VOA标准英语2012--Addressing Climate Change through Diet

Addressing Climate Change through Diet

 

A new study says one of the best ways to curb¹ greenhouse gas emissions² is to eat less meat. In fact, the study says meat consumption in the developed should be cut by 50 percent per person by 2050.

Meat production and consumption are expected to soar by 2050. That’s because the global population is projected to grow from the current 7 billion to 9 billion. But also, the diets of people in many developing countries are changing. Countries with emerging economies are seeing a sharp rise in protein consumption, especially red meat.

Dr. Eric Davidson said changing how people eat can have a dramatic effect on greenhouse gas emissions. People in developed countries, he said, already eat much more protein than the daily minimum requirement.

“In the developed world there’s considerable room for us to manage our portion sizes and the frequency with which we eat meat. We’re not talking about everybody suddenly needing to become a vegetarian³. Rather it’s kind of reversing the supersize trend and being more mindful of the impacts of the amount of meat and the types of meat, both for the environment and our own health,” he said.

A dead ironwood tree (Prosopis africana) in Senegal, West Africa, is one of many trees that have died due to climate change. 

Davidson is the president and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.

Meat, manure⁴ and gas

“If there is a growing demand for meat, which of course there is, that is going to end up requiring use of more nitrogen fertilizer and production of more livestock⁵ manure, both of which end up resulting in unintentional releases of various forms of nitrogen to the environment, including nitrates to groundwater and surface water and also greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide⁶ to the atmosphere,” he said.

Davidson looked for ways to ease the effects of climate change that would support an aggressive strategy laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In particular, the effects of nitrous oxide, described as the third biggest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide and methane⁷.

But while nitrous oxide ranks number three in greenhouse gases, it is considered the most potent⁸. It’s much better at absorbing infrared⁹ radiation. In other words, the sun’s energy passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, heats things up and is then released through infrared radiation. But that radiation then hits the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and goes no further.

Davidson has a simple analogy.

“It’s sort of the same idea as a parked car. The energy goes through the windshield of a car pretty easily. It’s absorbed on the car seat. Gets the car seat hot. Re-radiates out and it cannot escape the windshield on the way out. This infrared radiation cannot escape the windshield and so the inside of the car heats up. The physics is pretty well understood for climate change. I think we’d probably have better acceptance of it if we called it the parked car effect instead of the greenhouse gas effect,” he said.

And nitrous oxide stays in the atmosphere a very long time before breaking down. It can take over a hundred years to break down one molecule¹⁰ of the gas. The main sources of nitrous oxide are synthetic¹¹ nitrogen fertilizers and storage and use of livestock manure.

Start now

Davidson says farmers should be given incentives¹² to use fertilizers and manure more judiciously¹³.

“If we want to meet the most ambitious and optimistic goal of these scenarios¹⁴ of bringing harmful climate change under control, we need to improve the efficiency with which we use fertilizers in agriculture. We need to improve the efficiency of the management of manure. And we also need to consider changes in dietary patterns. And that means hopefully better diets in the developing world and better balanced diets in the developed world,” he said.

Even if it were possible to turn off all harmful greenhouse gas emissions today, he said climate change would continue.

“That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t start the mitigation now because the sooner we start it the more options our children and grandchildren will have in terms of being able to feed themselves and have prosperous lifestyles without environmental degradation,” he said.

Davidson’s findings appear in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters.

1 curb   

n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制

参考例句：

• I could not curb my anger.我按捺不住我的愤怒。
• You must curb your daughter when you are in church.你在教堂时必须管住你的女儿。

2 emissions   

排放物( emission的名词复数 )； 散发物（尤指气体）

参考例句：

• Most scientists accept that climate change is linked to carbon emissions. 大多数科学家都相信气候变化与排放的含碳气体有关。
• Dangerous emissions radiate from plutonium. 危险的辐射物从钚放散出来。

3 vegetarian   

n.素食者；adj.素食的

参考例句：

• She got used gradually to the vegetarian diet.她逐渐习惯吃素食。
• I didn't realize you were a vegetarian.我不知道你是个素食者。

4 manure   

n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥

参考例句：

• The farmers were distributing manure over the field.农民们正在田间施肥。
• The farmers used manure to keep up the fertility of their land.农夫们用粪保持其土质的肥沃。

5 livestock   

n.家畜，牲畜

参考例句：

• Both men and livestock are flourishing.人畜两旺。
• The heavy rains and flooding killed scores of livestock.暴雨和大水淹死了许多牲口。

6 oxide   

n.氧化物

参考例句：

• Oxide is usually seen in our daily life.在我们的日常生活中氧化物很常见。
• How can you get rid of this oxide coating?你们该怎样除去这些氧化皮？

7 methane   

n.甲烷，沼气

参考例句：

• The blast was caused by pockets of methane gas that ignited.爆炸是由数袋甲烷气体着火引起的。
• Methane may have extraterrestrial significance.甲烷具有星际意义。

8 potent   

adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的

参考例句：

• The medicine had a potent effect on your disease.这药物对你的病疗效很大。
• We must account of his potent influence.我们必须考虑他的强有力的影响。

9 infrared   

adj./n.红外线(的)

参考例句：

• Infrared is widely used in industry and medical science.红外线广泛应用于工业和医学科学。
• Infrared radiation has wavelengths longer than those of visible light.红外辐射的波长比可见光的波长长。

10 molecule   

n.分子，克分子

参考例句：

• A molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hygrogen and one atom of oxygen.一个水分子是由P妈̬f婘̬ 妈̬成的。
• This gives us the structural formula of the molecule.这种方式给出了分子的结构式。

11 synthetic   

adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品

参考例句：

• We felt the salesman's synthetic friendliness.我们感觉到那位销售员的虚情假意。
• It's a synthetic diamond.这是人造钻石。

12 incentives   

激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机

参考例句：

• tax incentives to encourage savings 鼓励储蓄的税收措施
• Furthermore, subsidies provide incentives only for investments in equipment. 更有甚者，提供津贴仅是为鼓励增添设备的投资。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

13 judiciously   

adv.明断地，明智而审慎地

参考例句：

• Let's use these intelligence tests judiciously. 让我们好好利用这些智力测试题吧。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His ideas were quaint and fantastic. She brought him judiciously to earth. 他的看法荒廖古怪，她颇有见识地劝他面对现实。 来自辞典例句

14 scenarios   

n.[意]情节；剧本；事态；脚本

参考例句：

• Further, graphite cores may be safer than non-graphite cores under some accident scenarios. 再者，根据一些事故解说，石墨堆芯可比非石墨堆芯更安全一些。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• Again, scenarios should make it clear which modes are acceptable to users in various contexts. 同样，我们可以运用场景剧本来搞清楚在不同情境下哪些模式可被用户接受。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓