2022年06月六级第2套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) In the long view, the human relationship with forests has been one of brutal destruction, but even it carries elements of slow hope. In the Middle Ages, there was no shortage of timber in most parts of the world, and few saw cutting down forests as a problem. Yet in 1548 the people of Venice estimated that an important timber supply would last only 30 years at their current rate of usage -- but different forest management would make it possible to meet the demand for many centuries to come. The idea of preserving resources came out of a concern for the future: a fear of using up resources faster than they could be replenished (补充).

从长远来看，人类与森林的关系一直是残酷破坏，但即便如此，它也承载着缓慢希望的元素。在中世纪，世界大部分地区木材并不短缺，很少有人将砍伐森林视为问题。然而，在1548年，威尼斯人估计，按当时的使用速度，一个重要的木材供应只能维持30年——但不同的森林管理将可能在未来几个世纪满足需求。保护资源的想法源于对未来的担忧：害怕资源消耗速度快于其补充速度。

B) Economic interests were at the core of this understanding of trees and forests. It would take more than three centuries before scientists began to understand that timber production is not the only, and possibly not the most important, function of forests. The late 19th and early 20th century saw an increasing recognition that forests serve as habitats for countless animal and plant species that all rely on each other. They take over protective functions against soil erosion and landslides (塌方); they make a significant contribution to the water balance as they prevent surface runoff; they filter dirt particles, greenhouse gases and radioactive substances from the air; they produce oxygen; they provide spaces for recreation and they preserve historic and prehistoric remains. As a result, forests around the world have been set aside as parks or wilderness areas.

经济利益是这种对树木和森林理解的核心。科学家花了一个多世纪的时间才开始明白，木材生产并非森林的唯一功能，也可能不是最重要的功能。19世纪末20世纪初，人们越来越认识到森林是无数动植物物种的栖息地，这些物种相互依存。它们承担防止土壤侵蚀和塌方的保护功能；它们通过阻止地表径流对水平衡做出重大贡献；它们从空气中过滤灰尘颗粒、温室气体和放射性物质；它们产生氧气；它们提供休闲空间并保存历史和史前遗迹。因此，世界各地的森林已被划为公园或荒野地区。

C) Recent years have seen a big change in our view of forests. Peter Wohlleben's book The Hidden Life of Trees (2015), an international bestseller, suggests that trees can warn each other of danger through a "wood wide web" of roots and fungi (真菌). They support each other through sharing of nutrients and information, and they even keep ancient stumps alive by feeding them solutions of sugars. Such insights have made us aware of deep ecological relationships between humans and the more-than-human world.

近年来，我们对森林的看法发生了巨大变化。彼得·沃莱本的著作《树的秘密生活》（2015年）是国际畅销书，它提出树木可以通过根部和真菌的“木联网”相互警告危险。它们通过共享营养和信息相互支持，甚至通过喂养糖液来维持古老树桩的生命。这些见解让我们意识到人类与超人类世界之间深刻的生态关系。

D) Awareness of ecologies is a recent phenomenon. It was not until the 1940s that the concept of the "environment" embracing all living and nonliving things developed. In the 1970s, the term "environment" gained currency, becoming widely adopted in the English and Romance languages, and as "Umwelt" ("surrounding world") in German. The emergence of the idea led to the rise of environmental agencies, regulations and environmental studies, and to environmental science as new, integrated academic disciplines. It was in 1956 that the very first bachelor of science in environmental studies was awarded, at the State University of New York College of Forestry at Syracuse. Since the 1970s- with the rise of "environmentalism" -- environmental studies programmes have sprung up at hundreds of universities. There is (slow) hope in the fact that scholars from many different disciplines have adopted the term "environment" over the past decades. They are exploring intricate connections within and between complex ecologies, as well as the impact that human environment-making (through techno-industrial, economic and other manipulative developments) has had on the biosphere.

生态意识是近期现象。直到20世纪40年代，涵盖所有生物和非生物的“环境”概念才得以发展。20世纪70年代，“环境”一词开始流行，在英语和罗曼语族语言中被广泛采用，在德语中则称为“Umwelt”（“周围世界”）。这一思想的出现导致了环境机构、法规和环境研究的兴起，以及环境科学作为新的综合性学术学科的诞生。1956年，纽约州立大学锡拉丘兹林学院首次授予环境研究理学学士学位。自20世纪70年代以来，随着“环保主义”的兴起，环境研究项目在数百所大学涌现。在过去几十年里，许多不同学科的学者采用了“环境”一词，这带来了（缓慢的）希望。他们正在探索复杂生态内部和之间的错综联系，以及人类环境塑造（通过技术工业、经济和其他操纵性发展）对生物圈的影响。

E) The rise of the idea of the environment and a scholarly understanding of ecological processes has influenced new technologies and also politics. We have come to ask questions about vulnerability and risk, world ecologies, and the relationship between nature and power. The search for an adequate response to climate change occupies centre stage in international diplomacy.

环境理念的兴起和对生态过程的学术理解影响了新技术和政治。我们开始关注脆弱性与风险、世界生态以及自然与权力之间的关系。寻求应对气候变化的充分对策在国际外交中占据中心位置。

F) Social and environmental activists, scientists and indigenous groups have called the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2015 insufficient, weak, or compromised. To some extent, they are right: climate change has already destroyed tens of thousands of livelihoods, and the situation will worsen in the near future for millions of mostly poorer people, who will join the ranks of those who have already been displaced by climate change and extreme weather events. But the Paris Conference nevertheless marked a historic step toward the recognition of the need for action on climate change, the cutting of carbon emissions, and world cooperation. There were 195 nations that came to the table in Paris and agreed to limits on emissions. Historically, nothing comparable had happened prior to this. Before the 20th century, a handful of scientists had been interested in the theoretical relationship between greenhouse gases and climate change, but only the empirical evidence accumulated since the late 20th century established a clear connection between the burning of fossil fuels and a vastly accelerated rise in global temperatures.

社会和环保活动家、科学家和原住民群体称2015年12月联合国气候变化大会的《巴黎协定》不足、软弱或妥协。在某种程度上，他们是正确的：气候变化已经摧毁了数万人的生计，未来情况对数百万主要是较贫困的人来说将更糟，他们将加入已被气候变化和极端天气事件流离失所者的行列。但巴黎会议仍标志着承认应对气候变化、减少碳排放和世界合作需求的历史性一步。有195个国家参加了巴黎会议，同意限制排放。历史上，在此之前没有类似事件发生。20世纪之前，少数科学家对温室气体和气候变化的理论关系感兴趣，但直到20世纪末积累的经验证据才建立了化石燃料燃烧与全球温度急剧上升之间的明确联系。

G) The current crisis is not the first that humans have encountered, and a look at the struggles with pollution in recent history reveals transformations that once seemed unimaginable. The "London fog", that came to define the capital through British novels and thrillers is in reality smog or smoke, a legacy of industrialisation. After a century of ignorance, London was hit by the Great Smog of December 1952- the worst air-pollution event in the history of the United Kingdom which caused the deaths of approximately 12,000 people. Shortly thereafter, public initiatives and political campaigns led to strict regulations and new laws, including the Clean Air Act (1956). Today, London has effectively reduced traffic emissions through the introduction of a Congestion Charge Zone in 2003, and an Ultra Low Emission Zone in 2019.

当前危机并非人类首次遇到的危机，回顾近代历史上与污染的斗争，揭示了一些曾经难以想象的转变。通过英国小说和惊悚片定义首都的“伦敦雾”实际上是烟雾或烟尘，是工业化的遗产。经过一个世纪的忽视，伦敦在1952年12月遭受了大烟雾——英国历史上最严重的空气污染事件，导致约12,000人死亡。此后不久，公众倡议和政治运动导致了严格的规定和新法律的出台，包括《清洁空气法》（1956年）。如今，伦敦通过2003年引入拥堵收费区和2019年的超低排放区，有效减少了交通排放。

H) Scientific evidence that we are living in an era of climate change, resource exhaustion and potential ecological disaster is overwhelming. How do we motivate a public exhausted by never-ending scenarios of doom and disaster, when the challenges seem so huge and so impossible to solve? Statistics about extinction and the gloom of decline will not in themselves get us out of our often self-created ecological traps: instead, they are more likely to result in paralysis and inaction.

科学证据表明我们生活在一个气候变化、资源枯竭和潜在生态灾难的时代，这些证据是压倒性的。当挑战如此巨大且似乎无法解决时，我们如何激励被无休止的末日和灾难情景所疲惫的公众？关于物种灭绝和衰退的统计数据本身不会让我们摆脱往往自我造成的生态陷阱：相反，它们更可能导致瘫痪和不作为。

I) We need stories and histories of change and transformation: ecological stories that make us confront the fact that human power is potentially destructive, and that the survival of our species on this planet depends on the preservation of soil and water, and the habitats and ecological systems.

我们需要关于变革和转型的故事和历史：生态故事让我们面对人类力量可能具有破坏性的事实，以及我们物种在这个星球上的生存依赖于土壤和水的保护，以及栖息地和生态系统的保护。

J) It is time that we showed successes and accelerations in ecological awareness, action and restoration: stories that include past successes and future visions about the rise of urban gardening and of renaturalised riverscapes, of successful protests against polluted air and water, of the rise of regional markets and slow food, and the planting of trees around the globe, of initiatives and enterprises that work towards ecological restoration. The reality of ecological curses seems far greater than the power of the hopes left at the bottom of Pandora's box. But if we believe that nothing can be changed, then we are giving up our opportunity to act.

是时候展示生态意识、行动和恢复方面的成功和加速了：这些故事包括过去的成功和未来愿景，关于城市园艺和河流景观自然恢复的兴起，关于成功抗议空气和水污染，关于地区市场和慢食运动的兴起，以及全球植树活动，还有致力于生态恢复的倡议和企业。生态诅咒的现实似乎比潘多拉盒子底部留下的希望力量大得多。但如果我们相信什么都无法改变，那我们就放弃了行动的机会。

K) Today's saving powers will not come from a deus ex machina (解围之中). In an ever-more complex and synthetic world, our saving powers won't come from a single source, and certainly not from a too-big-to-fail approach or from those who have been drawn into the whirlpool of our age of speed. Hope can work as a wakeup call. It acknowledges setbacks. The concept of slow hope suggests that we can't expect things to change overnight. If the ever-faster exhaustion of natural resources (in ecological terms) and the "shrinking of the present" (in social terms) are urgent problems of humans, then cutting down on exhaustive practices and working towards a "stretching of the present" will be ways to move forward.

今天的拯救力量不会来自解围之策。在一个日益复杂和综合的世界里，我们的拯救力量不会来自单一来源，当然也不会来自“太大而不能倒”的方法，或来自那些被卷入我们时代速度漩涡的人。希望可以作为一种唤醒的号召。它承认挫折。缓慢希望的概念表明，我们不能期望事情一夜之间改变。如果自然资源的（从生态角度看）日益加速枯竭和“现在”（从社会角度看）的“收缩”是人类的紧迫问题，那么减少耗竭性做法和致力于“拉伸现在”将是前进的方式。