新视野(第三版)课文book4 unit 4-Achieving sustainable environ

新视野大学英语读写教程(第三版)第四册- unit4 Achieving sustainable environmentalism

新视野大学英语第三版读写教程第四册:Unit4A 可持续性发展的环保主义Unit 4 Text A Achieving sustainable environmentalism 翻译, 原文

Achieving sustainable environmentalism

1 Environmental sensitivity is now as required an attitude in polite society as is sa y 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 advanc ed 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 t he best options and consolidate our varying interests into a single sound policy?

2 There is a simple way. First differentiate between environmental luxuries and env ironmental necessities. Luxuries are those things that would be nice to have if costl ess. 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.

3 For example preserving the atmosphere stopping ozone depletion and the green house effect is an environmental necessity. Recently scientists reported that ozone damage is far worse than previously thought. Ozone depletion has a correlation n ot 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.

4 The possible thermal consequences of the greenhouse effect are far deadlier: me lting ice caps flooded coastlines disrupted climate dry plains and ultimately empty b readbaskets. The American Midwest feeds people at all corners of the atlas. With t he planetary climate changes are we prepared to see Iowa take on New Mexico's desert climate or Siberia take on Iowa's moderate climate?

5 Ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect are human disasters and they are ur gent 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 bein gs. A sane environmentalism is entirely a human focused regime: It calls upon hu manity to preserve nature but merely within the parameters of self-survival.

6 Of course this human focus runs against the grain of a contemporary environme ntalism that indulges in overt earth worship. Some people even allege that the eart h 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.

新视野大学英语读写教程(第三版)第四册- unit4 Achieving sustainable environmentalism

My nature worship stops with the twister that came through Kansas or the dreadf ul rains in Bangladesh that eradicated whole villages and left millions homeless.

7 A non-sentimental environmentalism is one founded on Protagoras's idea that "M an is the measure of all things." In establishing the sovereignty of man such a prin ciple helps us through the dense forest of environmental arguments. Take the curre nt debate raging over oil drilling in a corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Environmentalist coalitions mobilizing against a legislative action working it s way through the US Congress for the legalization of such exploration propagate t hat Americans should be preserving and economizing energy instead of drilling for i t. This is a false either-or proposition. The US does need a sizable energy tax to r educe consumption. But it needs more production too. Government estimates indica te a nearly fifty-fifty chance that under the ANWR rests one of the five largest oil f ields ever discovered in America. It seems illogical that we are not finding safe wa ys to drill for oil in the ANWR.

8 The 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 ground s of Arctic caribou.

9 I like the caribou as much as the next person. And I would be rather sorry if th eir mating patterns were disturbed. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. A nd in the standoff of the welfare of caribou versus reducing an oil reliance that get s people killed in wars I choose people over caribou every time.

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 biopersi ty is after all necessary to the ecosystem. But we must remember that not every s pecies is needed to keep that persity. Sometimes aesthetic aspects of life have t o be sacrificed to more fundamental ones. If the cost of preserving the spotted owl is the loss of livelihood for 30000 logging families I choose the families (with their saws and chopped timber) over the owl.

11 The important distinction is between those environmental goods that are fundam ental and those that are not. Nature is our ward not our master. It is to be respec ted and even cultivated. But when humans have to choose between their own well-being and that of nature nature will have to accommodate.

12 Humanity should accommodate only when its fate and that of nature are insepa rably bound up. The most urgent maneuver must be undertaken when the very int egrity of humanity's habitat e.g. the atmosphere or the essential geology that sustai ns the core …… 此处隐藏：6914字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……