KinsonLai
2020-04-12T13:46:36+00:00
[url]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-climate-change.html[/url]
长求总：分别分析了疫情对气候的长短期影响，并给建议。
What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change
Lockdowns and distancing won’t save the world from warming. But amid this crisis, we have a chance to build a better future.
By Meehan Crist
Ms. Crist is writer in residence in biological sciences at Columbia University.
Something strange is happening. Not just the illness and death sweeping the planet. Not just the closing of borders and bars and schools, the hoarding of wipes and sanitizer, the orders — unimaginable to most Americans weeks ago — to “shelter in place.” Something else is afoot. In China and Italy, the air is now strikingly clean. Venice’s Grand Canal, normally fouled by boat traffic, is running clear. In Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, the fog of pollution has lifted. Even global carbon emissions have fallen.
最近发生了好多大事儿，COVID-19横扫了全球，导致酒吧、学校、国界都关闭了；发布了居家令等等。还有些事儿比较奇怪，中国和意大利的空气居然非常干净，维纳斯的大运河也很洁净，平时由于货运都是很脏的。还有好多工业城市，平时堆积的污染物都飘到高空去了，甚至连全球碳排放都降低了。
Coronavirus has led to an astonishing shutdown of economic activity and a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels. In China, measures to contain the virus in February alone caused a drop in carbon emissions of an estimated 25 percent. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air estimates that this is equivalent to 200 million tons of carbon dioxide — more than half the annual emissions of Britain. In the short term, response to the pandemic seems to be having a positive effect on emissions. But in the longer term, will the virus help or harm the climate?
疫情导致了很多事情，比如经济衰退，比如化石燃料的使用量大幅下降。中国为了控制疫情采取了很多措施，结果二月碳排量下降了25%。XX机构估计这得有2亿吨二氧化碳，比英国全年碳排量的一半还多。短期而言，疫情对这次碳排量下降是有贡献的。但从长期说，这是有利还是不利？
To be clear, the coronavirus pandemic is a tragedy — a human nightmare unspooling in overloaded hospitals and unemployment offices with unnerving speed, barreling toward a horizon darkened by economic disaster and crowded with portents of suffering to come. But this global crisis is also an inflection point for that other global crisis, the slower one with even higher stakes, which remains the backdrop against which modernity now plays out. As the United Nations’ secretary general recently noted, the threat from coronavirus is temporary whereas the threat from heat waves, floods and extreme storms resulting in the loss of human life will remain with us for years.
这次疫情毫无疑问是场悲剧——医疗资源发生挤兑，好多人失业，接下来还有更糟糕的经济衰退和一些别的不好的影响。但除了这些，还有些其他的事，虽然来得没这么快，但影响更大，它就像音乐里的背景音，一直环绕在你身边，不容易被注意到，但一直存在。XX说，疫情的影响是暂时的，但有些其他的灾难将会在未来很长一段时间影响我们，比如全球变暖，洪水，风暴等等。
Our response to this health crisis will shape the climate crisis for decades to come. The efforts to revive economic activity — the stimulus plans, bailouts and back-to-work programs being developed now — will help determine the shape of our economies and our lives for the foreseeable future, and they will have effects on carbon emissions that reverberate across the planet for thousands of years.
我们如何应对这次疫情，比如刺激经济的措施，发放救助金，复工措施，将决定了将来数十年气候环境的走向。
How hopeful you feel about the direction this response is taking may depend on how long ago you refreshed your news feed. Just last week (which feels like a hundred years ago), a friend suggested that there may be a sort of Freudian transference from coronavirus to climate — that the fear and sense of urgency will be lifted from the faster-moving crisis and settle on the slower one, becoming a catalyst for much-needed action. So far, it seems any transference is working in the opposite direction: Lockdowns and social distancing are providing a litany of necessary actions ripe for the transferal of nebulous climate anxieties and fears. In this context, consumerism perversely provides some relief — you can finally go buy dry goods to prepare for the apocalypse.
这段没读好，我读的意思对不上逻辑。略。高手可以试试。
But personal consumption and travel habits are, in fact, changing, which has some people wondering if this might be the beginning of a meaningful shift. Maybe, as you hunker down with cabinets full of essentials, your sense of what consumer goods you need will shrink. Maybe, even after the acute phase of the coronavirus crisis has passed, you will be more likely to telecommute. Lifestyles that include, for example, frequent long-distance travel already seem ethically questionable in light of the climate crisis, and, in an age irrevocably scarred by pandemic, these lifestyles may come to be seen as grossly irresponsible. Maybe among the relatively wealthy, jumping on a plane for a weekend away or for a destination wedding will come to seem unthinkable.
个人的消费和旅游习惯正在改变，比如blahblahblah举了一堆例子，比如看着一堆囤的货你会想以后你真正刚需的是什么，比如你可能会习惯在家办公，比如你不再远途旅游。
Sweeping changes in individual habits — particularly in wealthy countries with high per capita consumption — could lead to lower emissions, which would be an unequivocal good. But personal habits may matter less because of direct reductions in carbon emissions and more because of “behavioral contagion,” a term from the social sciences that refers to the way ideas and behaviors spread through a population and can, in terms of climate action, lead to changes in voting and even policy.
这些个人习惯的改变，尤其是发达国家的人，会降低碳排量，这的确是件好事。但是这些碳排量太少了，影响不了大局。想要起点作用，关键在其他地方。
Which is to say, in order to be meaningful for global emissions, changes in consumption habits as a result of the virus would need to extend beyond individuals to the larger structures that shape our lives. In China, it wasn’t telecommuting or grounded planes that led to the 25 percent drop in emissions. It was the abrupt halt of industrial manufacturing. (The concept of the “personal carbon footprint” was popularized by BP in a 2005 media campaign costing over $100 million — a campaign that, research has indicated, deflected responsibility for climate change away from the corporation and onto the individual consumer.) This is not to say that personal consumption is meaningless — a significant reduction in air travel could decrease aviation emissions. But aviation accounts for only about 2.5 percent of global emissions, an amount that looks downright puny in the shadow cast by heavy industry.
就是说，光是个人消费习惯改变是远不够的，要改变的是周围的环境。比方说，在中国，并不是交通流量减少或者航空停飞导致的25%碳排量下降，而是那些突然停工的制造业。这并不是在否认个人低碳生活方式对环境毫无贡献，而是这些作用实在太小了，比如中国航空业停飞带来的碳排量下降只占2.5%，大部分都是重工业带来的。
If anything, the short-term positive effects on the climate that we’re seeing today serve as a dramatic reminder that changing personal consumption habits will mean very little going forward if we also fail to decarbonize the global economy.
二月碳排量下降的事会永远提醒我们，如果全球经济不低碳，光靠个人杯水车薪。
Of course, there’s good reason for concern that despite the clean air and canals of the past three weeks, coronavirus will be a disaster for the climate.
当然了，虽说空气暂时变好了，但是未来气候将发生巨大灾难。
According to the oil-trading firm Trafigura, coronavirus may lead to global oil demand seeing its biggest contraction in history, perhaps by more than 10 million barrels per day. While this may be good news for carbon emissions now, it signals a human disaster of epic proportions without any guarantee that emissions will remain low.
有人说因疫情影响，全球石油需求量将缩水1k万/天，这是历史上最严重的的下跌。虽然暂时来说这对于碳排量来说确实是个好消息，但无法保证今后将会维持这一水平。
Yes, we could see a sustained emissions drop as economies stagnate and people struggle with the harsh daily realities of a global recession. But there were also dips in emissions during the 2008 financial crisis and the oil shocks of the 1970s, and emissions bounced back as economies recovered. The current crisis is different, to be sure, but after the acute phase passes, industrial production and carbon emissions are likely to ramp back up.
确实，现在碳排量在连续下降，但几乎可以肯定将来石油需求会反弹。因为2008年经济危机和1970年代石油危机就是这样的。诚然，这次疫情跟之前两种情况不一样，但一旦疫情过去，工业碳排量是极有可能会反弹的。
A global recession as a result of coronavirus shutdowns could also slow or stall the shift to clean energy. If capital markets lock up, it will become difficult for companies to secure financing for planned solar, wind and electric grid projects, and it could tank proposals for new projects; renewable energy projects around the world are already stumbling because of disruptions to the global supply chain. (A huge share of the world’s solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries are produced in China.) Going forward, a shutdown of trade between China and the United States — for economic or political reasons — would also hit these projects hard. The clean energy analyst BloombergNEF has already downgraded its 2020 expectations for the solar, battery and electric-vehicle markets, signaling a slowdown in the clean energy transition when we urgently need to speed it up.
由疫情导致的全球经济衰退还会影响能源升级。如果资本市场停止流动，那太阳能、风能、电能电木将很难筹措到资金。这些可再生能源项目已经因为全球供应链被打断(全球大部分太阳能面板、风力涡轮、锂电池由中国制造)而停转了。再往前点说，中美贸易战也会让这些项目举步维艰。XX机构已经调低了2020年对太阳能、电池和电力汽车市场的预期，这标志着清洁能源发展的减缓，而现在证实我们需要它的时候。
If oil prices stay low, that could be bad news for the climate, too. Falling demand has converged with skittish investors spooked by the pandemic and with an oil price and production war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Cheaper energy often leads consumers to use it less efficiently. Low prices could help depress electric-vehicle sales and make people less inclined toward projects like retrofitting homes and offices to save energy.
油价降低对环境来说也不见得就是好事。需求量下滑、投资者恐慌、沙俄石油价格战这三件事凑一块了，其结果就是油价下跌。其结果就是，人们在用便宜能源的时候并不会想着如何提高它的使用效率，打击电力汽车的售价，人们会更倾向于出门(开车)，而不是待在家开启省电模式。
Coronavirus is bad for the climate even on the most macro levels. Lockdowns and social distancing have slowed climate research around the world or ground it to a halt. NASA is on mandatory telework. Research flights to the Arctic have been stopped, and fieldwork everywhere is being canceled. No one knows how much climate data will never be collected as a result, or when research might be able to start up again.
疫情还影响了很多方面，比如全世界各地很多研究都停了，NASA也开启了远程办公模式，要飞北极做研究的飞机也停了，这种比比皆是。没人知道我们会错失多少气候数据，也不知道什么时候研究才能重新启动。
Gatherings of world leaders to address the climate crisis also have been delayed or canceled, and the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow planned for November could be next, meaning that the pandemic will very likely slow already sluggish international action. This could derail climate talks at a time when, under the Paris Agreement, countries are supposed to announce new pledges to reduce emissions. Such a derailment would make it even more likely that countries would blow past warming-limit goals. Going forward, public attention is likely to be diverted from the climate by ballooning fears over health and finances, and climate activism that depends on large public protests is being forced indoors and online.
原本全球各国领导人要处理全球气候问题的，现在也推迟甚至取消了，比如COP26峰会本来计划11月开的，可能要推迟了。这表明疫情将很可能让很多国际活动不能如期举行。比如说本来巴黎协定后各国理应做新的减排承诺，现在这事儿也黄了，再过一阵这事儿很可能就被当做无事发生了。再进一步说，原本老百姓都挺关注气候问题的，现在疫情一来，大家都很慌，谁还管地球会怎么样。原来很多要依靠环保主义者上街游行来推进的行动现在只能转地下了。
There is a world in which stimulus measures could outweigh short-term impacts on energy and emissions, driving emissions up over the long term. This is what happened in China after the 2008 global economic crisis. Already, China is indicating that it will relax environmental supervision of companies to stimulate its economy in response to coronavirus shutdowns, which means that astonishing 25 percent cut in carbon emissions could evaporate, followed by even more emissions than before.
2008年后的中国采取了很多刺激经济的措施，短期来看减排减碳，长期就完全相反。现在中国已经说了，由于疫情影响，现在必须得松开环境监管大力发展经济，原来说好的25%减排肯定是黄了，以后的碳排量肯定比这之前还要多。
In the United States, we could see similarly shortsighted recovery packages aiming to ramp up the economy to pre-pandemic levels that double down on soaring carbon emissions. So far, the American government’s aid legislation has failed to address clean energy or the climate. The $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by Congress this week, the largest fiscal stimulus package in modern American history, includes direct payments to individuals, expanded and extended unemployment benefits, and $500 billion in loans to bail out affected industries. It does not include relief for renewables, such as crucial tax credit extensions for solar and wind.
美国也好不到哪去。一票刺激经济措施实施后，碳排量肯定也是短期下降长期上升。美国政府已经将环境问题置之度外了。这周已经通过了直升机撒钱法案，美国史上最大撒钱活动帮助了很多人，很多公司来度过这个难关，除了可再生能源行业。啥帮助也没有，税收抵免也没有。
This isn’t likely to be the last stimulus. Already, there is talk of the next phase of economic relief, and climate and clean energy advocates are looking to future legislation that might aim to relieve specific industries.
直升机撒钱肯定不会是最后一个措施。有人说了，下一阶段措施正在拟定。清洁能源行业就眼巴巴地等着政府会不会出台一些针对他们的扶助政策。
The two biggest wild cards for climate going forward are how policymakers respond to the threat of a global recession and how the pandemic changes political will for climate action around the world. Prime Minister Andrej Babis of the Czech Republic has already said that the European Green Deal, a new policy package that commits European Union member states to zero emissions by 2050, should be set aside so that countries can focus on fighting the pandemic.
要说世上最没法预测的两件事儿，大概就是政客们会如何应对经济衰退和疫情会如何改变人的政治意愿。捷克说了，欧洲绿色协定(2050年前零碳排量)的事儿就先放一边吧，把眼前的难关度过去再说。
This week has seen a chilling shift in conservative rhetoric around the virus that echoes all-too-familiar patterns of climate denialism, suggesting that a more dangerous sort of transference is taking place. As the climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote on Twitter, “The six stages of climate denial are: It’s not real. It’s not us. It’s not that bad. It’s too expensive to fix. Aha, here’s a great solution (that actually does nothing). And — oh no! Now it’s too late. You really should have warned us earlier.”
这周政府的说辞变化的可太精彩了，跟之前否认气候变化时的情况一模一样。当时这么说的，有种危险的变化正在发生。KH发推说，“政府解决问题的六步式：这是假的。这跟我们没关系。现在还没那么糟。要解决这问题得花好多钱。哈哈，有个超棒的解决方案(然而实际上毛都没做)！最后——我擦，现在要做也晚了，你们得早点儿提醒我们啊。” (谁上个yes minister的经典截图，可乐坏我了)
There is another world in which policymakers and politicians planning for economic recovery decide to make building a carbon-neutral society a priority. Because while the new reality could easily drain political will and funding from efforts to address the climate crisis, it could also inject a sense of urgency at a time when politicians are suddenly willing to spend vast sums of money. In this world, governments would create meaningful jobs in areas such as education, medical care, housing and clean energy, with an emphasis on “shovel-ready” projects that put people to work immediately.
其实除了牺牲环境拯救经济的方案，还有个更好的办法——建设一个碳平衡的社会，最终实现经济复苏。虽然以目前的状况，为了保护环境而付出的努力、金钱很容易付之一炬，但也有可能领导人们突然醒悟，建设这种社会花上很多钱是值得的。在这个社会，政府会把钱都投到教育、医疗、房地产、清洁能源这些行业里，创造一些非常有意义的岗位，这些岗位能立刻就让人就业。
The U.S. government, for example, could continue to provide jobs as needed — the program would expand during recession and contract when the economy recovered and people could find work elsewhere. As Kate Aronoff writes in The New Republic, “One possible benefit to such a program is that it could provide an alternative to low-paid work bound up in carbon-intensive supply chains like those at McDonald’s and Walmart — currently the only employment on offer in many communities around the country.” This approach would address the climate crisis with the urgency it demands while also addressing the immediate needs of workers who will be laid off or have hours reduced because of shutdowns.
比方说，在这种社会里，美国政府可以按需创造就业岗位——按需是指经济衰退的时候创造岗位，而复苏的时候就不用那么多。就像KA说的，这种社会会有中好处，它会淘汰掉很多脱胎于非低碳经济的低薪岗位，比如说麦当劳和沃尔玛(当然了这是现在全国为数不多还在招人的企业)。这个方案能把迫在眉睫的环境问题给处理好，还能给失业的人提供就业岗位。
Rather than seeing the clean energy transition stall, such an approach could jump-start it, while also stimulating the economy. Governments drive more than 70 percent of global energy investments, and recovery plans could shift those investments as well as include new large-scale investments to turbocharge the development, deployment and integration of clean energy technologies. As Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, recently pointed out, the drop in oil prices also offers an opportunity for countries around the world to lower or remove subsidies for fossil fuel consumption, which disproportionally line the pockets of wealthy individuals and corporations with money that could go to education, health care or clean energy projects.
这个方案会加速清洁能源行业的发展，同时刺激经济。政府用全球超过七成的能源业投资丢到这个方案里，能给发展、失业、能源业倒退注入强心针。FB说，原油下跌，政府可以减少甚至取消对化石燃料的补助，然后用这笔钱投资到教育、医疗和能源行业。
There are, of course, more radical policy interventions that could improve the health of the planet, our communities and our lives. Adopting a 32-hour workweek in the United States could lower emissions and vastly improve the quality of American life. It’s unlikely we will see a four-day workweek anytime soon, but the profound disruptions of the pandemic provide a rare opportunity, even in the midst of great suffering, for rewiring our sense of what is possible in American society. Maybe the rupture caused by “shelter in place” orders provides a glimpse of what work is “essential” to society — care work, education and food distribution. Maybe it offers a glimpse, distorted though it may be, of what life might be like if we all went to work a little less.
当然了，还有更激进的政策可以保护地球、社区和我们的生活。比方说一周工作32小时就能有效降低碳排量，提升我们的生活质量。虽然近期可能是见不到这种景象了，但是这次疫情却让它产生了一点小小的可能性。也许这次的居家令会让人们慢慢意识到，到底什么工作才是我们这个社会运转所真正必须的——医护，教育，食物分配。这次的疫情也许人们也会慢慢了解，如果大家每周都少工作几个小时，生活会变成什么样。
A best-case outcome might include a rethinking of the social contract that helps protect and provide for the most vulnerable members of society at a time of increasing risk. We need to ask: What does a government owe to its people? The climate crisis has already demonstrated that the way our societies and economies are organized is unsustainable on a planet of finite resources. And as people face increasing and unevenly distributed climate risk, it is reasonable to wonder what sort of support we can expect from our government. When your community is in crisis, how will your government respond? The pandemic is a gut-wrenching reality check.
这次疫情最好的结果就是，我们会反思社会、政府在风险出现的时候，是如何保护它的人民的。我们得问问，政府欠了人民什么？气候危机已经表明了我们现在的社会、经济运行方式是不可持续的，因为地球的资源始终是有限的。随着人越来越多，全球各地的气候风险是不一样的，这时候得想想，我们能期望政府给我们什么帮助。当你生活的地方出现危机的时候，政府会如何作为？这次疫情将会回答。
The crushing blows of the coronavirus pandemic, like those of the climate crisis, will be felt hardest by our most vulnerable populations — the poor, the elderly, the homeless, the stateless, the incarcerated, and the precariously employed — while international corporations driven by the logics of profit and endless growth to seek new markets, cheap labor, and what the sociologist Jason Moore has called “cheap nature,” thereby connecting the world and helping create the conditions for crisis, will most likely remain relatively protected.
这次爆发的疫情，就像气候危机，谁最遭殃？是那些无穷止境追逐利益、开拓新市场、剥削便宜劳动力的跨国公司吗？不，他们会是危机发生时活得最好的一批人。对危难最感同身受切身体验的是穷人，老人，无家可归之人，无国籍之人，犯人，没有稳定工作的人。
The new coronavirus spread through the activity of global markets, and it remains to be seen whether we can respond to this crisis without relying on and reinforcing the same market logics that got us into this mess. Rather, to face the profound challenges of pandemics — of which this coronavirus will not be the last — as well as the threat of climate change, to survive and even flourish on this interconnected planet, we have to learn to subordinate the needs of the market to our own needs.
疫情还在肆虐，而我们是不是还会用让我们吃过亏的方式来应对，这有待观察。为了应对这次疫情和气候变化带来的挑战，为了能在这颗星球上活下来，活得好，我们得学着把自己的需求放第一位，开拓市场赚钱的事儿就排后边儿吧
长求总：分别分析了疫情对气候的长短期影响，并给建议。
What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change
Lockdowns and distancing won’t save the world from warming. But amid this crisis, we have a chance to build a better future.
By Meehan Crist
Ms. Crist is writer in residence in biological sciences at Columbia University.
Something strange is happening. Not just the illness and death sweeping the planet. Not just the closing of borders and bars and schools, the hoarding of wipes and sanitizer, the orders — unimaginable to most Americans weeks ago — to “shelter in place.” Something else is afoot. In China and Italy, the air is now strikingly clean. Venice’s Grand Canal, normally fouled by boat traffic, is running clear. In Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, the fog of pollution has lifted. Even global carbon emissions have fallen.
最近发生了好多大事儿，COVID-19横扫了全球，导致酒吧、学校、国界都关闭了；发布了居家令等等。还有些事儿比较奇怪，中国和意大利的空气居然非常干净，维纳斯的大运河也很洁净，平时由于货运都是很脏的。还有好多工业城市，平时堆积的污染物都飘到高空去了，甚至连全球碳排放都降低了。
Coronavirus has led to an astonishing shutdown of economic activity and a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels. In China, measures to contain the virus in February alone caused a drop in carbon emissions of an estimated 25 percent. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air estimates that this is equivalent to 200 million tons of carbon dioxide — more than half the annual emissions of Britain. In the short term, response to the pandemic seems to be having a positive effect on emissions. But in the longer term, will the virus help or harm the climate?
疫情导致了很多事情，比如经济衰退，比如化石燃料的使用量大幅下降。中国为了控制疫情采取了很多措施，结果二月碳排量下降了25%。XX机构估计这得有2亿吨二氧化碳，比英国全年碳排量的一半还多。短期而言，疫情对这次碳排量下降是有贡献的。但从长期说，这是有利还是不利？
To be clear, the coronavirus pandemic is a tragedy — a human nightmare unspooling in overloaded hospitals and unemployment offices with unnerving speed, barreling toward a horizon darkened by economic disaster and crowded with portents of suffering to come. But this global crisis is also an inflection point for that other global crisis, the slower one with even higher stakes, which remains the backdrop against which modernity now plays out. As the United Nations’ secretary general recently noted, the threat from coronavirus is temporary whereas the threat from heat waves, floods and extreme storms resulting in the loss of human life will remain with us for years.
这次疫情毫无疑问是场悲剧——医疗资源发生挤兑，好多人失业，接下来还有更糟糕的经济衰退和一些别的不好的影响。但除了这些，还有些其他的事，虽然来得没这么快，但影响更大，它就像音乐里的背景音，一直环绕在你身边，不容易被注意到，但一直存在。XX说，疫情的影响是暂时的，但有些其他的灾难将会在未来很长一段时间影响我们，比如全球变暖，洪水，风暴等等。
Our response to this health crisis will shape the climate crisis for decades to come. The efforts to revive economic activity — the stimulus plans, bailouts and back-to-work programs being developed now — will help determine the shape of our economies and our lives for the foreseeable future, and they will have effects on carbon emissions that reverberate across the planet for thousands of years.
我们如何应对这次疫情，比如刺激经济的措施，发放救助金，复工措施，将决定了将来数十年气候环境的走向。
How hopeful you feel about the direction this response is taking may depend on how long ago you refreshed your news feed. Just last week (which feels like a hundred years ago), a friend suggested that there may be a sort of Freudian transference from coronavirus to climate — that the fear and sense of urgency will be lifted from the faster-moving crisis and settle on the slower one, becoming a catalyst for much-needed action. So far, it seems any transference is working in the opposite direction: Lockdowns and social distancing are providing a litany of necessary actions ripe for the transferal of nebulous climate anxieties and fears. In this context, consumerism perversely provides some relief — you can finally go buy dry goods to prepare for the apocalypse.
这段没读好，我读的意思对不上逻辑。略。高手可以试试。
But personal consumption and travel habits are, in fact, changing, which has some people wondering if this might be the beginning of a meaningful shift. Maybe, as you hunker down with cabinets full of essentials, your sense of what consumer goods you need will shrink. Maybe, even after the acute phase of the coronavirus crisis has passed, you will be more likely to telecommute. Lifestyles that include, for example, frequent long-distance travel already seem ethically questionable in light of the climate crisis, and, in an age irrevocably scarred by pandemic, these lifestyles may come to be seen as grossly irresponsible. Maybe among the relatively wealthy, jumping on a plane for a weekend away or for a destination wedding will come to seem unthinkable.
个人的消费和旅游习惯正在改变，比如blahblahblah举了一堆例子，比如看着一堆囤的货你会想以后你真正刚需的是什么，比如你可能会习惯在家办公，比如你不再远途旅游。
Sweeping changes in individual habits — particularly in wealthy countries with high per capita consumption — could lead to lower emissions, which would be an unequivocal good. But personal habits may matter less because of direct reductions in carbon emissions and more because of “behavioral contagion,” a term from the social sciences that refers to the way ideas and behaviors spread through a population and can, in terms of climate action, lead to changes in voting and even policy.
这些个人习惯的改变，尤其是发达国家的人，会降低碳排量，这的确是件好事。但是这些碳排量太少了，影响不了大局。想要起点作用，关键在其他地方。
Which is to say, in order to be meaningful for global emissions, changes in consumption habits as a result of the virus would need to extend beyond individuals to the larger structures that shape our lives. In China, it wasn’t telecommuting or grounded planes that led to the 25 percent drop in emissions. It was the abrupt halt of industrial manufacturing. (The concept of the “personal carbon footprint” was popularized by BP in a 2005 media campaign costing over $100 million — a campaign that, research has indicated, deflected responsibility for climate change away from the corporation and onto the individual consumer.) This is not to say that personal consumption is meaningless — a significant reduction in air travel could decrease aviation emissions. But aviation accounts for only about 2.5 percent of global emissions, an amount that looks downright puny in the shadow cast by heavy industry.
就是说，光是个人消费习惯改变是远不够的，要改变的是周围的环境。比方说，在中国，并不是交通流量减少或者航空停飞导致的25%碳排量下降，而是那些突然停工的制造业。这并不是在否认个人低碳生活方式对环境毫无贡献，而是这些作用实在太小了，比如中国航空业停飞带来的碳排量下降只占2.5%，大部分都是重工业带来的。
If anything, the short-term positive effects on the climate that we’re seeing today serve as a dramatic reminder that changing personal consumption habits will mean very little going forward if we also fail to decarbonize the global economy.
二月碳排量下降的事会永远提醒我们，如果全球经济不低碳，光靠个人杯水车薪。
Of course, there’s good reason for concern that despite the clean air and canals of the past three weeks, coronavirus will be a disaster for the climate.
当然了，虽说空气暂时变好了，但是未来气候将发生巨大灾难。
According to the oil-trading firm Trafigura, coronavirus may lead to global oil demand seeing its biggest contraction in history, perhaps by more than 10 million barrels per day. While this may be good news for carbon emissions now, it signals a human disaster of epic proportions without any guarantee that emissions will remain low.
有人说因疫情影响，全球石油需求量将缩水1k万/天，这是历史上最严重的的下跌。虽然暂时来说这对于碳排量来说确实是个好消息，但无法保证今后将会维持这一水平。
Yes, we could see a sustained emissions drop as economies stagnate and people struggle with the harsh daily realities of a global recession. But there were also dips in emissions during the 2008 financial crisis and the oil shocks of the 1970s, and emissions bounced back as economies recovered. The current crisis is different, to be sure, but after the acute phase passes, industrial production and carbon emissions are likely to ramp back up.
确实，现在碳排量在连续下降，但几乎可以肯定将来石油需求会反弹。因为2008年经济危机和1970年代石油危机就是这样的。诚然，这次疫情跟之前两种情况不一样，但一旦疫情过去，工业碳排量是极有可能会反弹的。
A global recession as a result of coronavirus shutdowns could also slow or stall the shift to clean energy. If capital markets lock up, it will become difficult for companies to secure financing for planned solar, wind and electric grid projects, and it could tank proposals for new projects; renewable energy projects around the world are already stumbling because of disruptions to the global supply chain. (A huge share of the world’s solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries are produced in China.) Going forward, a shutdown of trade between China and the United States — for economic or political reasons — would also hit these projects hard. The clean energy analyst BloombergNEF has already downgraded its 2020 expectations for the solar, battery and electric-vehicle markets, signaling a slowdown in the clean energy transition when we urgently need to speed it up.
由疫情导致的全球经济衰退还会影响能源升级。如果资本市场停止流动，那太阳能、风能、电能电木将很难筹措到资金。这些可再生能源项目已经因为全球供应链被打断(全球大部分太阳能面板、风力涡轮、锂电池由中国制造)而停转了。再往前点说，中美贸易战也会让这些项目举步维艰。XX机构已经调低了2020年对太阳能、电池和电力汽车市场的预期，这标志着清洁能源发展的减缓，而现在证实我们需要它的时候。
If oil prices stay low, that could be bad news for the climate, too. Falling demand has converged with skittish investors spooked by the pandemic and with an oil price and production war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Cheaper energy often leads consumers to use it less efficiently. Low prices could help depress electric-vehicle sales and make people less inclined toward projects like retrofitting homes and offices to save energy.
油价降低对环境来说也不见得就是好事。需求量下滑、投资者恐慌、沙俄石油价格战这三件事凑一块了，其结果就是油价下跌。其结果就是，人们在用便宜能源的时候并不会想着如何提高它的使用效率，打击电力汽车的售价，人们会更倾向于出门(开车)，而不是待在家开启省电模式。
Coronavirus is bad for the climate even on the most macro levels. Lockdowns and social distancing have slowed climate research around the world or ground it to a halt. NASA is on mandatory telework. Research flights to the Arctic have been stopped, and fieldwork everywhere is being canceled. No one knows how much climate data will never be collected as a result, or when research might be able to start up again.
疫情还影响了很多方面，比如全世界各地很多研究都停了，NASA也开启了远程办公模式，要飞北极做研究的飞机也停了，这种比比皆是。没人知道我们会错失多少气候数据，也不知道什么时候研究才能重新启动。
Gatherings of world leaders to address the climate crisis also have been delayed or canceled, and the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow planned for November could be next, meaning that the pandemic will very likely slow already sluggish international action. This could derail climate talks at a time when, under the Paris Agreement, countries are supposed to announce new pledges to reduce emissions. Such a derailment would make it even more likely that countries would blow past warming-limit goals. Going forward, public attention is likely to be diverted from the climate by ballooning fears over health and finances, and climate activism that depends on large public protests is being forced indoors and online.
原本全球各国领导人要处理全球气候问题的，现在也推迟甚至取消了，比如COP26峰会本来计划11月开的，可能要推迟了。这表明疫情将很可能让很多国际活动不能如期举行。比如说本来巴黎协定后各国理应做新的减排承诺，现在这事儿也黄了，再过一阵这事儿很可能就被当做无事发生了。再进一步说，原本老百姓都挺关注气候问题的，现在疫情一来，大家都很慌，谁还管地球会怎么样。原来很多要依靠环保主义者上街游行来推进的行动现在只能转地下了。
There is a world in which stimulus measures could outweigh short-term impacts on energy and emissions, driving emissions up over the long term. This is what happened in China after the 2008 global economic crisis. Already, China is indicating that it will relax environmental supervision of companies to stimulate its economy in response to coronavirus shutdowns, which means that astonishing 25 percent cut in carbon emissions could evaporate, followed by even more emissions than before.
2008年后的中国采取了很多刺激经济的措施，短期来看减排减碳，长期就完全相反。现在中国已经说了，由于疫情影响，现在必须得松开环境监管大力发展经济，原来说好的25%减排肯定是黄了，以后的碳排量肯定比这之前还要多。
In the United States, we could see similarly shortsighted recovery packages aiming to ramp up the economy to pre-pandemic levels that double down on soaring carbon emissions. So far, the American government’s aid legislation has failed to address clean energy or the climate. The $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by Congress this week, the largest fiscal stimulus package in modern American history, includes direct payments to individuals, expanded and extended unemployment benefits, and $500 billion in loans to bail out affected industries. It does not include relief for renewables, such as crucial tax credit extensions for solar and wind.
美国也好不到哪去。一票刺激经济措施实施后，碳排量肯定也是短期下降长期上升。美国政府已经将环境问题置之度外了。这周已经通过了直升机撒钱法案，美国史上最大撒钱活动帮助了很多人，很多公司来度过这个难关，除了可再生能源行业。啥帮助也没有，税收抵免也没有。
This isn’t likely to be the last stimulus. Already, there is talk of the next phase of economic relief, and climate and clean energy advocates are looking to future legislation that might aim to relieve specific industries.
直升机撒钱肯定不会是最后一个措施。有人说了，下一阶段措施正在拟定。清洁能源行业就眼巴巴地等着政府会不会出台一些针对他们的扶助政策。
The two biggest wild cards for climate going forward are how policymakers respond to the threat of a global recession and how the pandemic changes political will for climate action around the world. Prime Minister Andrej Babis of the Czech Republic has already said that the European Green Deal, a new policy package that commits European Union member states to zero emissions by 2050, should be set aside so that countries can focus on fighting the pandemic.
要说世上最没法预测的两件事儿，大概就是政客们会如何应对经济衰退和疫情会如何改变人的政治意愿。捷克说了，欧洲绿色协定(2050年前零碳排量)的事儿就先放一边吧，把眼前的难关度过去再说。
This week has seen a chilling shift in conservative rhetoric around the virus that echoes all-too-familiar patterns of climate denialism, suggesting that a more dangerous sort of transference is taking place. As the climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote on Twitter, “The six stages of climate denial are: It’s not real. It’s not us. It’s not that bad. It’s too expensive to fix. Aha, here’s a great solution (that actually does nothing). And — oh no! Now it’s too late. You really should have warned us earlier.”
这周政府的说辞变化的可太精彩了，跟之前否认气候变化时的情况一模一样。当时这么说的，有种危险的变化正在发生。KH发推说，“政府解决问题的六步式：这是假的。这跟我们没关系。现在还没那么糟。要解决这问题得花好多钱。哈哈，有个超棒的解决方案(然而实际上毛都没做)！最后——我擦，现在要做也晚了，你们得早点儿提醒我们啊。” (谁上个yes minister的经典截图，可乐坏我了)
There is another world in which policymakers and politicians planning for economic recovery decide to make building a carbon-neutral society a priority. Because while the new reality could easily drain political will and funding from efforts to address the climate crisis, it could also inject a sense of urgency at a time when politicians are suddenly willing to spend vast sums of money. In this world, governments would create meaningful jobs in areas such as education, medical care, housing and clean energy, with an emphasis on “shovel-ready” projects that put people to work immediately.
其实除了牺牲环境拯救经济的方案，还有个更好的办法——建设一个碳平衡的社会，最终实现经济复苏。虽然以目前的状况，为了保护环境而付出的努力、金钱很容易付之一炬，但也有可能领导人们突然醒悟，建设这种社会花上很多钱是值得的。在这个社会，政府会把钱都投到教育、医疗、房地产、清洁能源这些行业里，创造一些非常有意义的岗位，这些岗位能立刻就让人就业。
The U.S. government, for example, could continue to provide jobs as needed — the program would expand during recession and contract when the economy recovered and people could find work elsewhere. As Kate Aronoff writes in The New Republic, “One possible benefit to such a program is that it could provide an alternative to low-paid work bound up in carbon-intensive supply chains like those at McDonald’s and Walmart — currently the only employment on offer in many communities around the country.” This approach would address the climate crisis with the urgency it demands while also addressing the immediate needs of workers who will be laid off or have hours reduced because of shutdowns.
比方说，在这种社会里，美国政府可以按需创造就业岗位——按需是指经济衰退的时候创造岗位，而复苏的时候就不用那么多。就像KA说的，这种社会会有中好处，它会淘汰掉很多脱胎于非低碳经济的低薪岗位，比如说麦当劳和沃尔玛(当然了这是现在全国为数不多还在招人的企业)。这个方案能把迫在眉睫的环境问题给处理好，还能给失业的人提供就业岗位。
Rather than seeing the clean energy transition stall, such an approach could jump-start it, while also stimulating the economy. Governments drive more than 70 percent of global energy investments, and recovery plans could shift those investments as well as include new large-scale investments to turbocharge the development, deployment and integration of clean energy technologies. As Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, recently pointed out, the drop in oil prices also offers an opportunity for countries around the world to lower or remove subsidies for fossil fuel consumption, which disproportionally line the pockets of wealthy individuals and corporations with money that could go to education, health care or clean energy projects.
这个方案会加速清洁能源行业的发展，同时刺激经济。政府用全球超过七成的能源业投资丢到这个方案里，能给发展、失业、能源业倒退注入强心针。FB说，原油下跌，政府可以减少甚至取消对化石燃料的补助，然后用这笔钱投资到教育、医疗和能源行业。
There are, of course, more radical policy interventions that could improve the health of the planet, our communities and our lives. Adopting a 32-hour workweek in the United States could lower emissions and vastly improve the quality of American life. It’s unlikely we will see a four-day workweek anytime soon, but the profound disruptions of the pandemic provide a rare opportunity, even in the midst of great suffering, for rewiring our sense of what is possible in American society. Maybe the rupture caused by “shelter in place” orders provides a glimpse of what work is “essential” to society — care work, education and food distribution. Maybe it offers a glimpse, distorted though it may be, of what life might be like if we all went to work a little less.
当然了，还有更激进的政策可以保护地球、社区和我们的生活。比方说一周工作32小时就能有效降低碳排量，提升我们的生活质量。虽然近期可能是见不到这种景象了，但是这次疫情却让它产生了一点小小的可能性。也许这次的居家令会让人们慢慢意识到，到底什么工作才是我们这个社会运转所真正必须的——医护，教育，食物分配。这次的疫情也许人们也会慢慢了解，如果大家每周都少工作几个小时，生活会变成什么样。
A best-case outcome might include a rethinking of the social contract that helps protect and provide for the most vulnerable members of society at a time of increasing risk. We need to ask: What does a government owe to its people? The climate crisis has already demonstrated that the way our societies and economies are organized is unsustainable on a planet of finite resources. And as people face increasing and unevenly distributed climate risk, it is reasonable to wonder what sort of support we can expect from our government. When your community is in crisis, how will your government respond? The pandemic is a gut-wrenching reality check.
这次疫情最好的结果就是，我们会反思社会、政府在风险出现的时候，是如何保护它的人民的。我们得问问，政府欠了人民什么？气候危机已经表明了我们现在的社会、经济运行方式是不可持续的，因为地球的资源始终是有限的。随着人越来越多，全球各地的气候风险是不一样的，这时候得想想，我们能期望政府给我们什么帮助。当你生活的地方出现危机的时候，政府会如何作为？这次疫情将会回答。
The crushing blows of the coronavirus pandemic, like those of the climate crisis, will be felt hardest by our most vulnerable populations — the poor, the elderly, the homeless, the stateless, the incarcerated, and the precariously employed — while international corporations driven by the logics of profit and endless growth to seek new markets, cheap labor, and what the sociologist Jason Moore has called “cheap nature,” thereby connecting the world and helping create the conditions for crisis, will most likely remain relatively protected.
这次爆发的疫情，就像气候危机，谁最遭殃？是那些无穷止境追逐利益、开拓新市场、剥削便宜劳动力的跨国公司吗？不，他们会是危机发生时活得最好的一批人。对危难最感同身受切身体验的是穷人，老人，无家可归之人，无国籍之人，犯人，没有稳定工作的人。
The new coronavirus spread through the activity of global markets, and it remains to be seen whether we can respond to this crisis without relying on and reinforcing the same market logics that got us into this mess. Rather, to face the profound challenges of pandemics — of which this coronavirus will not be the last — as well as the threat of climate change, to survive and even flourish on this interconnected planet, we have to learn to subordinate the needs of the market to our own needs.
疫情还在肆虐，而我们是不是还会用让我们吃过亏的方式来应对，这有待观察。为了应对这次疫情和气候变化带来的挑战，为了能在这颗星球上活下来，活得好，我们得学着把自己的需求放第一位，开拓市场赚钱的事儿就排后边儿吧