新視野大學英語4：Unit4 TextA（課文+譯文）

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ronmental 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?

1.在上流社會，對環境的敏感就如同信仰民主、反對整容一樣，是一種不可或缺的態度。然而，既然從泰德•特納到喬治•W.H.布什，每個人都聲稱自己熱愛地球母親，那麼，在由議員、選民之類的人以環境名義而提出的眾多的相互矛盾的提案、規章和法規中，我們又該如何做出選擇呢?顯而易見，並不是每一項冠以環境保護名義的事情都值得去做。我們怎樣才能分離出最佳選擇，並且把我們各自不同的興趣統一在同一個合理的政策當中呢?

e 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.

2.有一種簡便的方法。首先要區分什麼是環境奢侈品，什麼是環境必需品。奢侈品是指那些無需人類付出代價就能擁有的給人美好感受的東西。必需品則是指那些無論付出什麼代價，都一定要去擁有的東西。這一區分原則可以被稱為理性環保主義的至高原則。它規定，對那些直接威脅人類健康與安全的生態變化採取應對措施是環境保護的必需品，而其他則都屬於奢侈品。

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.

3.例如，保護大氣層——阻止臭氧損耗及控制温室效應——是環境保護的必需品。近來，科學家報告説臭氧層遭受破壞的程度遠比我們先前認為的要嚴重得多。臭氧損耗不僅與皮膚癌及眼疾有關，而且它還會破壞海洋生態。而海洋生態是食物鏈的起點，人類則位於該食物鏈的頂端。

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?

4.温室效應所可能引發的熱效應是非常具有毀滅性的：冰川融化、海岸線被淹沒、氣候遭受破壞、平原乾涸，最終食物消失殆盡。美國中西部地區的糧食供養着全世界。隨着全球氣候的變化，我們難道準備看到衣阿華州變成新墨西哥州的沙漠氣候，而西伯利亞變成衣阿華州的温和氣候嗎?

e 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.

5.臭氧損耗和温室效應是人類的災難，而且是需要緊急處理的災難，因為它們直接威脅到人類，且後果很難扭轉。理性環保主義——唯一能夠引起公眾共鳴的環保主張——首先公開聲明，自然是服務於人類的。理性環保主義是一種完全以人類為中心的思想。它號召人類保護自然，但是是在人類自我生存得到保證的前提之下。

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.

6.當然，這種以人類為中心的主張與當下盛行的環保主義是格格不入的，後者已經沉溺於對地球的公然崇拜。有的人甚至聲稱地球是一個活的生物體。這種環保主義喜歡把自己看作是神聖的，其實它只是感情用事而已。比如，在自然是否友善的問題上，當下的環保主義採取了高度選擇性的片面的.觀點，而這種觀點與自然造成的災難這一現實是不相協調的。當龍捲風肆虐堪薩斯州，當瓢潑大雨襲擊孟加拉國，毀滅了整座整座的村莊，使幾百萬人失去家園的時候，我對自然的崇拜便停止了。

7.A non-sentimental environmentalism is one founded on Protagoras's idea that "Man is the measure of all things." In establishing the sovereignty of man, such a principle helps us through the dense forest 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.

7.非感情用事的環保主義是建立在普羅泰哥拉的格言“人是萬物的尺度”的基礎上的。在建立人類權威的過程中，這條原則會幫助我們梳理各種錯綜複雜的關於環境保護的爭議。就以當前關於是否在北極國家野生動物保護區的某一角落開採石油的激烈爭論為例吧。環保主義者聯盟動員人們反對目前正在試圖通過美國國會審議、使這一開採行為變得合法化的一項立法行動。他們散佈説美國應該保護並且節約能源而不是開採能源。這其實是一個錯誤的非此即彼的主張。美國確實需要徵收高額的能源税以減少能源消耗，但同時也需要生產更多的能源。政府的估測表明，在北極國家野生動物保護區的地下藴藏着美國五大油田之一的可能性幾乎到達 50%。我們沒有尋找安全的方法開採北極國家野生動物保護區地下的石油，這看上去是不符合情理的。

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.

8.美國剛剛經歷了一場戰爭，其部分原因就是為了獲取石油。對能源的依賴使美國不但付出了金錢的代價，而且也付出了生命的代價。就因為可能破壞北美馴鹿的繁衍地而放棄能夠以和平手段獲得的石油，這是一種十分怪異的感情用事。

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.

9.我像別人一樣喜歡馴鹿。如果他們的交配模式受到干擾，我會感到非常遺憾。但是，魚和熊掌不能兼得。是要保護馴鹿，還是要為了避免人們在戰爭中喪生而減少對石油的依賴，面對這一僵局，我每次都會選擇人類而不是馴鹿。

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.

10.我對俄勒岡州的斑點貓頭鷹的態度也是一樣。我絕不是仇視貓頭鷹。如果花很少的代價就可以保護貓頭鷹，我會贊同它應受保護——畢竟，生物多樣性對生態系統是非常必要的。但是，我們必須記住，保持生物多樣性並不意味着要留住每一種物種。有時候，為了更加根本的利益，我們不得不犧牲一部分生活中美的東西。如果為了保護斑點貓頭鷹而讓三萬伐木工家庭失去生計，我會選擇伐木工家庭(包括他們的鋸子和砍伐的木材)，而不是貓頭鷹。

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.

11.重要的是，我們要區分哪些東西對環境保護是根本性的，哪些是非根本性的。自然受我們的監護，而不是我們的主人。我們應該尊重自然，也可以開發利用自然。但是，如果人類必須在自身的福利和自然的福利之間作出選擇，自然則必須作出讓步。

12 nity 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.

12.只有當人類的命運與自然的命運密不可分時，人類才應該作出讓步。當人類棲息地的完整性(比如大氣層或維持地球核心的基本地質狀況)受到威脅時，人類就必須立即調整自己的行為。而當人類受到的威脅不大，不太需要對自己的行為進行調整時，恰當的做法是平衡考慮經濟方面和與之相對的健康方面的因素，以便作出適度的調整。但是，無論是哪種情況，其遵循的原則是一致的：保護環境，因為這是我們人類的環境。

13 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.

13.感情用事的環保主義者會説這種拯救自然的思路是完全錯誤的。的確是這樣。理性、明確的環保主義保護環境是為了人類自身，而不是為了自然。