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Living Sustainably

机译：可持续生活

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Living Sustainably Lester W. Milbrath State University of New York at Buffalo The Tragic Success of the Human Species We often hear that we face an environmental crisis. Do we? Try this thought experiment: imagine that suddenly, poof all the humans disappear but leave behind the buildings, roads, shopping malls, stadiums, factories, skyscrapers, automobiles, ships, planes, and so forth. Now imagine that three or four centuries pass. What will have happened? Buildings will have crumbled, vehicles will have rusted and fallen apart, plants will have grown into and broken up roads and parking lots, much of the land will have been recolonized by forests. Water, air and soil will have gradually cleaned up, endangered species will once more flourish. Nature, you see, will thrive splendidly without us. That experiment makes it clear that we do not have an environmental crisis. We have a crisis of human civilization. It was not until we became civilized and took more and more of the biosphere to serve our exclusive needs that we began to reproduce and consume at epidemic rates. Just in this century, human numbers will have doubled twice, from one and a half billion to three billion, to six billion. Still another doubling would carry us beyond twenty billion. But that is impossible. Our use of resources and discharge of wastes more than doubles with each doubling of human population. Those growth rates simply cannot continue for two reasons: first, there simply will not be sufficient resources for all those new humans, even at present per capita consumption rates. Even more importantly, the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and chlorofluorocarbons are beginning to change the way the biosphere works. Scientists estimate that the earth will warm three to nine degrees Fahrenheit in the next seven decades, perhaps sooner. That will be sufficient to change climate patterns. We cannot be sure that the climate will change gradually and then settle down into a new pattern. It may oscillate unpredictably and bring unexpected catastrophe. Climate change and loss of the ozone
机译：纽约州立大学布法罗分校的可持续生活莱斯特·米尔布鲁斯（L. W. Milbrath）人类物种的悲惨成功我们经常听到我们面临环境危机。我们要不要？尝试一下这个思想实验：想象一下，突然之间，所有人类都po然大悟，却离开了建筑物，道路，购物中心，体育场，工厂，摩天大楼，汽车，轮船，飞机等。现在想象三个或四个世纪过去了。会发生什么事？建筑物将崩溃，车辆将生锈并坍塌，植物将生长在道路和停车场中，并被破坏，大部分土地将被森林重新定居。水，空气和土壤将逐渐被清理干净，濒临灭绝的物种将再次繁盛。你知道，没有我们，自然将灿烂地兴旺起来。该实验清楚地表明，我们没有环境危机。我们面临着人类文明的危机。直到我们开始文明化并越来越多地利用生物圈来满足我们的独特需求后，我们才开始以流行病的速度繁殖和消费。就在本世纪，人类人数将翻一番，从十亿五千万增至三十亿，再增至六十亿。再加倍，将使我们超过200亿。但这是不可能的。人口每增加一倍，我们对资源的利用和废物的排放就增加一倍以上。这些增长率根本无法持续，原因有两个：第一，即使按目前的人均消费率，也根本没有足够的资源供所有这些新人类使用。更重要的是，二氧化碳，甲烷，一氧化二氮和氯氟烃等温室气体的排放开始改变生物圈的工作方式。科学家们估计，在未来的七十年中，地球可能会升温三到九华氏度，甚至更早。这将足以改变气候模式。我们不能确定气候会逐渐变化，然后稳定下来成为新的格局。它可能会发生不可预期的振荡并带来意想不到的灾难。气候变化与臭氧损失

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