Humans go against     nature so     environment is getting worse and worse.

Humans go against     nature so     environment is getting worse and worse.

1. A.
   the ; an
2. B.
   /;an
3. C.
   the;the
4. D.
   /;the

1．Advertisers go to a lot of trouble and ___________（开支） to make adverts and so they want to make sure they achieve their purpose．

2．So the Vikings would ___________（观察） the winds before and during their outward or return journeys．

3．Australia is a mainly dry country with only a few areas that have adequate________（降雨量） to support a large population．

4．The authorities, being __________（绝望）, increased the height of the fence again and again and it was soon over forty meters high．

5．The advertisement says that when you buy two, they will give you two more without _______ （额外） cost．

6．The boat was at the m________ of the waves — it’s impossible to fight against nature．

7．This town had a long history, d___________ back to the Roman times．

8．Having lived in Fuzhou for decades, he has a__  _______ to the changeable weather here．

9．Committee members recently appointed me their chairman and have asked me to tell you how much we all a_____ _________ your donation．

10．We consider your offer of help to be a lifesaver for many of these poor children and cannot thank you ___________．

When you go shopping，you are given at least one plastic bag to carry what you’ve bought.They are so common that we don’t often give them a second thought.But the beginning of the end may have come for the plastic bag.

A small town in Tasmania，an island off the south coast of mainland Australia，is making itself an environmental role model (模范) by becoming the country’s first plastic­bag­free town.

Since April 28，Coles Bay’s population of 175 and its tourist shoppers have been using reusable paper or cloth bags to carry their shopping.

Coles Bay sits on the edge of the beautiful Freycinet national park.Around 180,000 tourists pass through the town and the park every year.

Ben Kearney，a local businessman who supports the bag ban，said it would cut the amount of waste and prevent damage to native wildlife who try to eat the plastic.

“Most of the business here comes from the tourism and that’s all based on the environment，so people were pretty supportive.”he said.

Every year Australians use more than 6 million plastic bags.More than half of these come from supermarkets.Since_it_takes_years_for_the_bags_to_biodegrade_(生物分解)，tens_of_millions_end_up_polluting_the_environment.They kill about 100,000 seabirds and animals，which mistake the bags for food，every year.

Only in the past few months have major Australian supermarkets begun cutting down on their use of plastic bags.Environmental groups are pushing for a plastic bag fee (费) like that in Ireland.There，since plastic bags cost 10 pence (about 1 yuan) each，their use has been cut by 90 percent.

Pollution caused by plastic bags is a big headache for countries all over the world.As early as 1999，Beijing said that only plastic bags of certain thickness could be used.This was to encourage them to be used again and again.In China’s capital alone，an average of 6 million plastic bags are used every single day.

36．What’s meant by“the beginning of the end may have come for the plastic bag”in the first paragraph?

A．It’s possible for the war against plastic bag use to have been started.

B．It’s likely that plastic bag use has been stopped.

C．It won’t be long before an end is put to plastic bag use.

D．Once started，plastic bag use will never end.

37．We can know from the passage that Coles Bay________.

A．is a small coastal city

B. is a place where you can see far more visitors than natives

C. was the first to offer plastic bags to shoppers free of charge

D．is a place where reusable plastic bags are used

38．According to Ben Kearney，the natives welcome the change in bag use because they________.

A．need to make money

B．are short of energy supply

C．don’t want to waste money

D．want to do something good for mankind

39．Judging from the underlined sentence in the Paragraph 7，“end up doing sth.” means“________”．

A．stop doing sth.                                     B．begin doing sth.

C．do sth.as a result                                  D．disappear while doing sth.

40．Which country or area is more polluted by plastic bags than the others?

A．Ireland.                                              B．Mainland Australia.

C．Coles Bay.                                          D．Beijing.

The War Against Sand

Imagine living on the edge of a vast desert, which is moving quietly closer to your village every day and covering your fields. The desert is on the move. This is called desertification.

Desertification occurs in regions close to an already existing desert.     71     The first is over-use of water in the area. There is not enough water in any case, and if it is not carefully used, disaster can follow. As time goes on, water shortages make farming more and more difficult. In some places, locals can remember local lakes and marshes which were once the homes for all kinds of fish and birds.     72     Farmers leave the land, and fields are replaced by deserts.

The second cause is misuse or over-use of the land.     73     Ploughing(耕) large fields and removing bushes and trees means that the wind will blow away the soil. Once the soil is lost, it is hard to replace, and if there is rain, it has nowhere to go, and brings no benefit.

    74     Every spring, the skies over some of eastern cities, thousands of kilometers away from the deserts, can be darkened by sandstorms. Dust from deserts can have a great effect on weather systems. While desertification is perhaps being partly caused by global warming, these sandstorms can make global warming worse by adding to what is known as the greenhouse effect.

What can be done to slow down or stop the process of desertification? A great deal of work is already under way. Obviously first steps are to find new water sources.     75     Some types of grass also hold the soil together, and stop the wind taking it. Without these efforts, it will be harder and harder to stop the world’s deserts in their tracks, and more and more farmers will give up and head for cities. The lesson to be learnt lies beneath the sand.

A. It generally arises from two related causes.

B. It is not only the farmers and villagers who suffer.

C. They have been completely buried by the sand now.

D. Scientists are doing the research on the cause of desertification.

E. They destroy the land, as the soil dries out and is then blown away.

F. Tree planting can help, by providing barriers between desert and rich field.

G. This means that the wrong crops are planted, and need more water than is available.