经济学人下载:气候问题(3)

The scale of the implications underlines another thing that climate change is not. It is not just an environmental problem alongside all the others—and absolutely not one that can be solved by hair-shirt self-abnegation. Change by the people who are most alarmed will not be enough. What is also needed is change in the lives of those who do not yet much care. Climate is a matter for the whole of government. It cannot be shunted off to the minister for the environment whom nobody can name. And that leads to a third thing that climate change is not. It is not a problem that can be put off for a few decades. It is here and now. It is already making extreme events like Hurricane Dorian more likely. Its losses are already there and often mourned—on drab landscapes where the glaciers have died and on reefs bleached of their coral colours. Delay means that mankind will suffer more harm and face a vastly more costly scramble to make up for lost time.
其影响范围还凸显了关于气候变化的另外事实。这不仅仅是一个环境问题，而且绝对不是一个可以通过克己来解决的问题。仅仅靠最警觉的人的改变是不够的。我们还需要改变那些还不太在意的人的生活。气候问题是整个政府的事。这件事不能交给环境部长去办，谁也说不出他的名字。这就引出了气候变化所没有的第三个问题。这不是一个可以推迟几十年的问题。而是发生在此时此地的一个问题。飓风多利安这样的极端事件发生的可能性越来越大。它的损失已经存在，而且常常是令人悲哀的——在冰川死亡的单调景观上，在珊瑚颜色褪色的珊瑚礁上。拖延意味着人类将遭受更多的伤害，并面临更大的代价来弥补失去的时间。

Hanging together
齐心协力

What to do is already well understood. And one vital task is capitalism’s speciality: making people better off. Adaptation, including sea defences, desalination plants, drought-resistant crops, will cost a lot of money. That is a particular problem for poor countries, which risk a vicious cycle where the impacts of climate change continuously rob them of the hope for development. International agreements stress the need to support the poorest countries in their efforts to adapt to climate change and to grow wealthy enough to need less help. Here the rich world is shirking its duties.
该做什么已经很清楚了。一项重要的任务就是在资本主义的特殊性：让人们生活得更好。适应气候变化，包括海防、海水淡化、抗旱作物，将花费大量资金。这对穷国来说是一个特别的问题，穷国面临着恶性循环的风险，气候变化的影响不断剥夺穷国发展的希望。国际协议强调有必要支持最贫穷国家适应气候变化的努力，帮助它们富裕起来，减少对援助的需求。在这方面，富裕国家正在逃避自己的责任。

Yet, even if it were to fulfil them, by no means all the effects of climate change can be adapted away. The further change goes, the less adaptation will be able to offset it. That leads to the other need for capital: the reduction of emissions. With plausible technological improvements and lots of investment, it is possible to produce electricity grids that need no carbon-dioxide emitting power stations. Road transport can be electrified, though long-haul shipping and air travel are harder. Industrial processes can be retooled; those that must emit greenhouse gases can capture them.
然而，即使实现了这些目标，气候变化的所有影响也绝不可能被消除。变化越大，适应能力就越弱，无法抵消这种影响。这就导致了对资本的另一种需求:减排。通过合理的技术改进和大量的投资，有可能建造不需要排放二氧化碳的发电站的电网。公路运输可以电气化，尽管长途运输和航空运输更加困难。工业过程可以重新加工；那些必须排放温室气体的国家可以捕获它们。