高考英语 3500 词・语境速记【198】|地球在发烧,我们不能假装看不见 ——24 个高频词

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If you are under thirty, you have never experienced a normal summer. Every year since 2015 has been among the hottest on record. The temperature does not just rise a little. It breaks records, then breaks them again the next year. This is not a coincidence. It is the result of more than a century of burning fossilfuels, cutting down forests, and pumping greenhousegases into the atmosphere. The planet has a fever, and the fever is getting worse.

The consequences are no longer predictions. They are the news. droughts turn farmland into dust. floods swallow entire neighborhoods. hurricanes grow stronger as the oceans warm. glaciers that took thousands of years to form are melting in decades. Sea levels are rising, threatening coastal cities from Shanghai to Miami. species are disappearing faster than at any time since the dinosaurs. This is not a future problem. It is happening now.

Yet the world's response has been slow. Governments make promises at conferences but fail to keep them. corporations spend millions on advertising their green commitment while continuing to pollute. Individuals feel helpless, thinking one person cannot make a difference. But the truth is that change comes from both directions: from the top, through policy and regulation, and from the bottom, through millions of small choices that add up to a shift in how society lives.

There is still time, but not much. Every year of delay makes the problem harder to solve. The good news is that clean energy is now cheaper than coal in most of the world. Electric cars are becoming affordable. Young people everywhere are demanding action. The climate crisis is the greatest test of our generation. Will we be the generation that finally woke up, or the one that looked away? The answer is being written right now, in every choice we make.

如果你不到三十岁，你从未经历过一个"正常"的夏天。2015年以来的每一年都在有记录以来最热的年份之列。温度不只是上升一点点。它打破纪录，然后第二年又打破纪录。这不是巧合。这是一个多世纪燃烧化石燃料、砍伐森林、向大气排放温室气体的结果。地球在发烧，而且烧得越来越厉害。后果不再是预测。它们是新闻。干旱把农田变成尘土。洪水吞没整个社区。飓风随着海洋变暖而变得更强。形成了数千年的冰川在几十年内融化。海平面正在上升，威胁着从上海到迈阿密的沿海城市。物种消失的速度比恐龙时代以来任何时候都快。这不是未来的问题。它正在发生。然而世界的反应一直很慢。政府在会议上做出承诺却不兑现。企业花数百万广告宣传他们的绿色承诺，同时继续污染。个人感到无助，认为一个人不能改变什么。但真相是改变来自两个方向：自上而下，通过政策和法规；自下而上，通过数百万个小选择，累积成社会生活方式的转变。还有时间，但不多了。每拖延一年都会让问题更难解决。好消息是，在世界大部分地区，清洁能源现在比煤炭便宜。电动汽车正变得负担得起。各地的年轻人都在要求行动。气候危机是我们这一代人最大的考验。我们会是终于醒来的那一代，还是移开目光的那一代？答案正在被书写，就在我们做出的每一个选择中。