黄色墙纸英语毕业论文

求本科英语专业 毕业论文一篇题目为 《 傲慢与偏见 》的幽默与讽刺 要求 符合英语专业论文要求 英文论文 字数 五千字左右 不可抄袭 要求原创 （有网站可检测） 大致 文献我已找好 可供参考 主要研究内容.： 本论文主要研究在《傲慢与偏见》这部作品中，叙述几位村镇中产阶级姑娘谈婚论嫁的故事时随处可见的幽默和讽刺。论文的主体部分首先介绍了幽默和讽刺手法产生的背景特点，让读者能大概的了解这两者的定义区别和联系；接着介绍幽默和讽刺在刻画人物形象及叙述事情发展经过中的应用；最后详细阐明故事中体现的幽默和讽刺与表现主题表达主旨的紧密关系。从而对整部作品进行尝试性的分析，通过这一部分的论述，论文自然得出结论：作者用精心挑选的语言，借幽默和讽刺最生动活泼的抒发，表达出了对人性最透彻的了解，使两者写作手法珠联璧合，不动声色却可以微言大义，《傲慢与偏见》无疑也是英国小说的幽默和讽刺传统中的一块重要基石。 摘要: 小说《傲慢与偏见》中幽默与讽刺的运用非常突出,特别是在潜移默化的心理视角和人物对话进行故事情节的叙述时，所反映出烘托人物之间的矛盾，突出、昭彰了人物的形象特点的作用。本文将针对《傲慢与偏见》中幽默与讽刺的具体应用，揭示出言语行为理论应用于文学作品赏析的可行性,这也使我们对这一理论应用于具体文本分析的有效性有了更充分的认识。 【1】 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice [M ]. London: Bantam Classic edition 1981. 34. 【2】Sperber，D. ＆Wilson，D. Irony and the use － mention distinction［A］. In:P. Cole( ed. ) Radical Pragmatics［C］. New York:Academic Press，1981:295 － 318. 【3】Sperber，D. ＆ Wilson，D. Relevance: Communication and Cognition［M］. Oxford: Bladkwell，1986 /1995. 【4】 Genette, G Narrative Discourse [ J ]. Ithaca: Cornell 1980. 69. 【5】 Percy Lubbock. The Craft of Fiction [M]. London: Jona than Cape, 1921. 117. 【6】 Lefroy, Helen. Jane Austen [J ]. Xian Global Books Publishing Company, 1998. 【7】 ]Austin , J .L. How to Do Things with Words [M].Oxford : Oxford University Press , 19621 【8】 ]Pratt , M. L. Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse [M]Bloomington, IN: Indianna University Press , 1977171 【9】 Haverkate , H. A Speech Act Analysis of Irony [J] . Journal of Pragmatics , 1990 , (14) :1001 【10】 《在理性和感性之间—谈“奥斯丁的反讽”》，林文深，[J]《 外国文学评沦》，2005年第4期 【11】胡舒莉.《傲慢与偏见》:全反讽的艺术［J］. 镇江师范学院学报，2001 年第1 期. 【12 】 朱小舟. 言语行为理论与《傲慢与偏见》中的反讽[ J ]. 外语与外语教学, 2002 (8).

The earth scale change of climate has brought a new kind of natural disaster and the developed and complicated city system is holding a latent risk of expanding the damage artificially. Also people has been spoiling the health since the immense quantity of chemicals have been produced and already used in pursuit of convenience and various toxic substances have been produced unintentionally and accumulated in environment. Therefore, We need some countermeasures from the viewpoint to prevent the city environment form disaster and to manage environmental risks. So we will develop and improve a new risk management system and a disaster prevention system to preserve and create the city environment where people feel easy and sound in their life.英语作文常见话题-环境保护 Protect EnvironmentMany people are active in fighting against unfair treatment to colored people, women , animals and so on. Right now I am talking about fighting for respect to our the environment doesn’t have a mouth to deprecate what humans have done to her, she retaliates through action. In the early years the Chinese cut down large quantities of trees, at the source of the yellow river, which led to the disappearance of big forests and terrible floods. As a result，the Huangtu plateau which was once covered with grass and forests was turned into barrens that supported fewer plants. Another example was in several developed countries. Because many chemical factories discharged poisonous gas without filtering it, cities were covered with so much poisonous gas that people were killed by the air they breathed in. What horrible scene!What we are suffering is only a small part of what the nature once suffered. If we don’t take action to show respect to the environment, we will have to face an increasingly awful should be taken to protect the environment on which we are relying. First governments should forbid destroying vegetation, rivers and lakes, oceans, as and the atmosphere as well. Second voices should be made to announce the public of the importance of protecting the environment. Third enterprises should pay special attention to the effect they have on the environment and work out solutions for the by changing the way we treat the environment can we get along well with it. Only by saving the environment can we save ourselves.

在Word里面有template的，theses就是了。

英语专业毕业论文其实格式和一般其它专业差不多，具体论文格式要以你学校提供的毕业论文模板为准，因为每个学校的论文格式多多少少都是不一样的，如果找不到合适的格式，可以百度下：普刊学术中心，也提供有很多论文格式模板和范文，可以多学习下

英语专业论文格式规范 A Contrastive Study between English and Chinese Idioms （题目：二号，黑体，加粗，居中,除了英语小词外，其他单词首字母都要大写；另外：除了题目外，论文中所有英文的字体均采用“Times New Roman”） （学院、专业、学号、作者姓名、指导教师姓名（小四号宋体字，加粗），依次排印在论文题目下，上空二行，居中） 【Abstract】 This paper centers on the different expressions of …… （英文摘要：上空二行；题目采用五号“Times New Roman”字体，加粗，置于粗体方括号【】内，顶格放置；随后的内容与前面的粗体方括号【】之间空一格，不用其他任何标点符号；采用五号“Times New Roman”字体，不加粗；单倍行距。） 【Key Words】 idiom; comparison; English; Chinese （英文关键词：题目采用五号“Times New Roman”字体，加粗，两个单词的首字母要大写，置于粗体方括号【】内，顶格放置；随后的内容与前面的粗体方括号【】之间空一格，不用任何其他标点符号，采用五号“Times New Roman”字体，不加粗，除了专有名词外，其他单词的首字母不大写，各单词之间用分号“；”隔开，分号之后空一格；最后一个关键词之后不用任何标点符号；单倍行距。） 1. Introduction (顶格，除了第一个单词及专有名词外，其他单词首字母都不要大写；标题最后不用任何标点符号，上空两行) In both English and Chinese, …. So, this essay is trying to focus on the differences between Chinese and English idoms in terms of their essential meaning, customary usage and typical expression (Chang Liang, 1993:44; Li Guangling, 1999). (段落第一行缩进4个英文字符；夹注的标注法：出现在夹注中的作者必须与文后的参考文献形成一一对应关系；注意一个或多个作者间的标点符号，时间、页码等的标注法；另外，汉语参考文献的作者要以拼音形式出现，不能出现汉语姓氏；夹注出现在标点符号之前) 2. The similarities between English idioms and Chinese idioms In English, …. And it can be clearly seen in the below examples: (1) I don’t know。我不知道。 (2) I am not a poet. 我不是诗人。 (正文中的例子以（1），（2）…为序号排列，直至最后一个例子；而①, ②…则为脚注或尾注的上标序号) 3. The differences between English idioms and Chinese idioms The characteristics of English idioms （正文章节序号编制：章的编号：1. ，2.， 3.，…；节的编号：…，…；小节的编号为：, …。小节以下层次，采用希腊数字加括号为序，如（i），（ii）…；之后再采用字母加括号，如(a), (b),…;每章题目左顶格，小四号字，加粗；每节（及小节以下）题目左顶格，小四号字，不加粗但要斜体；所有章节的题目都单独一行，最后不加任何标点符号） …. In conclusion, …. The characteristics of Chinese idioms …. Feng (1998) found some problems as shown in the following examples (注意此句中夹注的另一种写法): (9) We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. (10) People take no thought of the value of time until they lose it. …. The analysis of the differences between English and Chinese idioms … (i) …. …. (ii) …. …. 4. Conclusion …. Bibliography (References) （小四号，加粗，后面不加任何标点符号） Sanved, ed. The Oxford book of American literary anecdotes[C]. New York: OUP, 1981. 一、英语论文的标题 一篇较长的英语论文(如英语毕业论文)一般都需要标题页,其书写格式如下:第一行标题与打印纸顶端的距离约为打印纸全长的三分之一,与下行(通常为by,居中)的距离则为5cm,第三、第四行分别为作者姓名及日期(均居中)。如果该篇英语论文是学生针对某门课程而写,则在作者姓名与日期之间还需分别打上教师学衔及其姓名(如:Dr./)及本门课程的编号或名称(如:English 734或British Novel)。打印时,如无特殊要求,每一行均需double space,即隔行打印,行距约为(论文其他部分行距同此)。 就学生而言,如果英语论文篇幅较短,亦可不做标题页(及提纲页),而将标题页的内容打在正文第一页的左上方。第一行为作者姓名,与打印纸顶端距离约为,以下各行依次为教师学衔和姓、课程编号(或名称)及日期；各行左边上下对齐,并留出左右的页边空白(下同)。接下来便是论文标题及正文(日期与标题之间及标题与正文第一行之间只需隔行打印,不必留出更多空白)。 二、英语论文提纲 英语论文提纲页包括论题句及提纲本身,其规范格式如下:先在第一行(与打印纸顶端的距离仍为左右)的始端打上 Thesis 一词及冒号,空一格后再打论题句,回行时左边须与论题句的第一个字母上下对齐。主要纲目以大写罗马数字标出,次要纲目则依次用大写英文字母、阿拉伯数字和小写英文字母标出。各数字或字母后均为一句点,空出一格后再打该项内容的第一个字母；处于同一等级的纲目,其上下行左边必须对齐。需要注意的是,同等重要的纲目必须是两个以上,即:有Ⅰ应有Ⅱ,有A应有B,以此类推。如果英文论文提纲较长,需两页纸,则第二页须在右上角用小写罗马数字标出页码,即ii(第一页无需标页码)。 三、英语论文正文 有标题页和提纲页的英语论文,其正文第一页的规范格式为:论文标题居中,其位置距打印纸顶端约5cm,距正文第一行约。段首字母须缩进五格,即从第六格打起。正文第一页不必标页码(但应计算其页数),自第二页起,必须在每页的右上角(即空出第一行,在其后部)打上论文作者的姓,空一格后再用阿拉伯数字标出页码；阿拉伯数字(或其最后一位)应为该行的最后一个空格。在打印正文时尚需注意标点符号的打印格式,即:句末号(句号、问号及感叹号)后应空两格,其他标点符号后则空一格。 四、英语论文的文中引述 正确引用作品原文或专家、学者的论述是写好英语论文的重要环节；既要注意引述与论文的有机统一,即其逻辑性,又要注意引述格式 （即英语论文参考文献）的规范性。引述别人的观点,可以直接引用,也可以间接引用。无论采用何种方式,论文作者必须注明所引文字的作者和出处。目前美国学术界通行的做法是在引文后以圆括弧形式注明引文作者及出处。现针对文中引述的不同情况,将部分规范格式分述如下。 1.若引文不足三行,则可将引文有机地融合在论文中。如: The divorce of Arnold's personal desire from his inheritance results in “the familiar picture of Victorian man alone in an alien universe”(Roper9). 这里,圆括弧中的Roper为引文作者的姓(不必注出全名)；阿拉伯数字为引文出处的页码(不要写成)；作者姓与页码之间需空一格,但不需任何标点符号；句号应置于第二个圆括弧后。 2.被引述的文字如果超过三行,则应将引文与论文文字分开,如下例所示: Whitman has proved himself an eminent democratic representative and precursor, and his “Democratic Vistas” is an admirable and characteristic diatribe. And if one is sorry that in it Whitman is unable to conceive the extreme crises of society, one is certain that no society would be tolerable whoses citizens could not find refreshment in its buoyant democratic idealism.(Chase 165) 这里的格式有两点要加以注意。一是引文各行距英语论文的左边第一个字母十个空格,即应从第十一格打起；二是引文不需加引号,末尾的句号应标在最后一个词后。 3.如需在引文中插注,对某些词语加以解释,则要使用方括号(不可用圆括弧)。如: points out that“he [Charles Darw in] has been an important factor in the debate between evolutionary theory and biblical creationism”(9). 值得注意的是,本例中引文作者的姓已出现在引导句中,故圆括弧中只需注明引文出处的页码即可。 4.如果拟引用的文字中有与论文无关的词语需要删除,则需用省略号。如果省略号出现在引文中则用三个点,如出现在引文末,则用四个点,最后一点表示句号,置于第二个圆括弧后(一般说来,应避免在引文开头使用省略号)；点与字母之间,或点与点之间都需空一格。如: Mary Shelley hated tyranny and“looked upon the poor as pathetic victims of the social system and upon the rich and highborn...with undisguised scorn and contempt...(Nitchie 43). 5.若引文出自一部多卷书,除注明作者姓和页码外,还需注明卷号。如: Professor Chen Jia's A History of English Literature aimed to give Chinese readers“a historical survey of English literature from its earliest beginnings down to the 20thcentury”(Chen,1:i). 圆括弧里的1为卷号,小写罗马数字i为页码,说明引文出自第1卷序言(引言、序言、导言等多使用小写的罗马数字标明页码)。此外,书名 A History of English Literature 下划了线；规范的格式是:书名,包括以成书形式出版的作品名(如《失乐园》)均需划线,或用斜体字；其他作品,如诗歌、散文、短篇小说等的标题则以双引号标出,如“To Autumn”及前面出现的“Democratic Vistas”等。 6.如果英语论文中引用了同一作者的两篇或两篇以上的作品,除注明引文作者及页码外,还要注明作品名。如: Bacon condemned Platoas“an obstacle to science”(Farrington, Philosophy 35). Farrington points out that Aristotle's father Nicomachus, a physician, probably trained his son in medicine(Aristotle 15). 这两个例子分别引用了Farrington的两部著作,故在各自的圆括弧中分别注出所引用的书名,以免混淆。两部作品名均为缩写形式(如书名太长,在圆括弧中加以注明时均需使用缩写形式),其全名分别为 Founder of Scientific Philosophy 及 The Philosophy of Francis Baconand Aristotle。 7.评析诗歌常需引用原诗句,其引用格式如下例所示。 When Beowulf dives upwards through the water and reaches the surface,“The surging waves, great tracts of water, / were all cleansed...”(). 这里,被引用的诗句以斜线号隔开,斜线号与前后字母及标点符号间均需空一格；圆括弧中小写的1是line的缩写；21不必写成1621。如果引用的诗句超过三行,仍需将引用的诗句与论文文字分开(参见第四项第2点内容)。 五、英语论文的文献目录 论文作者在正文之后必须提供论文中全部引文的详细出版情况,即文献目录页。美国高校一般称此页为 Works Cited, 其格式须注意下列几点: 1.目录页应与正文分开,另页打印,置于正文之后。 2.目录页应视为英语论文的一页,按论文页码的顺序在其右上角标明论文作者的姓和页码；如果条目较多,不止一页,则第一页不必标出作者姓和页码(但必须计算页数),其余各页仍按顺序标明作者姓和页码。标题Works Cited与打印纸顶端的距离约为,与第一条目中第一行的距离仍为；各条目之间及各行之间的距离亦为,不必留出更多空白。 3.各条目内容顺序分别为作者姓、名、作品名、出版社名称、出版地、出版年份及起止页码等；各条目应严格按各作者姓的首字母顺序排列,但不要给各条目编码,也不必将书条与杂志、期刊等条目分列。 4.各条目第一行需顶格打印,回行时均需缩进五格,以将该条目与其他条目区分开来。 现将部分较为特殊的条目分列如下,并略加说明,供读者参考。 Two or More Books by the Same Author Brooks, Cleanth. Fundamentals of Good Writing: A Handbook of Modern Rhetoric. NewYork: Harcourt, 1950. ---The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren. New Haven: Yale UP,1963. 引用同一作者的多部著作,只需在第一条目中注明该作者姓名,余下各条目则以三条连字符及一句点代替该作者姓名；各条目须按书名的第一个词(冠词除外)的字母顺序排列。 An Author with an Editor Shake speare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Ed. Louis B. Wright. New York: Washington Square, 1959. 本条目将作者 Shakespeare 的姓名排在前面,而将编者姓名(不颠倒)放在后面,表明引文出自 The Tragedy of Macbeth；如果引文出自编者写的序言、导言等,则需将编者姓名置前,如: Blackmur, Richard . The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. By Henry James. New York: Scribner's, . 如果引言与著作为同一人所写,则其格式如下例所示(By后只需注明作者姓即可): Emery, Donald. Preface. English Fundamentals. By Emery. London: Macmillan, . A Multivolume Work Browne, Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. Ed. Geoffrey Keynes. 4 vols. London: Faber, 1928. Browne, Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. Ed. Geoffrey Keynes. . London: Faber, 1928. 4 vols. 第一条目表明该著作共4卷,而论文作者使用了各卷内容；第二条目则表明论文作者只使用了第2卷中的内容。 A Selection from an Anthology Abram, M. H.“English Romanticism: The Spirit of the Age.” Romanticism Reconsidered. Ed. Northrop Frye. New York: Columbia UP,. 被引用的英语论文名须用引号标出,并注意将英语论文名后的句点置于引号内。条目末尾必须注明该文在选集中的起止页码。 Articles in Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers Otto, Mary L.“Child Abuse: Group Treatment for Parents.” Personnel and Guidance Journal 62(1984): 336-48

What Environmental Disaster? We have developed a huge and thriving society; and in the process we deforest huge sections of land for living and livestock grazing. This decreases oxygen and increases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; possibly adding to global warming though the greenhouse effect. This mass population produces mass amounts of waste, so to deal with that we just throw it into the ground, which in turn contaminates our water supply and contributes to further deforestation. We develop motorized transportation; and then burn non-renewable fossil fuels that put lead, carbon monoxide, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, ozone, excess carbon dioxide, and other harmful particulates into the atmosphere (Skjel & Whorton 95-108). This produces dangers like smog and cancer and contributes to global warming. In the production of fuel we exhaust oil reserves and pollute the oceans through spills from tankers. This endangers wilderness and wildlife. We produce an inert, easily producible propellant for aerosols; and then realize it's only inert on the ground. Once it's bombarded by UV ray in the upper atmosphere it releases a highly destructive ion that wreaks havoc on the protective ozone layer shielding us from those same deadly UV rays, creating a hole in the layer allowing the radiation through, increasing cancer and other genetic defects. We build rockets capable of going into space and breaking the earth's gravitational pull; and then immediately start to pollute this new environment with spent rockets and boosters along with other miscellaneous particles of debris (Curran and Haw 3). Michael Crichton writes, "What we call nature is a complex system of far greater subtlety than we are willing to accept. We make a simplified view of nature and then botch it all up. ...You have to understand what you don't understand. How many times must the point be made? How many times must we see the evidence? We build the Aswan Dam and claim it is going to revitalize the country. Instead, it destroys the fertile Nile Delta, produces parasitic infestation, and wrecks the Egyptian economy" (Jurassic Park 91). To the common person our current situation contains little hope. All the advancement and improvements have done little to further our species. With each one has come a new environmental issue. You almost need to evaluate each situation in terms of positives and negatives. However, at the root of all this chaos you'll find anthropocentrism, a human centered way of thinking. This way of thinking as an attitude, and moral theory, centers on humans as the highest of the significant beings. The theory views nature and the environment in terms of their use value for humans only (Michaels 7). So all of the above developments with costs can be justified through their usefulness for humans. The human centered ethic is deeply rooted in the past through the ancient Greek and Roman societies. To pursue further development based on this ethic would be disastrous. With our current numbers of population and rate of growth we're just asking for an environmental catastrophe of the highest magnitude to act as a wake up call. Granted that a great deal of the population realizes that unless action is taken today then we'll have to face that disaster tomorrow. The principle question is how to go about alleviating and repairing the damage we've already caused. We also need to address how to prevent doing further damage for the sake of future generations. The only problem with this view is that it is still a human centered ethic. It still sees the environment as a thing to be utilized by humans for their own pleasure. It doesn't do enough. The problems aren't getting fixed. Better ways of doing things are being researched, but the underlying problem is not receiving any attention. So the environmental downward spiral is only slowed down and is not fixed. We've still got the same problems. To take the conservationist attitude further you would see all sentient beings as holding moral standing and due consideration. This includes most of the animals in the world; any animal capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. Through these experiences you form the basis for the extended moral theory. If the animals perish through their habitat's destruction or outside influences, then their future pleasures will no longer be. When you take into account whole societies and communities of animals then the added value to the environment increases exponentially as you combine their happiness with the happiness never experienced by their future generations (Singer 275-276). So by taking this viewpoint you place even more intrinsic value on the environment through the experiences of all sentient animals involved. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume that we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion" (The Lost World 7-8). Granted this does not present a case for sentience on the basis of pain vs. pleasure, but it does present an interesting way to think about classifying sentience. So you can see drawing the cut off line for even lower animals could present considerable challenges. You have trouble reaching an adequate definition of "sentient." You are now facing how much awareness a creature has to perceive pain and pleasure along with joy from anticipation of future events to consider it morally significant. If a cat is significant, but not a fish, what makes the cat a moral patient while the fish is not? Where is there a difference? There is a problem of arbitrarily assigning moral value when actual feelings and emotions are beyond description. To go a step further away from human sentience you would hold all living thing to be of moral value. This would then bring plants and non-sentient animals into the picture. This view holds life as the ultimate intrinsic value. Beings have moral value in just being alive. So life is viewed as an intrinsic good, and no verifying pleasures or pains being experienced are needed to allot this worth. Anything living is held with a reverence for that life (Singer 277-278). 2】The Environmental Revolution - We Can Make a Difference! Since the first time having blown bubbles in my Open Water class, I've logged over 100 dives. This love for diving has evolved into an intense passion towards protecting the ocean, and all of its inhabitants. I've chosen to put my love for the ocean into action, as an environmentalist. Actually, this passion extends out towards efforts that look to help all the planetary domains gain protection. As such, I appreciate when others take the time educate me on those other realms for which I know less about. To be an environmentalist, one must choose the cause which resonates within ones sole, and run with it. One must be willing to educate people about the environment while being open to education from those people who support other causes. Together we can help each other towards learning how to become a true "Environmentalist". We must all encourage positive collaboration and education as opposed to being against something. For example, sharks are being decimated to near extinction simply for their fins. The fins are used to make Shark Fin soup, a delicacy popular particularly in Taiwan and Singapore. It would be easy to blame these communities for creating the demand. However, in conversing with Asian environmentalists, they liken the culture around eating Shark Fin soup to the culture surrounding Americans eating turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. There are ongoing efforts to educate these people, by members of their own community, on just how dangerous this cultural practice is and the devastating impact this could have on their (our) world if all the sharks were to disappear as a result. Environmentalists everywhere are making a difference! Famous restaurants have taken endangered Swordfish off their menus, these same restaurants are buying wild-caught salmon (and boosting the economy of local fisheries in the process), laundromats have started selling green detergent, this just to name a few of these enlightened changes. This is how the "Environmentalist" can begin the revolution. Just find something you believe in and make a stand. One by one, we can make our planet a cleaner place to live, steeped in healthy bio-diversity for generations to come. 3Giving 1% to Protect Our Environment Though most of the world's surface is covered by water, since the Earth is so large relative to human horizons, there doesn't appear to be a shortage of land. However, when one begins to think of land in terms of a human resource, ., a producer of food, a provider of wood, an expanse for passage, one realizes that many portions are either too lacking in nutrients, too high in elevation, too prone to flooding, or too cold or ice-ridden for extensive use. Furthermore, habitable lands are becoming less abundant due to desertification (the expansion of deserts due to the misuse of land), agricultural expansions and rising sea levels. Since humans aren't the only species that need land, it isn't surprising that this resource is becoming limited for other forms of life too. In part as a result of this added stress on living things, we are also witnessing extinctions of grand proportions-at a rate of many thousands species per year. Since these losses are largely due to human actions, such as deforestation and non-native species introduction, many are beginning to pay attention to how we use and protect land. Recent ecological research has also recently provided a message of hope concerning the future well-being of life on this planet. In the world today, scientists estimate that the Earth is losing at least 1 percent of species every ten years, and the percentage loss may be close to 5 percent. Even if only the lower rate persists, the Earth will have lost near half of its biological diversity by 2070. Can this be possible? Many esteemed scientists think so. While the future appears bleak, several recent insights tell us that we have the potential to significantly reduce what amounts to a biotic holocaust, one not witnessed on Earth for over 60,000,000 years. While there are hopeful signs in the area of human activities (such as increased acreage of nature preserves and national parks), the hope of which I speak of here stems from specific characteristics of the other forms of life which may enable us to mutually coexist in the long term. The Earth's organisms are wonderfully varied in size, shape, function, behavior, and genetic code. One only need to consider that there are ~ 15,000 species of butterflies and ~50,000 species of mushrooms worldwide to begin to fathom the immensity of variety that this planet has. Yet, as different as the species come, the bulk of living things are also similar in a couple of very important ways. Most living things live in relatively small regions and do not travel far from where they or their parents were born. In fact, recent biological and ecological work has determined that most land species are very particular about where they live. As opposed to humans whose choice of home is largely driven by economic and political forces (mobility driven by availability of wealth or forced relocation), flora and fauna find themselves in locations for which they are adapted. We now know that many species of insects and plants have a very restricted range in which they found. Very few organisms are ubiquitous like we are. It goes without saying that you aren't going to find a Great Blue Heron or a Grizzly visiting Antarctica or climbing Mt. Everest; yet you might find the snow bear (recently discovered and previously known as the Abominable Snowman) doing the latter. Recognizing that most living things are rather localized during their lifetimes has profound implications, both hopeful and cautious. On the one hand, it suggests that we can learn a lot about species by parking our scientific minds in specific locations. On the other hand, it means that if we destroy even small areas of the globe we are likely causing great and even irreversible destruction to the species that are found there. We have also determined that there are specific locations on our planet where a disproportionate number of species live. For our species, Asia serves as the homeland for most. In fact more than 60 percent of humans lives on this largest of continents (which only makes up 24 percent of the land surface on the planet). With other life forms, geographic concentrations sometimes defy description. We only recently became aware that the vast majority of terrestrial (as distinguished from oceanic or riparian) species collectively live on just 1 percent of the Earth's land surface. (If humans lived at a comparable concentration level, we'd all have to cluster together in an area roughly the size of Antarctica or twice that of Australia.) This mind-blowing realization has prompted those that have been struggling to protect organisms a new way of thinking about such protection. They have concluded that if we humans could somehow find a way to avoid disturbing just 1-2 percent of the land surface, nearly 70 percent of the world's terrestrial species might be able to survive. Recently some conservationists have refocused their attention on these unique locations. The regions of the globe that contain such a splendid array of biological diversity have been named "hot spots," a name that communicates their critical status. In what has to be the most beautiful books I have seen, Hotspots represents the collective work of scientists Russ and Cristina Mittermeier and Norman Myers as well as photographer Patricio Robles Gil. In this oversized volume, these four scholars have assembled more than three hundred vivid photographs of some of the world's endangered species and threatened ecosystems. These absolutely breath-taking images come from the what they refer to as "the 25 most critically important regions" in the world. These regions originally constituted almost 12 percent of the world's land surface but now, due to human pressure at many levels, only a little more than 1 percent remains intact. What makes these locations, which are found on all continents except Antarctica, so "hot" is that they are home to hordes of the Earth's plants and animals and they face imminent danger from a variety of human activities. The Hotshot authors and others strongly believe that the global community can do wonders if these areas move to the top of our priority list. But what will have to happen for these spots to be protected? There are no simple answers to this central question. Unfortunately, those of us in the United States who have the luxury of time to even ponder such questions, face many obvious difficulties. First, nearly all of the hotspots are located outside of our territorial boundaries, exceptions being the forests of Oregon and California as well as portions of Southern Florida (namely the Keys and the Everglades). Key hotspots are found in New Zealand, Madagascar, and Indonesia as well as the continental parts of south-east Asia. Obviously we cannot expect that we will be able to force other countries to enact and enforce laws that will greatly reduce biological degradation. Yet, while many other countries have ratified the Biodiversity Treaty that was drafted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, it has never reached the floors of the . Congress for a vote; Canada, Japan, and the European Union are among those to ratify it. By this inaction our nation apparently lacks the wherewithal to support global conservation efforts as a matter of principle. However, given that the wealthy nations in concert with international banks promote unsustainable extraction of resources in the world's developing countries, it would appear that we have an obligation to do so. If our national policy makers are unwilling to commit themselves to the protection of global ecosystems and species, we still have ourselves to look to for sources of positive change. All of us have tremendous purchasing power, especially in comparison to the majority of the other human residents on this planet; Barry Bearak, a Pulitzer Prize-winner journalist who recently spoke at Knox College's convocation, referred to the residents of the United States as "filthy rich," a conclusion he came to after spending a great deal of time in the poorer regions of the world, particularly Afghanistan and India. What we buy makes a difference. The environmental campaign to support shade coffee rather than sun coffee is just one of many attempts for the consumer to support sustainable practices in regions of great ecological diversity. According to the Northwest Shad Coffee Campaign, shade coffee agricultural allows for the extraction of a desired resource but at the same time allows between 3-8 times as many birds species to persist not to mention many more mid-size mammals as well as amphibians and beetles. Coffee is also a particularly important commodity in terms of the health of ecological systems because the countries that produce the bulk of it are precisely the same countries that are home to the majority of the world's species; the countries of Brazil, Bolivia, Indonesia, Vietnam collectively produce ~40 percent of the 17 billion pounds of coffee that are harvested each year (folks, that's more than 3 pounds per person!). Burdensome debts also force many developing countries to endlessly delay infrastructure investment. Debt-for-nature swaps, an idea proposed by Dr. Thomas Lovejoy of the World Wildlife Federation in the mid-1980s, have enabled poor countries to relieve foreign debt and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to increase commitment to conservation programs both at the same time. In these swaps, NGOs pay off a poor country's debt to a bank or well-to-do country at greatly reduced costs in order to establish agreements for investment in national parks, for example. While not a cure-all, these efforts have begun the paradigm shift from unabated expansion and unhealthy extraction to one supportive of saving natural ecosystems and securing the health and welfare of all human populations. Threats to these locations represent massive scale intrusions taken by societies found on every continent. Unfortunately, there is so much that will be lost if these "special" places aren't quickly protected from future degradation. On the bright side though, so much of the world's genetic diversity lives in just a couple handfuls of "hotspots" that if these locations were saved hordes of species would be able to persist into the next millennium. The time is now to respond to this fairly recent observation and insight. It is time for the world to begin to act like a civilized 21st Century society. It is incumbent upon us, those with time and wealth, to maintain the momentum that others have started. The masses of life forms are relying on us to make the best attempt at this daunting yet critical task. Hopefully our species will be sensible enough to leave at least 1 percent of land alone, so that other life forms may continue to exist. Do we need all 100 percent? 写不下了，如果觉得不够，邮箱可否留一下，我继续补充