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问答题
The Threatened Environment In recent years we have come to realize that several threats to the environment are fundamental. One is acid rain, which is created by the millions of tones of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed out of North American smokestacks and automobile exhaust pipes1. The oxides mix with water vapor in the air to form weak sulphuric and nitric acid, which later falls as acid rain. The result is increased acidity in lakes, which has curtailed the ability of many fish to reproduce, and in the soil, which has slowed the growth of trees and increased their vulnerability to disease.2 With every news report, the externality dimension of environmental problems3 seems to become clearer. For instance, it was recently reported that Lapp villagers in northern Sweden and Norway were forbidden to eat local reindeer meat after their herds became contaminated by fallout from the nuclear accident at ChernobyI5 in far-off Ukraine. Similarly, Canadian wildlife scientists have found high levels of PCBs6 and other contaminants in polar-bear livers. But some pollution problems involve such dramatic externalities that the whole world is affected. One example is the greenhouse effect. The steadily rising and essentially irreversible concentration7 of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere causes it to trap increasing amounts of the heat radiated by the planet. The general warming trend is expected to have disastrous effects, including mass starvation in some less developed countries, flooding of entire coastal areas, and severe droughts on the Canadian Prairies, perhaps within the next fifty years. Another worldwide threat is in the upper atmosphere—the thinning of the layer of ozone, a bluish gas that shields the earth from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are depleting the ozone layer. One estimated result is that the chance of getting skin cancer is now 8 to 16 percent greater than it was in 1950. Hazardous wastes (such as those from nuclear plants, industrial manufacturing, laboratories, and medical institutions) represent yet another critical environmental problem improperly disposed, they can threaten all forms of organic life. Unfortunately, little has been done so far to solve this problem. Indeed there are many instances in which industrialized countries have literally just shipped the problem off to the poorest of the less developed countries—countries unequipped with the necessary storage and treatment facilities, and certainly too poor to deal with the serious environmental problems that will follow. For example, in 1988 the government of Guinea-Bissau13 signed a contract with two British firms to receive 15 million tones of pharmaceutical wastes over a five-year period. While this arrangement was very inexpensive from the firms’ point of view, the payments to Guinea-Bissau totaled more than four times that county’s national product. It makes it difficult to solve the problem when parts of the world are so poor that they are forced to regard such transactions as “good deals”. The users of the world’s resources simply must be made to take the external costs of their actions into consideration when making their decisions. The people who are hacking down the world’s rain forests at the rate of 1200 hectares an hour are literally cutting away the lungs of the earth, since rain forests contribute a large percentage of the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere. But these individuals are not necessarily evil: in many cases, they are forced to overuse the environment for their own or their country’s immediate survival. For example, some developing countries’ needs for foreign exchange to pay for imports compel them to cut timber faster than it can be regenerated. They simply cannot afford to worry about the future. Obviously, many of these problems cannot be solved without political decisions to redistribute income to the less developed countries, and to define property rights. But the right kinds of political and institutional changes will be forthcoming only if they are rooted in an understanding of the externality dimension of environmental issues.
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【参考译文】
环境危机 近年来我们逐渐认识到,有几种对环境构成的威胁是根本性的,其中之一便是酸雨。酸雨现象是由大量二氧化硫和氧化氮造成的。在北美洲,大烟囱和汽车尾气管每天都排放出大量的二氧化硫和氧化氮。这些氧化物在空气中和水蒸汽结合,转化为弱硫酸和弱氮酸,降落到地面便形成酸雨。酸雨现象不但导致湖泊酸性提高,使鱼类繁殖能力下降;而且随着土壤里酸性物质的激增,树木的生长速度开始放慢,对疾病的抵抗力明显下降。
新闻曝光使污染问题的外延性更加清晰。比如最近有报道称:居住在瑞典和挪威北部的拉普兰人被禁止食用当地鹿肉,因为远在乌克兰的切尔诺贝利城发生核事故,污染波及到了拉普兰人的鹿群。无独有偶,加拿大野生动物学家发现,北极熊肝内含有大量聚氯联二苯和其他污染物。
另外,有些污染问题的外延性很大,全世界都无法幸免。温室效应便是一例。由于大气中的二氧化碳分子日益聚集,浓度越来越高,而且很难分解,使地球热量滞留,无法散发,导致全球气候变暖。据估计,人类在未来五十年内也许将面临巨大灾难:部分经济落后国家将爆发大面积饥荒,整个沿海地区将被淹没,加拿大平原地区则可能遭受严重的旱灾。
对全球气候的另一威胁来自大气层上端越来越稀薄的臭氧层。臭氧层是由一团微蓝色的气体构成,该气团能遮挡来自太阳的紫外线。现在它正被一种叫氯氟甲烷的合成化学物质所吞噬。臭氧层变薄,人类患皮肤癌的机率比1950年增长了8%-16%。
另外,大量由核电厂、工厂、实验室和制药厂排放的有毒废弃物未得到妥善处理,它们可能对所有的有机体构成威胁。不幸的是,迄今为止,该问题很少有人理会。不少工业发达的国家干脆把问题转嫁给极度贫困的国家,这些落后国家没有废物堆积和处理设备,更没有能力应对此后的隐患。1988年几内亚(比绍)政府与英国两个公司签订合同,同意在其后五年中接收1500万吨制药废物。作为交换的费用对英国公司是区区小数,但却是几内亚(比绍)国民产值的四倍多。世界上有些国家极度贫穷,这种交易对于他们来说还非常“划得来”。因此,解决这个问题绝非易事。
我们提醒那些利用世界上的资源的人们,在做出决定时必须三思,想想外部世界会为他们的行为付出什么样的代价。有人正以每小时1200公顷的速度砍伐雨林,他们砍的其实是地球的肺脏,因为雨林是地球大气层中氧气的主要供给者之一。但这些人并不都是邪恶之徒。他们为了国家和自己眼前的生计,过度利用环境,实属无奈。例如,有些发展中国家不得不超速砍伐树木,以换取必需的外汇以进口物品。他们实在无力顾及将来。
显然,如果不采用政治手段在落后国家和发达国家之间重新分配所得,并且重新界定环境所有权的话,很多环境问题便得不到解决。只有在人们充分理解污染的外延性的基础上,才能使政治和制度朝正确的方向转变。
解析：
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