2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：欢迎来到人类纪

　　The new geology leaves all in doubt

　　新地质学一切没有定论

　　What geologists choose to call a period of history normally matters little to the rest of mankind;tussles at the International Commission on Stratigraphy over the boundaries of the Ordovicianera do not normally capture headlines. The Anthropocene is different. It is one of thosemoments where a scientific realisation, like Copernicus grasping that the Earth goes round thesun, could fundamentally change people’s view of things far beyond science. It means morethan rewriting some textbooks. It means thinking afresh about the relationship between peopleand their world and acting accordingly.

　　地质学家选择称呼历史一个时期为什么名字通常与其他人关系不大。地层学国际研究组关于奥陶纪时代界限的争辩往往不能占领头条。人类纪就不一样了，像哥白尼掌握了地球围绕太阳运转那样，它是科学认识可以从根本上改变人们对远远超乎科学事物看法的时刻。它不仅仅意味着一些教科书的重写。它意味着对人与世界关系的重新审视并以此采取相应行动。

　　Thinking afresh is the easier bit. Too many natural scientists embrace the comfortingassumption that nature can be studied, indeed should be studied, in isolation from the humanworld, with people as mere observers. Many environmentalists—especially those in the Americantradition inspired by Henry David Thoreau—believe that “in wilderness is the preservation ofthe world”. But the wilderness, for good or ill, is increasingly irrelevant.

　　重新审视相对比较容易。太多的自然科学家接受让人欣慰的假定，即研究自然可以(实际上应当)与人类世界分离，把人类当作纯粹的旁观者。许多环保主义者——尤其是受亨利·戴维·梭罗处受到启发的美国传统中的那些人认为，“世界存于荒野之中”。不过，在现实世界中，无论好坏，它们的关系渐行渐远。

　　Almost 90% of the world’s plant activity, by someestimates, is to be found in ecosystems wherehumans play a significant role. Although farms havechanged the world for millennia, the Anthropoceneadvent of fossil fuels, scientific breeding and, most ofall, artificial nitrogen fertiliser has vastly increasedagriculture’s power. The relevance of wilderness toour world has shrunk in the face of this onslaught.The sheer amount of biomass now walking aroundthe planet in the form of humans and livestockhandily outweighs that of all other large animals.The world’s ecosystems are dominated by an increasingly homogenous and limited suite ofcosmopolitan crops, livestock and creatures that get on well in environments dominated byhumans. Creatures less useful or adaptable get short shrift: the extinction rate is running farhigher than during normal geological periods.

　　一些评估认为，全球90%的农业种植，在人类起重要作用的生态系统中进行。尽管农业改变世界已有千年历史，人类纪出现的化石燃料、科学繁殖以及最重要的人工氮肥极大地加大了农业的力量。在无孔不入的人力改造面前，我们与自然产生了疏离。以人类和牲畜形式在地球上行走的巨大生物量轻易地超过了其他大型动物。世界生态系统由同质的有限系列的世界性的庄稼、家畜以及与人类主导的环境相处不错的生物们支配。人们对不那么有用、适应性不那么强的生物漠不关心，与正常的地质时期相比，这些生物的死亡率要高出许多。

　　Recycling the planet

　　循环利用地球

　　How frightened should people be about this? It would be odd not to be worried. The planet’shistory contains many less stable and clement eras than the Holocene. Who is to say thathuman action might not tip the planet into new instability?

　　面对如此种种，人类该有多么担惊受怕?不担心才让人觉得奇怪。地球历史包含许多没有全新世稳定和温和的时期。谁敢说人类行为就不能将地球带到一种新的不稳定状态?

　　Some will want simply to put the clock back. But returning to the way things were is neitherrealistic nor morally tenable. A planet that could soon be supporting as many as 10 billionhuman beings has to work differently from the one that held 1 billion people, mostly peasants, 200 years ago. The challenge of the Anthropocene is to use human ingenuity to set things upso that the planet can accomplish its 21st-century task.

　　一些人只是简单地希望时光倒流。但种种回到本初的方式既不实际，在道义上也站不住脚。一个即将养活多达100亿人类的地球与200年前养活10亿人类(大多是农民)时期相比，运行方式不可同日而语。人类纪的挑战在于运用人类智慧让地球能够完成21世纪的任务。

　　Increasing the planet’s resilience will probably involve a few dramatic changes and a lot offiddling. An example of the former could be geoengineering. Today the copious carbon dioxideemitted to the atmosphere is left for nature to pick up, which it cannot do fast enough.Although the technologies are still nascent, the idea that humans might help remove carbonfrom the skies as well as put it there is a reasonable Anthropocene expectation; it wouldn’tstop climate change any time soon, but it might shorten its lease, and reduce the changes inocean chemistry that excess carbon brings about.

　　增加地球的恢复很可能包括一些剧烈的变化和细枝末节。地球工程就是一个先例。现在，大量的二氧化碳被排放至大气层，等待自然界的消化吸收。但自然界的速度有限。尽管技术尚不成熟，人类可能从天空去除碳，也能将碳放到天空这一想法可能是合理的人类纪展望。这种技术可能不能很快地阻止气候变化，但是，也许可以缩短气候变化的阶段，并且减少产生过多碳的海洋化学变化。

　　More often the answer will be fiddling—finding ways to apply human muscle with the grain ofnature, rather than against it, and help it in its inbuilt tendency to recycle things. Humaninterference in the nitrogen cycle has made far more nitrogen available to plants and animals;it has done much less to help the planet deal with all that nitrogen when they have finishedwith it. Instead we suffer ever more coastal “dead zones” overrun by nitrogen-fed algal blooms.Quite small things, such as smarter farming and better sewage treatment, could help a lot.

　　通常情况下，答案是无足轻重的：找到将人类力量适用于自然的方式，而不是与自然进行抵触，协助自然用其内在趋势对事物进行再循环利用。人类对氮循环的干预使得地球和动物有了更多可以获取的氮，当人类对氮循环的干预完成后，却又没有设法帮助自然去处理所有的氮。相反，我们遭受由氮提供养分的赤潮肆虐造成的沿海“死区”。一些相当小的事情，如智能养殖、污水净化处理，都能有不少帮助。

　　For humans to be intimately involved in many interconnected processes at a planetary scalecarries huge risks. But it is possible to add to the planet’s resilience, often through simple andpiecemeal actions, if they are well thought through. And one of the messages of theAnthropocene is that piecemeal actions can quickly add up to planetary change.

　　对人类而言，在全球范围密切参与如此之多相互联系的过程充满巨大风险。不过通常经过简单而零碎的行动——只要从头到尾认真思考过，对地球恢复都不无裨益。人类纪传达出的一个信息即是：人类的琐碎行为加起来就能很快使地球发生改变。

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