新视野大学英语第三版B4U4 TextA 课文中英对照版
高考信息平台-教师节感想
unit4 TextA
Achieving sustainable
environmentalism
实现可持续性发展的环保主义
1
Environmental sensitivity is now as required an
attitude in polite society as is, say, belief in
democracy or disapproval of plastic surgery.
But now that everyone from Ted Turner to George H.
W.
Bush has claimed love for Mother Earth, how
are we to choose among the dozens of conflicting
proposals, regulations and laws advanced by
congressmen and constituents alike in the name of
the
environment? Clearly, not everything with
an environmental claim is worth doing. How do we
segregate
the best options and consolidate our
varying interests into a single, sound policy?
在上流社会,对环境的敏感就如同信仰民主、反对整容一样,是一种不可或缺的态度。然而,既然从泰德·特纳
到
乔治·W.H.布什,每个人都声称自己热爱地球母亲,那么,在由议员、选民之类的人以环境名义而
提出的众多的相
互矛盾的提案、规章和法规中,我们又该如何做出选择呢?显而易见,并不是每一项冠以
环境保护名义的事情都
值得去做。我们怎样才能分离出最佳选择,并且把我们各自不同的兴趣统一在同一
个合理的政策当中呢?
2 There is a simple way.
First, differentiate between environmental
luxuries and environmental
necessities.
Luxuries are those things that would be nice to
have if costless. Necessities are those
things
we must have regardless. Call this distinction the
definitive rule of sane environmentalism,
which stipulates that combating ecological
change that directly threatens the health and
safety of
people is an environmental
necessity. All else is luxury.
有一种简便的方法。首先要区分什
么是环境奢侈品,什么是环境必需品。奢侈品是指那些无需人类付出代价就
能拥有的给人美好感受的东西
。必需品则是指那些无论付出什么代价,都一定要去拥有的东西。这一区分原则
可以被称为理性环保主义
的至高原则。它规定,对那些直接威胁人类健康与安全的生态变化采取应对措施是环
境保护的必需品,而
其他则都属于奢侈品。
3 For example, preserving the
atmosphere —stopping ozone depletion and the
greenhouse effect —is
an environmental
necessity. Recently, scientists reported that
ozone damage is far worse than
previously
thought. Ozone depletion has a correlation not
only with skin cancer and eye problems, it
also destroys the ocean's ecology, the
beginning of the food chain atop which we humans
sit.
例,保护大气层——阻止臭氧损耗及控制温室效应——是环境保护的必需品。近来,科学家报
告说臭氧层遭受破
坏的程度远比我们先前认为的要严重得多。臭氧损耗不仅与皮肤癌及眼疾有关,而且它
还会破坏海洋生态。而
海洋生态是食物链的起点,人类则位于该食物链的顶端。
4 The possible thermal consequences of
the greenhouse effect are far deadlier: melting
ice caps,
flooded coastlines, disrupted
climate, dry plains and, ultimately, empty
breadbaskets. The American
Midwest feeds
people at all corners of the atlas. With the
planetary climate changes, are we prepared
to
see Iowa take on New Mexico's desert climate, or
Siberia take on Iowa's moderate climate?
温室效应所
可能引发的热效应是非常具有毁灭性的:冰川融化、海岸线被淹没、气候遭受破坏、平原干涸,最终
食物
消失殆尽。美国中西部地区的粮食供养着全世界。随着全球气候的变化,我们难道准备看到衣阿华州变成
新墨西哥州的沙漠气候,而西伯利亚变成衣阿华州的温和气候吗?
5 Ozone
depletion and the greenhouse effect are human
disasters, and they are urgent because they
directly threaten humanity and are not easily
reversible. A sane environmentalism, the only kind
of
environmentalism that will strike a chord
with the general public, begins by openly
declaring that
nature is here to serve human
beings. A sane environmentalism is entirely a
human focused regime: It
calls upon humanity
to preserve nature, but merely within the
parameters of self-survival.
臭氧损耗和温室效应是人类的灾难,而
且是需要紧急处理的灾难,因为它们直接威胁到人类,且后果很难扭转。
理性环保主义——唯一能够引起
公众共鸣的环保主张——首先公开声明,自然是服务于人类的。理性环保主义
是一种完全以人类为中心的
思想。它号召人类保护自然,但是是在人类自我生存得到保证的前提之下。
6 Of
course, this human focus runs against the grain of
a contemporary environmentalism that
indulges
in overt earth worship. Some people even allege
that the earth is a living organism. This kind
of environmentalism likes to consider itself
spiritual. It is nothing more than sentimental. It
takes, for
example, a highly selective view of
the kindness of nature, one that is incompatible
with the reality of
natural disasters. My
nature worship stops with the twister that came
through Kansas or the dreadful
rains in
Bangladesh that eradicated whole villages and left
millions homeless.
当然,这种以人类为中心的主张与当下盛行的环保主义是格格
不入的,后者已经沉溺于对地球的公然崇拜。有的
人甚至声称地球是一个活的生物体。这种环保主义喜欢
把自己看作是神圣的,其实它只是感情用事而已。比如,
在自然是否友善的问题上,当下的环保主义采取
了高度选择性的片面的观点,而这种观点与自然造成的灾难这
一现实是不相协调的。当龙卷风肆虐堪萨斯
州,当瓢泼大雨袭击孟加拉国,毁灭了整座整座的村庄,使几百万人
失去家园的时候,我对自然的崇拜便
停止了。
7 A non-sentimental environmentalism
is one founded on Protagoras's idea that
all
things.
of environmental arguments. Take the
current debate raging over oil drilling in a
corner of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge
(ANWR). Environmentalist coalitions, mobilizing
against a legislative action
working
its way through the US Congress for the
legalization of such exploration, propagate that
Americans should be preserving and economizing
energy instead of drilling for it. This is a false
either-or proposition. The US does need a
sizable energy tax to reduce consumption. But it
needs
more production too. Government
estimates indicate a nearly fifty-fifty chance
that under the ANWR
rests one of the five
largest oil fields ever discovered in America. It
seems illogical that we are not
finding safe
ways to drill for oil in the ANWR.
非感情用事的环保主义是
建立在普罗泰哥拉的格言“人是万物的尺度”的基础上的。在建立人类权威的过程中,
这条原则会帮助我
们梳理各种错综复杂的关于环境保护的争议。就以当前关于是否在北极国家野生动物保护
区的某一角落开
采石油的激烈争论为例吧。环保主义者联盟动员人们反对目前正在试图通过美国国会审议、
使这一开采行
为变得合法化的一项立法行动。他们散布说美国应该保护并且节约能源而不是开采能源。这其
实是一个错
误的非此即彼的主张。美国确实需要征收高额的能源税以减少能源消耗,但同时也需要生产更多的
能源。
政府的估测表明,在北极国家野生动物保护区的地下蕴藏着美国五大油田之一的可能性几乎到达50%。
我们没有寻找安全的方法开采北极国家野生动物保护区地下的石油,这看上去是不符合情理的。
8 The US has just come through a war fought in
part over oil. Energy dependence costs Americans
not
just dollars but lives. It is a bizarre
sentimentalism that would deny oil that is
peacefully attainable
because it risks
disrupting the birthing grounds of Arctic caribou.
美国刚刚经历了一场战争,其部分原因就是为了获取石油。对能源的依赖使美国不但付出了金钱的代价,
而且也
付出了生命的代价。就因为可能破坏北美驯鹿的繁衍地而放弃能够以和平手段获得的石油,这是一
种十分怪异
的感情用事。
9 I like the caribou as
much as the next person. And I would be rather
sorry if their mating patterns
were disturbed.
But you can't have your cake and eat it too. And
in the standoff of the welfare of
caribou
versus reducing an oil reliance that gets people
killed in wars, I choose people over caribou
every time.
我像别人一样喜欢驯鹿。如果他们的交配模式受到干扰,我会感到非
常遗憾。但是,鱼和熊掌不能兼得。是要保
护驯鹿,还是要为了避免人们在战争中丧生而减少对石油的依
赖,面对这一僵局,我每次都会选择人类而不是驯
鹿。
10 I feel
similarly about the spotted owl in Oregon. I am no
enemy of the owl. If it could be preserved
at
a negligible cost, I would agree that it should be
—biodiversity is after all necessary to the
ecosystem. But we must remember that not every
species is needed to keep that diversity.
Sometimes
aesthetic aspects of life have to be
sacrificed to more fundamental ones. If the cost
of preserving
the spotted owl is the
loss of livelihood for 30,000 logging families, I
choose the families (with their
saws and
chopped timber) over the owl.
我对俄勒冈州的斑点猫头
鹰的态度也是一样。我绝不是仇视猫头鹰。如果花很少的代价就可以保护猫头鹰,我
会赞同它应受保护—
—毕竟,生物多样性对生态系统是非常必要的。但是,我们必须记住,保持生物多样性并不意
味着要留住
每一种物种。有时候,为了更加根本的利益,我们不得不牺牲一部分生活中美的东西。如果为了保护
斑点
猫头鹰而让三万伐木工家庭失去生计,我会选择伐木工家庭(包括他们的锯子和砍伐的木材),而不是猫头
鹰。
11 The important distinction is between
those environmental goods that are fundamental and
those
that are not. Nature is our ward, not
our master. It is to be respected and even
cultivated. But when
humans have to choose
between their own well-being and that of nature,
nature will have to
accommodate.
重要的是,我们要区
分哪些东西对环境保护是根本性的,哪些是非根本性的。自然受我们的监护,而不是我们的
主人。我们应
该尊重自然,也可以开发利用自然。但是,如果人类必须在自身的福利和自然的福利之间作出选择,
自然
则必须作出让步。
12 Humanity should accommodate
only when its fate and that of nature are
inseparably bound up. The
most urgent maneuver
must be undertaken when the very integrity of
humanity's habitat, e.g., the
atmosphere or
the essential geology that sustains the core of
the earth, is threatened. When the
threat to
humanity is lower in the hierarchy of necessity, a
more modest accommodation that balances
economic against health concerns is in order.
But in either case the principle is the same:
protect the
environment —because it is
humanity's environment.
只有当人类的命运与自然的命运密不可分时,人类
才应该作出让步。当人类栖息地的完整性(比如大气层或维持
地球核心的基本地质状况)受到威胁时,人
类就必须立即调整自己的行为。而当人类受到的威胁不大,不太需要
对自己的行为进行调整时,恰当的做
法是平衡考虑经济方面和与之相对的健康方面的因素,以便作出适度的调
整。但是,无论是哪种情况,其
遵循的原则是一致的:保护环境,因为这是我们人类的环境。
13 The
sentimental environmentalists will call this
saving nature with a totally wrong frame of mind.
Exactly. A sane and intelligible
environmentalism does it not for nature's sake but
for our own.
感情用事的环保主义者会说这种拯救自然的思路是完全错误的。的确是这样
。理性、明确的环保主义保护环
境是为了人类自身,而不是为了自然。