大学英语综合教程 第二册 unit 8A

[00:00.00]Protecting nature certainly has benefits, but it has costs as well
[00:05.80]How are we to balance the two when deciding how far we should go in caring for the environment?
[00:13.79]SAVING NATURE, BUT ONLY FOR MAN by Charles Krauthammer
[00:20.98]Environmental sensitivity is now as required an attitude in polite society as is, say,
[00:30.17]belief in democracy or aversion to nylon. But now that everyone has claims to love Mother Earth,
[00:39.26]how are we to choose among the dozens of conflicting proposals, restrictions, projects,
[00:47.20]regulations and laws advanced in the name of the environment?
[00:54.07]Clearly not everything with an environmental claim is worth doing. How to choose?
[01:01.78]There is a simple way. First, distinguish between environmental luxu ries and env'n'onmental necessities.
[01:11.50]Luxuries are those things it would be nice to have if costless.Necessities are those things we must have regardless.
[01:23.02]Then apply a rule. Call it the fundamental principle of sensible environmentalism: Combating ecological change
[01:34.17]that directly threatens the health and safety of people is an environmental necessity. All else is luxury.
[01:44.49]For example: preserving the atmosphere, by both protecting the ozone layer and halting the greenhouse effect,
[01:53.87]is an environmental necessity. In April scientists reported that ozone damage
[02:03.01]is far worse than previously thought. Ozone reduction not only causes skin cancer and eye cataracts,
[02:13.54]it also destroys plankton, the beginning of the food chain on top of which we humanssit.
[02:21.82]The reality of the greenhouse effect is more speculative, though its possible consequences are far deadlier:
[02:31.43]melting ice caps, flooded coastlines, disturbed climate, dried up plains and, ullLrnately, empty breadbaskets.
[02:42.56]The American Midwest feeds the world.
[02:47.34]Are we prepared to see Iowa acquire Albuquerque's climate? And Siberia acquire Iowa's?
[02:56.48]Ozone reduction and the greenhouse effect are human disasters. They happen to occur in the environment.
[03:06.38]But they are urgent because they direedy threaten man. A sensible environmentalism,
[03:15.21]the only kind of environ- mentalism that will win universal public support,
[03:21.77]begins by unashamedly declaring that nature is here to serve man.A sensible environmentalism is entirely man-centered:
[03:33.94]it calls for man to preserve nature, but on the grounds of self-preservation.
[03:41.47]A sensible environmentalism does not sentimentalize the earth.
[03:47.92]It does not ask people to sacrifice in the name of other creatures. After all,
[03:56.09]it is hard enough to ask people to sacrifice in the name of other humans.
[04:03.04]Think of the public resistance to foreign aid and welfare.Ask hardworking voters to sacrifice in the name of the snail dartei;
[04:14.54]and, if they are feeling polite, they will give you a shrug.
[04:20.68]Of course, this man-centeredness runs against the grain ofa contemporary environmentalism
[04:28.62]that worships the earth to the point of excess.
[04:33.82]One scientific theory  Gaiatheory actually claims that Earthis allying organism.
[04:42.85]This kind of environmentalism likes to consider itself spiritual. It is nothing more than sentimental.
[04:52.05]It takes, for example, a highly selective view of the kindliness of nature.
[04:59.70]My nature worship stops with the May storms that killed more than 125,000 Bengalis and left 10 million homeless.
[05:11.01]A non-sentimental environmentalism is one founded on Protagoras' principle that "Man is the measure of all things."
[05:20.63]Such a principle helps us to fight our way through the jungle of environmental argument.
[05:27.99]Take the current debate raging over oil drilling in a corner of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
[05:36.64]Environmentalists, fighting against a bill working its way through Congress to permit such exploration,