. That means we should only buy and use environmentally friendly goods so that we can save the Earth. These goods will not damage the environment.

Let’s be green consumers and enjoy living a better life on the Earth!

You don’t have to raise your own cow or start growing crops in order to have a greener, more Earth-friendly lifestyle. It isn’t about changing who you are immediately. But you can change a few things you do, to help both you yourselves and the world we live in.

1 Cut your bills.

How often do you get home from the supermarket, having spent another hundred yuan to fill your fridge, only to find you’re taking back some lunch meat that never meets a fork? Make a list, stick to it and be sure to eat what you’ve bought.

2 Grow it yourself

If you have enough room outside your window or a backyard for a few plants, make 2014 the year you start growing. There are many websites with advice on what time of the year is best to plant certain things, what kind of soil (土壤) or extra care they need and how to start growing.

3 Don’t just dump it.

Rather than sending an old piece of furniture to a landfill, can someone else make use of it? Does any of your friends or neighbors like it? Is there a secondhand store where your old things can find a new home? At the same time, you might find cheap chairs, old-styled cupboards or some lovely curtains on a secondhand website.

There are many ways to make a greener living. Follow the above advice, be smart and remember that small steps can add up in big ways.

Feeling hot? So is Earth. Because of problems like climate change and bad ways of farming, much of the planet’s land is drying up. What can we do to solve this problem?

One thing the United Nations did was to create a holiday. In 1994, the UN started World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (世界防治荒漠化和干旱日), to let more people know about desertification. It is on June 17 every year.

Desertification happens when healthy land — land full of water and nutrients (营养)— becomes desert, which is dry and unhealthy. Every year, 20,000 to 50,000 square kilometers of Earth’s land is lost to desertification. In Africa, scientists expect that two thirds of Africa’s healthy land will be lost by 2025.

Desertification sometimes happens because of climate change, as big, fast changes in temperature can kill plants and trees.

However, it also happens because people use land too much, and in bad ways, to grow food on their farms. Growing too many plants in the same soil, in too short a time, can take away the soil’s nutrients faster than the soil can make new ones. That can turn the soil into dry sand, like a desert.

The UN suggests some different actions to stop desertification. One is to teach people better ways of farming, including the use of better fertilizers (肥料). Another is reforestation which means planting more trees. One country that has done a lot of that is China. Today China has 61 million hectares of reforested land — more than anywhere else in the world.