英语时文泛读 Current News Articles for Extensive Reading

1. 英语时文泛读Current News Articles for Extensive Reading BOOK I

2. Environmental Protection

3. I. Overview • In this unit, you will read 3 passages concerning environmental problems and the effort different countries are taking to solve them. Read them and try to think of some solutions.

4. Structure • This unit talks about some problems our Mother Earth is facing that will definitely help us to be more aware of the protection of the planet on which we and our offspring are living.

5. New Orleans Disaster Serves up a Tough Lesson on Environment New Orleans is a typical example of unsustainable urban development that shares similar problems with some other coastline cities in the US. Text A

6. It’s about the disappearance of the rain forest in Sumatra, Indonesia, and its impact on the environment and the livelihood of the local residents. Forest Loss in Sumatra Becomes a Global Issue Text B

7. It’s about the joint effort to cut emissions and how the plan works. Nine States in Plan to Cut Emissions by Power Plant Text C

8. Focus of this session

9. II. Text A New Orleans Disaster Serves up a Tough Lesson on Environment • Main Idea of the Text • It starts with Hurricane Katrina and discusses the problems of New Orleans when storms come as a result of unsustainable development of the city.

10. Author Richard Ingham is AFP’s international coordinator of science, health and environment coverage. His special interests are climate change, AIDS, space exploration, genetics and bird flu. He spent 10 years as a reporter in Brussels and Berlin and as regional news editor in Asia, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Czechoslovak revolution and the Hong Kong handover. In a 25-year career, he has filed from places ranging from East Timor, Goose Bay and Lhasa to French Guiana, Ouagadougou and the slums of Nairobi. Background Information

11. Background Information Source • Agence France-Presse (AFP), French cooperative news agency, one of the world’s great wire news services. It is based in Paris, where it was founded under its current name in 1944, but its roots go to the Bureau Havas, which was created in 1832 by Charles-Louis Havas, who translated reports from foreign papers and distributed them to Paris and provincial newspapers.

12. New Orleans A city in Louisiana in the southern US, next to the Mississippi River. It was originally a French city, and its style of cooking, old buildings, and traditions were influenced by French culture. It is famous for the way it celebrates Mardi Gras every year and also for the music played there. Many people consider New Orleans as the place where jazz music was originally developed. Cultural Notes

13. The French Quarter in New Orleans, founded as a military-style grid of seventy squares in 1718 by French Canadian naval officer Jean Baptiste Bienville, the French Quarter of New Orleans has charted a course of urbanism for parts of four centuries. Bienville served as governor for financier John Law’s Company of the Indies, which in naming the city for the Regent Duc d’Orleans sought to curry Court favor before failing spectacularly in the “Great Mississippi Bubble.” Cultural Notes

14. The Netherlands’ practice of building houses on pontoons The Dutch are gearing up for climate change with amphibious floating houses. If rivers rise above their banks, the houses simply rise upwards as well. The first town based on this model, numbering 12,000 floating houses, might conceivably be built close to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. Such innovation could be good news for hurricane and flood-stunned America. Cultural Notes

15. Language Points Key Words & Expressions • reckless (para.1): • not caring or worrying about the possible bad or dangerous results of your actions 不顾后果的，鲁莽的 • e.g. a reckless driver （莽撞的驾车人） • unconcerned 不关心的、不在意的 • e.g. reckless squandering of public funds （肆意浪费公共资金 ）

16. Language Points • laid-back (para. 2): • relaxed and seeming not to be worried about anything 休闲的；放心的 • e.g. • I don’t know how you can be so laid-back about your exams. （我真不明白你怎么对考试一点都不担心呢。 ）

17. Language Points • go through the roof (informal) (para. 2): • if a price, cost etc goes through the roof, it increases to a very high level （价格等）猛涨 • e.g. As a result of the war, oil prices have gone through the roof. （由于战争的结果，油价飚升。） • hit the roof (para. 2): • to suddenly become very angry 非常生气，火冒三丈 • e.g. Put that back before Dad sees you and hits the roof! （快把它放回原位，爸爸回来看见又得火冒三丈了。）

18. Language Points Difficult Sentences • Yet even sparkling modern cities are flawed. Shanghai, for instance, may be prone to inundation because of subsidence, inflicted by the unbridled building of skyscrapers and excess pumping, now curbed, of the water table. (para. 15) • 本句较长，“inflicted by the unbridled building of skyscrapers and excess pumping” 修饰subsidence，而“now curbed”又修饰“inflicted by the unbridled building of skyscrapers and excess pumping”。