国家地理 没有垃圾的世界可能存在吗(2)

All good so far; amazing even, if you're the type to be amazed by human effort and ingenuity¹. It's what happens next, after our needs are met, that's the problem -- the mother of all environmental problems, in fact. De Wit pointed² to the gray fog on the right edge of the diagram. The gray fog is waste.

听到这里感觉还不错，甚至不由得赞叹--如果你倾向于为人类的努力和创造性折服的话。但在我们满足自己需求后发生的事情才是症结所在，甚至可以说是一切环境问题之母：德威特指向图表右端的灰蒙蒙的色块--废弃物。

In 2015, he explained, about two-thirds of the material we scratched from the planet slipped through our fingers. More than 67 billion tons of hard-won stuff was lost, most of it scattered⁴ irretrievably. Plastic trash drifted into rivers and oceans; so did nitrates and phosphates leaching⁵ from fertilized⁶ fields. A third of all food rotted, even as the Amazon was deforested to produce more. Think of an environmental problem, and chances are it's connected to waste. That includes climate change: It happens because we burn fossil fuels and scatter³ the waste -- carbon dioxide -- into the atmosphere.

他解说道，2015年，我们从地球搜刮的物资约有三分之二从指缝间流走。超过670亿吨来之不易的物资遗失了，大部分四散无踪，不可挽回。塑料垃圾漂入江河海洋，农田肥料渗出的氮和磷也紧随其后。在亚马逊被毁林造田用于耕种的同时，食品总量的三分之一白白腐烂。任举一个环境问题，其成因多半与废物有关。这也包括气候变化--由我们燃烧化石燃料、将二氧化碳废气排向空中造成。

This may sound ridiculous, but as de Wit walked me through the numbers that morning, it felt like an epiphany. There was a unifying⁷, exhilarating clarity to that wonky diagram, to the way it defined the task. Sure, it said, the threats we face are multifarious and overwhelming. Sure, they're planetary in scale. But really, to get along on this Earth, we must do just one thing: Stop wasting so much of it. De Wit pointed to a thin arrow that circled back, from right to left, along the bottom of the diagram, representing all the material we'd managed to capture through recycling, composting, and so on. It was only 9.3 billion tons: just 9 percent of the total.

也许听起来不可思议，但在那个早晨，随着德威特逐步解说数据，我感觉好像醍醐灌顶。那张靠不住的图表及其改天换地的构想却体现出一种前后贯通、振奋人心的明朗。的确，它说我们面对的危机千头万绪，势不可挡。的确，其威胁是全球规模的。但归根到底，要在这个地球上存续，我们就必须做到一件事：停止浪费那么多资源。德威特指向一个在图表下部从右边巡回左边的细箭头，它代表的是我们通过回收、堆肥等方式得以存留的物质。只有93亿吨，占总量的9%。

1 ingenuity   

n.别出心裁；善于发明创造

参考例句：

• The boy showed ingenuity in making toys.那个小男孩做玩具很有创造力。
• I admire your ingenuity and perseverance.我钦佩你的别出心裁和毅力。

2 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

3 scatter   

vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散

参考例句：

• You pile everything up and scatter things around.你把东西乱堆乱放。
• Small villages scatter at the foot of the mountain.村庄零零落落地散布在山脚下。

4 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

5 leaching   

n.滤取，滤去v.（将化学品、矿物质等）过滤( leach的现在分词 )；（液体）过滤，滤去

参考例句：

• The lack of humus and the excessive leaching make this soil almost useless for agricultural purpose. 缺少腐殖质和过度淋滤使这种土壤对农业几乎无用。 来自辞典例句
• The deep oxidation and groundwater leaching solubilizes much of the loosely bound uranium. 深部氧化和地下水淋蚀使大部分固定得比较松散的铀溶解。 来自辞典例句

6 Fertilized   

v.施肥( fertilize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The study of psychology has recently been widely cross-fertilized by new discoveries in genetics. 心理学研究最近从遗传学的新发现中受益匪浅。
• Flowers are often fertilized by bees as they gather nectar. 花常在蜜蜂采蜜时受粉。

7 unifying   

使联合( unify的现在分词 )； 使相同； 使一致； 统一

参考例句：

• In addition, there were certain religious bonds of a unifying kind. 此外，他们还有某种具有一种统一性质的宗教上的结合。
• There is a unifying theme, and that is the theme of information flow within biological systems. 我们可以用一个总的命题，把生物学系统内的信息流来作为这一研究主题。