45. Allison Fleece and her company are meant to help women change their mindset about their life and be successful with the support of their peers.

　　Section C

　　Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.

　　The planet is “way off track” in dealing with climate change, a new United Nations report says, and experts declared that climate change is a far greater threat than the coronavirus (新冠病毒). “It is important that all the attention that needs to be given to fight this disease does not distract us from the need to defeat climate change,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday.

　　Although emissions have been reduced due to the virus, Guterres noted that “we will not fight climate change with a virus. Whilst the disease is expected to be temporary, climate change has been a phenomenon for many years, and will remain with us for decades and require constant action. “We count the cost in human lives and livelihoods as droughts, wildfires, floods and extreme storms take their deadly toll,” Guterres said.

　　The report confirmed that 2019 was the second-warmest year on record and the past decade the hottest in human history. 2019 ended with a global average temperature that was 1.1 degree Celsius above estimated pre-industrial levels, second only to the record set in 2016, when a very strong El Niño event contributed to an increased global temperature atop the overall warming trend.

　　“We are currently way off track to meeting either the 1.5°C or 2°C targets that the Paris Agreement calls for,” wrote Guterres in the report. “Greenhouse gas concentrations are at the highest levels in 3 million years—when the Earth’s temperature was as much as 3 degrees hotter and sea levels some 15 meters higher,” said Guterres at a joint press conference with World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas at UN headquarters in New York.

　　The main greenhouse gases that cause global warming are carbon dioxide and methane, which are emitted from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. “Given that greenhouse gas levels continue to increase, the warming will continue. A recent decadal forecast indicates that a new annual global temperature record is likely in the next five years. It is a matter of time,” said Taalas. “We just had the warmest January on record. Winter was unseasonably mild in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Smoke and pollutants from damaging fires in Australia circumnavigated the globe, causing a spike in carbon dioxide emissions.”