2019年经济学人 气候问题(1)（在线收听）

Leaders

来源于《社论》版块

The climate issue

气候问题

Climate change touches everything this newspaper reports on. It must be tackled urgently and clear-headedly

气候变化关系到本刊所报道的一切。这一问题必须迫切而清醒地加以解决

From one year to the next, you cannot feel the difference. As the decades stack up, though, the story becomes clear. The stripes on our cover represent the world’s average temperature in every year since the mid-19th century. Dark blue years are cooler and red ones warmer than the average in 1971-2000. The cumulative change jumps out. The world is about 1℃ hotter than when this newspaper was young. To represent this span of human history as a set of simple stripes may seem reductive. These are years which saw world wars, technological innovation, trade on an unprecedented scale and a staggering creation of wealth. But those complex histories and the simplifying stripes share a common cause. The changing climate of the planet and the remarkable growth in human numbers and riches both stem from the combustion of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to produce industrial power, electricity, transport, heating and, more recently, computation.

从一年到下一年，你感觉不到差别。然而，随着时间的推移，事情变得越来越清楚。封面上的条纹代表了自19世纪中叶以来每年的全球平均气温。深蓝色年份比1971-2000年的平均年份更冷，红色年份更热。累积变化会跳出来。现在的世界比本刊刚创立的时候温度要高1摄氏度。用一组简单的条纹来代表人类历史的这段时间似乎有些简化。这几年见证了世界大战、技术创新、空前规模的贸易和惊人的财富创造。但是这些复杂的历史和简化的条纹有一个共同的原因。地球气候的变化，以及人类数量和财富的显著增长，都源于数十亿吨化石燃料的燃烧，这些燃料用于生产工业动力、电力、交通、供暖，以及最近的计算。

All around us

我们身边的一切

That the changing climate touches everything and everyone should be obvious—as it should be that the poor and marginalised have most to lose when the weather turns against them. What is less obvious, but just as important, is that, because the processes that force climate change are built into the foundations of the world economy and of geopolitics, measures to check climate change have to be similarly wide-ranging and all-encompassing. To decarbonise an economy is not a simple subtraction; it requires a near-complete overhaul.

气候变化影响着一切，影响着每一个人，这一点应该是显而易见的——当天气对穷人和边缘人群不利时，他们的损失应该是最大的。不那么明显但同样重要的是，由于推动气候变化的过程已成为世界经济和地缘政治的基础，遏制气候变化的措施必须同样广泛和全面。经济脱碳不是简单的减法;这需要近乎彻底的改革。

To some—including many of the millions of young idealists who, as The Economist went to press, were preparing for a global climate strike, and many of those who will throng the streets of New York during next week’s un General Assembly—this overhaul requires nothing less than the gelding or uprooting of capitalism. After all, the system grew up through the use of fossil fuels in ever-greater quantities. And the market economy has so far done very little to help. Almost half the atmosphere’s extra, human- made carbon dioxide was put there after the turn of the 1990s, when scientists sounded the alarm and governments said they would act.

对一些人来说——包括《经济学人》付印时正在为全球气候罢工做准备的数百万年轻理想主义者中的许多人，以及下周联合国大会期间将涌上纽约街头的许多人——这种改革只需要把资本主义赶出或铲除。毕竟，这个系统是通过使用越来越多的化石燃料发展起来的。到目前为止，市场经济也没有提供多少帮助。20世纪90年代初，科学家拉响了警报，各国政府表示将采取行动，之后，大气中几乎一半的、人为制造的、额外的二氧化碳被排放到大气中。