Now too much CO2 makes the Earth warmer and warmer, and brings bad effect to people. To save our Earth, a new lifestyle called low-carbon life becomes popular. Low carbon means low energy and no waste. It is necessary for everybody to learn to live a low-carbon life.
To live a low-carbon life, we'd better save as much energy as we can. For example, turn off the lights and TV when you don't use them, use cold water to wash clothes or dishes; take a short shower and try to take a cold one when the weather gets warm; don't do the cooking with electricity.
To live a low-carbon life, we should eat less meat. Being a vegetarian can help reduce(减少) one and a half ton of carbon dioxide a year, but keeping animals for food produces even more carbon dioxide than all the cars do in the world.
To live a low-carbon life, we should plant more trees. Trees are very important for us. They can not only produce oxygen for us to breathe and keep the air clean, but also take in the harmful gases from the air. To protect trees we should stop people from cuting down trees and plant as many trees as we can.
If we can keep them a habit in our daily life, the earth will become a safer planet for us to live on.
"The world's oceans are slowly getting more acidic," say scientists. The researchers from California report that the change is taking place in response to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The lowering of the waters' PH value is not great at the moment but could cause a serious threat to current ocean life if it continues, they warn. Ken Caldeira and Michael Wickett, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, report their concerns in the journal Nature.
Increasing use of oil fuels means more carbon dioxide is going into the air, and most of it will eventually be absorbed by seawater. Once in the water, it reacts to form carbonic acid. Scientists believe that the oceans have already become slightly more acidic over the last century.
These researchers have tried to predict what will happen in the future by combining what we know about the history of the oceans with computer models of climate change. "This level of acidity will get much more extreme in the future if we continue releasing COZ into the atmosphere," said Dr Caldeira. "And we predict the amount of future acidity will exceed(超过) anything we have seen over the last several hundred million years, let alone perhaps after rare disastrous events such as asteroid impacts. "
However, it is not absolutely clear what that means for ocean life. Most organisms live near the surface, where the greatest pH change would be expected to occur, but deep-ocean life forms may be more sensitive to PH changes. Coral reefs and other organisms whose shells contain calcium carbonate(小行星) may be particularly affected if the water's acidity levels keep going up, the team predict. They could find it much more difficult to build these structures in water with a lower PH.
In recent years some people have suggested storing carbon dioxide from power stations in the deep ocean as a way of dealing with global warming. But Dr. Caldeira said that such a strategy should now be re-considered. "Previously, most experts had looked at ocean absorption of carbon dioxide as a good thing—because in releasing CO2 into the atmosphere we warm the planet, and when CO2, is absorbed by the ocean, it reduces the amount of greenhouse warming. "
More than 1,000 schools across the UK have signed up (报名) to a project with the aim of helping schools become carbon neutral (碳平衡的) by 2030. Carbon neutral means cutting down carbon emissions (碳排放) to zero or balancing them out in other ways. Carbon emissions are gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) that come out into the atmosphere, where they make climate change worse. This has also caused the temperature rise.
Emissions are caused by all sorts of human activities, such as burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) to make energy, cutting down forests and some types of farming. Becoming carbon neutral includes cutting the amount of carbon emissions a school produces and balancing those that are left by taking some carbon out of the atmosphere.
The project also shows how small changes can make a big difference. These might include thinking carefully about energy use, cutting waste, growing food closer to where it's eaten and walking or cycling to school if it is possible. Ways of balancing out the carbon emissions that a school still makes include planting trees and plants that take in CO2 as they grow.
Ysgol Bro Dinefwr Secondary School in Wales has promised to run entirely on renewable (可再生的) energy (such as wind and solar power) within the next three years. At Down High School in Northern Ireland, the students are looking after their own bees. So when flowers and crops produce food, that helps. Other schools have projects to cut food waste by weighing it after each meal to know how much is not being eaten. Some put the waste into a system that can turn this waste into useful things. They will be put on the garden to help plants grow.
Climate change is seen as a major global challenge. We can see it all around us. So join together, find out ways your school can put efforts to, and talk to a teacher about signing up.
Did you see snow in your home town lastwinter? Did you feel it was warmer than before? "There have been 21 warmwinters in China since 1986," said scientists. They also said that in thepast 100 years, as the global (全球的) temperatures wentup by 0.74 ℃, the temperature in North China has gone up by 1.4 ℃ in only 50years.
China needs to take quick action to cutcarbon dioxide emission (排放), because it's themain reason for global warming. We plan to cut energy use by 20% and pollution emission by 10% in the 11th Five-Year Plan.
Can you slow global warming? Sure! Youand your family can take steps to cut the amount of carbon dioxide that is sentout into the air.
Here are some pieces of advice to help you save the earth. Wear usedclothes. Wearing your brother's, sister's or dad's old T-shirts means you savethe energy.
Ride on the bus. Taking a bus saves alot of oil every year.
Open the window. Don't use the airconditioner (空调), and let some fresh air in.
When you have to use it, set the temperaturehigher in summer and lower in winter to save energy.
Make small changes in your daily life.Don't use paper cups, bags and boxes.
It's time for all of us to do somethingto save the earth.
Governments around the world are pushing for an end to plastic straws(吸管)and bags. More and more businesses are changing to paper products. Using paper is considered to be better than plastic. However, it is harmful to the environment, too.
Firstly, paper bags and straws arc made from trees. "Trees, as you know, are good for the environment. They can slow down climate change. An increase in the use of paper bags can cause more deforestation(毁林).
Secondly, the production of paper things requires more energy and water. About 10 percent more energy and four times as much water is used to produce a paper bag than a plastic one. You might say that we can use recycled paper to save that energy and water. This seems to be a good idea. However, it takes even more energy and water to go through the recycling process(过程) than to make a new paper bag. Products made from recycled paper are also often short-lived.
Furthermore, paper products are heavier than plastic ones. That means they require more fuel to transport. Seven trucks are needed to transport two million paper bags, while only one truck is needed to transport the same number of plastic bags. The increased weight also leads to a larger amount of waste once the bags are thrown away.
Paper products are actually a lose-lose for both the environment and businesses. They are more expensive than plastic products. A paper straw costs about 5 to 12 cents, while a plastic one usually costs only about 2 cents.
The most environment-friendly way is to avoid single-use things altogether. Products like glass water bottles and steel straws can be used over and over again. They are much better than either paper products or plastic products. By increasing the use of these items, you can greatly reduce your throwaway waste and truly make our earth a greener place!
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What will you do with a huge bag of waste when you see the four waste bins in your community(社区)? They are "Wet", "Dry", "Recyclable" and "Harmful."
Many people know the importance of waste sorting, but they just don' t know what falls into which kind. This makes it see, a little time-taking and difficult.
As a pioneer city. Shenzhen is also taking steps to encourage people to do waste sorting. Not only has the government tried hard to tell the public about the different four kinds of waste through posters and media, but also it is going to give prizes to people across the city. The total prize is 62.5 million yuan. As long as they take part in waste sorting, everyone has a chance to get the money. The purpose is to help people form a green idea of thinking of waste sorting as a good behavior.
Take Meilin No. 1 Village as an example. After several months of efforts, most people there can now sort out kitchen waste before throwing it out between 7 p. m. and 9 p. m. each day at proper places. The amount of sorted kitchen waste has increased from several hundred kilograms to about two tons.
Would you try food made of rubbish? When world leaders got together at the UN for a meeting on climate(气候) change, they had a special lunch. The food was made from something that most of us would throw away. There was a salad made of vegetable scraps(剩菜叶). The leaders also had hamburgers made of fruit left over from juicing.
The UN said this reminded people about food waste and the bad influence it has on climate change. "Food waste is not often noticed in climate change, and that is shameful when so many people are in hunger." said a government secretary.
Most people don't even realize how much food they throw away every day. Sometimes they cook too much or they don't use it in time. Every year more than one-third of all food produced worldwide goes to waste, according to the UN. Stop the waste, and the whole world could save $300 billion from wasted food. More importantly, it could also do less harm to the environment.
Think about a bag of cheese(奶酪). Before we buy it at the store, people have to raise the cows, deal with the milk, and drive to the shop to sell the cheese. If you throw the cheese away, you have wasted energy, fuel(燃料) and water, which give out greenhouse gases that add to global warming.
The UN said if we stop throwing good food away, we could cut down up to 17 million tons of CO₂. The good of that would be the same as taking one in every four cars off the road.
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Let's be more earth friendly! Dear Students, Please help make our school more earth friendly. We want to minimize – reduce as much as possible – the amount (数量) of water we use. We also want to recycle paper, cans and bottles. So please try to follow these new school rules: 1) Try to use less water when you are washing your hands. 2) Try to write on both sides of your paper, not just on one side. 3) Place paper, cans and bottles in the specially labeled (标签) recycling bins. We also hope you will volunteer – which is working without pay – as one of our Earth Friends. These are the programs you can join: A) The Plant It program Students plant more trees around the school grounds. B) The Bike It program Students ride their bicycles to school every day. C) The Pool It program Families that live near each other carpool. Good luck and thank you for helping our school become more earth friendly! Mrs. Anderson School Principal(校长) |
It's commonly known that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) causes global warming. The whole world has made great efforts to improve the situation. Especially, the trees planted in China are playing an important role.
A report published in Nature shows that CO2 absorption (吸收) in two new forest areas in China is more than we thought. The two areas are located in China's southwestern and northeastern provinces. They make up over 35 percent of China's carbon sinks. Carbon sinks are natural systems that absorb and store CO2 from the air. The main natural carbon sinks are trees and other plants.
According to Paul Palmer, these provinces have been working on rapid forestation (造林) in large areas. Over the past 10 to 15 years, the forest areas have kept increasing by 400-4,400 square kilometers per year.
China is one of the world's biggest countries of human-produced CO2, ▲ . In 1978,
China began a national-level forestation project. Many trees have planted in the areas of northern China to act as windbreaks. For example, about one third of the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia is now covered with trees. In 2019, Alipay's Ant Forest program planted 122 million trees and won the UN Champions of the Earth award for helping 500 million people live low-carbon lives.
China's goal is to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Carbon neutrality refers to removing as much CO2 as one puts into the air. If China's goal is achieved, it will lower global warming by around 0.2 to 0.3 C alone, according to Climate Action Tracker (CAT).
Gaocheng, a village about 20 kilometers north of Hangzhou City, has 204 families and a population of 895. In June, 2020, the village started an activity to help its villagers develop the habit of sorting waste. In December, the village won a monthly competition among over 20 villages. It sets a good example to the other villages now.
In front of each of those families now stand two dustbins, the green one for waste that goes smelly(难闻的) easily and the gray one for anything else. Every day after dinner, volunteers check whether the rubbish has been put into right bins. This makes the job easier for those who collect the rubbish the next early morning.
According to every family's performance, volunteers give them a score every day. Once a month families can change the total scores into things such as eggs and cooking oil.
One of the villagers, Li Rongchun, said that it was difficult to ask villagers to sort waste right because most villagers have had bad habits for a long time. At first, villagers considered sorting rubbish was a waste of time, but over the time they have realized its importance and have become better at it. And most families perform well enough to be able to get the highest score.
