现代大学英语精读第二版（第六册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——5 - At War with the Planet（与地球的战争）

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Unit 5 - At War with the Planet

At War with the Planet

Barry Commoner

People live in two worlds. Like all living things, we inhabit the natural world created over the Earth's 5-billion-year history by physical, chemical, and biological processes. The other world is our own creation: homes, cars, farms, factories, laboratories, food, clothing, books, paintings, music, poetry. We accept responsibility for events of our own world, but not for what occurs in the natural one. Its storms, droughts and floods are "acts of God" free of human control and exempt from our responsibility.

Now, on a planetary scale, this division has been breached. With the appearance of a continent-sized hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer and the threat of global warming, even droughts, floods, and heat waves may become unwitting acts of man.

Like the Creation, the portending global events are cosmic: They change the relationship between the Planet Earth and its star, the sun. The sun's powerful influence on the Earth is exerted by two forces: gravity and solar radiation. Gravity is a nearly steady force that fixes the planet's path around the sun. Solar radiation-largely visible and ultraviolet light-is vast stream of energy that bathes the Earth's surface, fluctuating from day to night and season to season. Solar energy fuels the energy-requiring processes of life; it creates the planet's climate and governs the gradual evolution and the current behavior of its huge and varied population of living things. We have been tampering with this powerful force, unaware, like the Sorcerer's' Apprentice, of the potentially disastrous consequences of our actions.

We have become accustomed to the now mundane image of the Earth as seen from the first expedition to the moon-a beautiful blue sphere decorated by swirls of fleecy clouds. It is spectacular natural object; at that distance, no overt signs of human activity are visible. But this image, now repeatedly thrust before us in photographs, posters, and advertisements, is misleading Even if the global warming catastrophe never materializes, and the ozone hole remains an esoteric, polar phenomena, already human activity has profoundly altered global conditions in ways that may not register on the camera. Everywhere in the world, there is now radioactivity that was not there before, the dangerous residue of nuclear explosion and the nuclear power industry; noxious flames of smog blanket over major cities; carcinogenic synthetic pesticides have been detected in mother's milk all over the world; great forests have been cut down, destroying ecological niches and their resident species.

Clearly, we need to understand the interaction between our two worlds: the natural ecosphere, the thin global skin of air, water, and soil and the plants and animals that live in it, and the man-made technosphere-powerful enough to deserve so grandiose a term. The technosphere has become sufficiently large and intense to alter the natural processes that govern the ecosphere. And in turn, the altered ecosphere threatens to flood our great cities, dry up our bountiful farms, contaminate our food and water, and poison our bodies-catastrophically diminishing our ability to provide for basic human needs. The human attack on the ecosphere has instigated an ecological counterattack. The two worlds are at war.

The two spheres in which we live are governed by very different laws. One of the basic laws of the ecosphere can be summed up as "Everything is connected to everything else." This expresses the fact that the ecosphere is an elaborate network, in which each component part is linked to many others. Thus, in an aquatic ecosystem a fish is not only a fish, the parent of other fish. It is also the producer of organic waste that nourishes microorganisms and ultimately aquatic plants; the consumer of oxygen produced photosynthetically by the plants; the habitat of parasites; the fish hawk's prey. The fish is not only, existentially, a fish, but also an element of this network, which defines its functions. Indeed, in the evolutionary sense, good part of the network-the microorgan and plants, for example preceded the fish, which could establish itself only because it fitted properly into the preexisting system.

In the technosphere, the component parts—the thousands of different man-made objects—have a very different relation to their surroundings. A car, for example, imposes itself on the neighborhood rather than being defined by it; the same car is sold for use on the densely packed Los Angeles freeways or in a quiet country village. It is produced solely as a salable object—a commodity—with-little regard for how well it fits into either sphere: the system of transportation or the environment. It is true, of course, that all cars must have width that is accommodated by the traffic lanes, and must have proper brakes, lights, and horn, and so on. But as every resident of Los Angeles or New York knows, in recent years their crowded streets and highways have been afflicted with longer and longer limousines, designed to please the buyer and profit the producer, but hardly suitable to their habitat.

Defined so narrowly, it is no surprise that cars have properties that are hostile to their environment. The new cars were successfully designed to carry people more comfortably at higher speed; but no attention was paid to an essential component in their habitat-the people themselves, and their requirement for clean, smog-free air.

Even a part of the technosphere as close to nature as the farm suffers from the same sort of clash with the environment. As man-made object, the farm is designed for the sole purpose of producing crops. Guided by that purpose, after World War, agronomists urged the increasingly heavy application of chemical nitrogen fertilizer. Yields rose, but not in proportion to the rate of fertilizer application; year by year less and less of the applied fertilizer was taken up by the crop and progressive more drained through the soil into groundwater, in the form of nitrate that contaminated rivers, lakes, and water supplies. Nitrogen fertilizer is commodity sold with the narrow purpose of raising yields and manufactured with the even narrower purpose of increasing the chemical industry's profits. When inorganic nitrogen fertilizer was introduced in the 1950s, little or no attention was paid to its ecological behavior in the soil/water system or to the harmful effects of elevated nitrate levels in drinking water.

The second law of ecology—"Everything has to go somewhere"—together with the first, expresses the fundamental importance of cycles in the ecosphere. In the aquatic ecosystem, for example, the participating chemical elements move through closed cyclical processes. As they respire, fish produce carbon dioxide, which in turn is absorbed by aquatic plants and is used, photosynthetically, to produce oxygen, which the fish respire. The fish excrete nitrogen-containing organic compounds in their waste; when the waste is metabolized by aquatic bacteria and molds, the organic nitrogen is converted to nitrate; this, in turn, is an essential nutrient for the aquatic algae; these, ingested by the fish contribute to their organic waste, and the cycle is complete. In such a closed, circular system, there is no such thing as "waste"; everything that is produced in one part of the cycle "goes somewhere" and is used in later step.

The technosphere, in contrast, is dominated by linear processes. Crops and the animals to which they are fed are eaten by people; their waste is flushed into the sewer system, altered in composition but not in amount at a treatment plant, and the residue is dumped into rivers or the ocean as waste, which upsets the natural aquatic ecosystem. Uranium is mined, processed into nuclear fuel which, in generating power, becomes highly radioactive waste that must be carefully guarded-ineffectually thus far-from contaminating the environment for thousands of years. The energy sources that now power the technosphere are mostly fossil fuels, stores that, once depleted, will never be renewed. The end result of this linear process is air pollution and the threat of global warming. Thus, In the technosphere goods are converted, linearly, into waste: crops into sewage; uranium into radioactive residues: fossil fuels into carbon dioxide. In the technosphere, the end of the line is always waste, an assault on the cyclical processes that sustain the ecosphere.

The third informal law of ecology is "Nature knows best." The ecosystem is consistent with itself: its numerous components are compatible with each other and with the whole. Such a harmonious structure is the outcome of a very long period of trial and error-the 5 billion years of biological evolution. The biological sector of the ecosphere-the biosphere is composed of living things that have survived this test because of their finely tuned adaptation to the particular ecological niche that they occupy. Left to their own devices, ecosystems are conservative; the rate of evolution is very slow, and temporary changes, such as an overpopulation of rabbits, for example, are quickly readjusted by the wolves.

In contrast to the ecosphere, the technosphere is composed of objects and materials that reflect a rapid and relentless process of change and variation. In less than a century, transport has progressed from the horse-drawn carriage, through the Model T Ford, to the present array of annually modified cars and aircraft. In a not much longer period, writing instruments have evolved from the quill pen to the typewriter and now the word processor. Synthetic organic chemistry began innocuously enough about 150 years ago with the laboratory production of a common natural substance-urea-but soon departed from this imitative approach to produce a huge array of organic compounds never found in nature and, for that reason, often incompatible with the chemistry of life. Nylon, for example, unlike a natural polymer such as cellulose, is not biodegradable-that is, there is no enzyme in any known living organism that can break it down. As a result, when it is discarded into the ecosphere, nylon, like plastics generally, persists. Thus oceanographers now find in their collecting nets bits of orange, blue, and white nylon and larger pieces jammed in the digestive tracts of dead turtles-the residue of nylon marine cordage. In the technosphere, nylon is a useful new commodity; in the ecosphere, nylon, untested by evolution, is a harmful intruder.

Nature knows best is shorthand for the view that during the several billion years in which they have evolved, living things have created a limited but self-consistent array of substances and reactions that are essential to life. The petrochemical industry has departed from these restrictions, producing thousands of new man-made substances.

Since they are based on the same fundamental patterns of carbon chemistry as the natural compounds, the new ones are often readily accepted into biochemical processes. They therefore can play an insidious, destructive role in living things. In effect, the petrochemical industry produces substances that-like the fantasies of human society invaded by look-alike but dangerous aliens-cunningly enter the chemistry of life, and attack it.

Finally, it is useful to compare the ecosphere and the technosphere with respect to the consequences of failure. In the ecosphere, this is expressed by the idea that "there is no such thing as a free lunch,"meaning that any distortion of an ecological cycle, or the intrusion of an incompatible component (such as a toxic chemical), leads unavoidably to harmful effects. At first glance, the technosphere appears to be extraordinarily free of mistakes-that is, a technological process or product that failed not because of some unanticipated accident but because it was unable to do what it was designed to do. Yet nearly every modern technology has grave faults, which appear not as a failure to accomplish its designed purpose but as a serious impact on the environment Cars usually run very well, but produce smog. Power plants efficiently generate electricity, but also emit dangerous pollutants; modern chemical farming is very productive but contaminates groundwater with nitrate and wildlife and people with pesticides. Even the spectacular nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were far less serious as technical failures than they were in their ecological effects.

Regarded only as a failure in the plant's function, the accident at Chernobyl amounts to a serious but local fire that destroyed the plant. But the resultant release of radioactivity threatens many thousands of people all over Europe with cancer.

A free lunch is really a debt. In the technosphere, a debt is an acknowledged but unmet cost-the mortgage on a factory building for example. Such a debt is tolerable because the technosphere is a system of production which-if—it functions properly-generate—goods that represent wealth potentially capable of repaying the debt. In the technosphere, debts are repaid from within and, at least in theory, are always capable of being paid off, or, in some cases, canceled. In contrast, when the debts represented by environmental pollution are created by the technosphere and transferred to the ecosphere, they are never canceled; damage is unavoidable. The debts represented by the radioactivity disseminated from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, and by the toxic chemicals that enveloped Bhopal, have not been canceled. These debts were merely transferred to the victims, and are paid as they sicken and die.

Since they inhabit both worlds, people are caught in the clash between the ecosphere and the technosphere. What we call the "environmental crisis"-the array of critical unsolved problems ranging from local toxic dumps to the disruption of global climate-is a product of the drastic mismatch between the cyclical, conservative, and self-cons-processes of the ecosphere and the linear, innovative, but ecologically disharmonious processes of the technosphere.

Since the environmental crisis has been generated by the war between the two worlds that human society occupies, it can be properly understood only in terms of their interplay. Of course, as in a conventional war, the issues can be simplified by taking sides: ignoring the interests of one combatant or the other. But this is done only at the cost of understanding. If the ecosphere is ignored, it is possible to define the environmental crisis solely in terms of the factors that govern the technosphere: production, prices, and profits, and the economic processes that mediate their interaction. Then, for example, one can concoct a scheme, as recently proposed by President Bush, in which factories are allotted the right to emit pollutants up to some acceptable level and, in a parody of the "free market," to buy and sell these rights. But unlike the conventional marketplace, which deals in goods-things that serve a useful purpose-this scheme creates a marketplace in "bads"-things that are not only useless but often deadly. Apart from the issue of morality, it should be noted that such a scheme cannot operate unless the right to produce pollutants is exercised-hardly an inducement to eliminating them.

If the technosphere is ignored, the environmental crisis can be defined in purely ecological terms. Human beings are then seen as a peculiar species, unique among living things, that is doomed to destroy its own habitat. Thus simplified, the issue attracts simplistic solutions: reduce the number of people: limit their share of nature's resources; protect all other species from the human marauder by endowing them with "rights."

This approach raises a profound, unavoidable moral question: Is the ecosphere to be protected from destruction for its own sake, or to enhance the welfare of the human beings who depend on it? This leads to a further question regarding the term "welfare." Some environmental advocates believe that human welfare would be improved if people were less dependent on the artifacts of the technosphere and lived in closer harmony with their regional ecosystem-baking bread instead of buying it; walking, or pedaling a bike instead of driving a car; living in small towns instead of cities. The thrust of this approach is to deny the value to society of, let us say, a woman who uses time saved by buying bread instead of baking it in order to work as a curator in an urban museum. Nor does it allow for the possibility that time-and labor-saving technologies can be compatible with the integrity of the environment. It assumes that the technosphere, no matter how designed, is necessarily an environmentally unacceptable means of giving people access to resources that are not part of their ecological niche. But as we shall see, this assumption is wrong; although nearly every aspect of the current technosphere is counterecological, technologies exist that-although little used thus far-are compatible with the ecosphere.

The view that people are to be regarded solely as components of the ecosystem can lead to extreme and often inhuman proposals. Consider the global warming issue, for example. The humanist approach dictates a vigorous effort to halt the process because it is a massive threat to human society: flooded cities, drought-ridden agriculture, and prolonged heat waves.

However, judged only in ecological terms, global warming can be regarded merely as a change in the structure of the global ecosystem similar to the warming that accompanies the last postglacial period, albeit more rapid. Viewed in this way, there is no more reason to oppose global warming than to be unhappy about the last ice age and the rise in global temperature that ended it. At its farthest reach, this nonhumanist position becomes antihumanist, as exemplified in an article in the publication of a group called Earth First!, which favored the spread of AIDS as a means of reducing the human population without threatening other animal species. Of course, at the other extreme is the potentially suicidal view that the enormous value of modern production technology to human society justifies whatever damage to the ecosphere it entails.

The ambiguity created by the dual habitat in which we live has led to a very to the ecosphere it entails. wide range of responses. The extreme interpretations of the relationship between the two spheres that human society occupies-and a sometimes bewildering array of intermediate positions-are compelling evidence that we have not yet understood how the two systems have come into conflict and, as a result, are unable as yet to resolve that conflict.

Understanding the war between the ecosphere and the technosphere-as distinct from reacting to it-is the only path to peace. The purpose is less a lament over the war's numerous casualties than an inquiry into how future casualties can be prevented. It is not so much a battle cry for one side or the other, as a design for negotiating an end to this suicidal war-for making peace with the planet.

参考译文——与地球的战争

与地球的战争

巴里·康门纳

人类生活在两个世界中。和所有的生物一样，我们生存在这个经过50多亿年物理、化学、生物变化所形成的地球上，即自然世界。另外一个世界则源于人类的创造，如家庭、汽车、农场、工厂、实验室、食物服装、书籍、绘画音乐、诗歌等。我们为人类世界所发生的一切承担责任，却对自然世界的变化无能为力。风暴、干旱、洪水等都是上帝的“手笔”，人类无法控制，也无须负责。

但如今，从全球的角度看，这个界限已被打破。对地球起保护作用的臭氧层出现空洞，全球变暖威胁人类，甚至干旱、洪水、热浪等都可能是人类的无心之过。

正如宇宙的建立，这种预示性的全球事件影响深远。它们改变了地球与它的恒星太阳之间的关系。太阳通过两种力量对地球产生强烈影响：重力和太阳辐射。重力是一种使地球轨道绕太阳运转的稳定力量。太阳辐射——大部分为可见光和紫外线—是沐浴着地球表层的取之不尽、用之不竭的能量，它会随日夜和季节的变化而改变。太阳能为生命进程提供必需的能量：它创造了地球上的气候并支配着庞大而多样的生物群的逐渐进化和当前的行为。我们一直在滥用这股强大的力量，就像传说中的“魔法师的学徒”一样，并没有意识到我们的这种行为很可能会导致灾难性的后果。

自从人类第一次登月起，我们就一直习惯于如今这平常无奇的地球景象一个被旋涡状白云装点的、漂亮的蓝色星球。这真是个壮观的自然天体。隔着么远的距离，人类活动的明显痕迹无法被察觉，但这种曾无数次展现在我们面前的照片、海报和广告上的景象都是误导。即使全球变暖这种灾害永不发生，即使臭氧层空洞仍然只是一种深奥的极地现象，人类活动已极大地改变了全球条件，这些也许是用照相机拍摄不出来的。世界的每个角落都出现了由核爆炸和核能工业的危险剩余物质所产生的辐射现象，那是从前不存在的；烟雾的有害烈焰笼罩在世界大都市的上空；各地都有报道发现母乳中有致癌的合成杀虫剂的成分；大片大片的森林被砍伐，摧毁了生态小环境，也毁灭了生存在其中的物种。

显而易见，我们需要认识这两个世界间的相互作用：一个是稀薄的地表空气、水、土壤和植物、动物们赖以存在的生态圈；另一个是人造技术圈——它庞大的力量完全配得上这一称号。如此庞大和强烈的技术圈已经改变了控制生态圈的自然进程。接着，被改变了的生态圈也已淹没我们的城市，耗尽我们丰厚的农场资源，污染我们的食物和水源，并毒害我们的身体使我们削弱了供应人类基本需求的能力。人类对生态圈侵害已遭到生态圈的反击——两大世界正处于交战状态。

我们所居住的两个世界分别受控于不同的规律。生态圈最基本的规律可概括为“万物皆相互联系”。这说明生态圈是一个精密的网络，其间的每个成员都与其他成员相联系。因此，在海洋生态系统中，一条鱼不仅仅是它自己，它也是其他鱼的生育者；它还充当有机废料的生产者，而这些有机废料滋养着微生物甚至水生植物；它又是由植物光合作用生成的氧气的消耗者；它也是寄生虫的栖息地和鱼鹰的捕食对象。这条鱼并不是一条孤立的鱼，它也是网络上的一个要素并限制网络的功能。的确，从进化论的角度上看，网络中的很多成员，比如微生物和植物，都先于鱼而存在。但正因为鱼能适应这一业已存在的系统，它才得以立足。

在技术圈中，成员们即众多形形色色的人造物体之间相对于它们的环境来说关系可能各不一样。例如，汽车立于社区却不受其限制；同型的汽车可以奔驰在熙熙攘攘的洛杉矶高速公路上，也可以行驶在安静的乡村小路上。汽车被生产出来就是为了出售，就是一种商品，无须考虑它是否适合于两种状态下的任何一种：交通系统或环境。当然，所有汽车都需要一定宽度的交通通道，并要有合适的刹车、灯光系统、喇叭等。但正如洛杉矶或纽约的每个居民所知道的那样，近年来，拥挤的街道和高速公路全都充塞着长龙般的小轿车。而这些小轿车的设计只求迎合消费者并使生产商获利却很少考虑与居住环境相宜。

若只为迎合消费者和生产商，汽车具有不利于环境的性能也就不足为奇了，人们成功地设计出了既舒适又快捷的新型载人汽车，却从不考虑居住环境中的必备要素人类本身和他们对清洁的无烟空气的需求。

就连技术圈中如此接近自然的农场也遭受到同样的与环境的冲突。作为人造物体，人类设计农场的唯一目的是生产农作物。在此目的的指导下，第二次世界大战后农学家们大力提倡增加化学氮肥料的投入量。产量提高了，却与肥料投入量不成正比；年复一年，庄稼吸收到的肥料日益减少，投入的肥料大都通过土壤流失到地下水中，并以硝酸盐的形式污染河流、湖泊和淡水供应。仅仅以提高产量为目的而出售氮肥料，甚至单单为了提高化学工业的利润而生产氮肥料。20世纪50年代引进无机氮肥料时，人们就很少考虑其在土壤/水系统中的生态情况和饮用水中硝酸盐比重提高的危害作用。

第二条生态规律“任何事物都会转化成其他事物”与第一条合起来，体现出自然圈中循环的重要性。例如在水域生态系统中，参与其中的化学元素通过封闭的循环流程来运行。鱼呼吸时产生二氧化碳，接下来，二氧化碳被水生植物吸收并用于光合作用生成鱼呼吸需要的氧气。鱼分泌出含氮的有机化合物废物；当废物被水生细菌和霉分解时，有机氮就转化为硝酸盐；依次下来，硝酸盐又是水生藻类的必要营养品；水生藻类被鱼吸收后会促成其产生有机废物，这个循环到此完成。在这个封闭的循环系统中，没有真正的“废物”，循环中产生的任何事物都会转化为他物并在下一步被利用。

与生态圈相反，技术圈是由线性流程决定的。农作物和以它们为生的动物被人食用；而它们的废物被冲进下水道，经处置后成分发生了改变但数量没有变化，然后残余部分作为废物被倒入河流或海洋中，因此这部分废物便打乱了自然水域生态系统。铀经开采后被加工成用于生产能源的原子燃料，然后变成放射性极强的核废料。为防止污染环境，这些核废料必须被认真保管长达数千年。但迄今为止，保管工作一直效果不佳。现在技术圈运作的能源主要是矿物燃料，一旦用完，永不再生。线性流程的最终后果就是空气污染和全球变暖的威胁。所以，在技术圈中，物质被直线性地转化为废物：农作物转化为污物；铀成为放射性残余物；矿物燃料成为二氧化碳。在技术圈中，直线末段永远是废物，是对维持生态圈循环流程的一种侵害。

第三条非正式的生态规律即“自然深知一切”。生态系统内部和谐；许多成分间相容并共存于一体。经过50亿年这一相当长时期生物进化的反复尝试，终于成就了如此和谐的结构。生态圈的生物部分——生物圈——由经受过考验而存活下来的生物构成。它们经过准确的调整后能适应自身居住的特殊生态小环境。若生态小环境保持其自身的方式，它们将几乎保持不变，进化速度十分缓慢。即使有暂时的变化，比如说兔子的激增，也会很快被狼群重新调整过来。

与生态圈相反，技术圈是由线性流程决定的。在不到一个世纪的时间里，交通工具不断更新，从马车、福特T型汽车到如今每年不断更新的汽车和飞机。在不长的一段时间里，书写工具便从羽毛笔变成了打字机，直至现在的文字处理器。150年前普通自然物质尿素的实验生产意味着人工合成有机化学的开端，但很快人们就从这条模仿型的方式转移到生产一系列自然界中从未有过的有机合成物，因此导致与生命化学极不相容。例如尼龙，它不会像植物纤维那样的天然聚合物一样可以进行生物分解，也就是说在现存的有机生物中还没发现哪种酶可以分解尼龙。所以，若尼龙被遗弃到生态圈，它就会像塑料一样永存。因此，海洋学家目前发现在他们的打网中有不少橙色、蓝色和白色的尼龙，在死海龟的消化道里也卡着大量船用尼龙绳索的残留物。在技术圈中，尼龙是一种有用的新商品；但在生态圈中，尼龙没有经过进化的检验，是一个有害的侵犯者。

“自然深知一切”是一个概括。在他们进化的几十亿年里，有生命的东西创造了一系列对生命至关重要的有限但独立的物质和反应。石油化学制品工业已经脱离了这些限制，生产出数以万计的新型人造物质。

既然他们基于与自然合成物相同的碳化学工业的基本模式，这些新的物质往往被认为属于生物化学流程。因此他们就对有生命物质发挥了一种暗中为害的作用。事实上，石油化学制品工业生产出的物质就像貌似人类却极其危险的外星人入侵人类社会一样狡猾地进入生命化学并对其进行攻击。

最后，有必要从失败的后果上对生态圈和技术圈进行比较。在生态圈里，人们用“没有免费的午餐”来表达这一点，意思是说，任何对生态圈的扭曲，或者是不相容成分的侵入（比如说有毒化学物），都会不可避免地导致恶果。乍一看来，技术圈好像完全没有错误，也就是说技术进程或产品的失败并非源于某种不可预料的事故，而是由于无法做到预期中的事。几乎每种现代技术都有缺陷，但这种缺陷看起来不是无法完成预期目的的失败，而是其对环境的严重影响。汽车总能照常行驶，但它却产生烟雾；电站能有效地发电，却会释放出危险的污染物；现代化学农业卓有成效，但随之而来的硝酸盐污染了地下水，杀虫剂危害了野生动物和人类。即使发生在三里岛和切尔诺贝利的巨大的核灾难相对于其所造成的生态影响来说，也只是一个并不太严重的技术失败。

若仅仅被视为工厂功能的失败，切尔诺贝利事故充其量也就相当于当地发生的一次破坏了工厂的严重大火。但随之释放出来的辐射，却使整个欧洲数以千计的人面临患上癌症的威胁。

免费的午餐实际上是一种债务。在技术圈中，债务是指已承认但尚未归还的欠款，比如说抵在工厂建筑上的押金。这种欠款可以忍受，因为技术圈是个生产系统，如果正常工作，生产的产品便代表着财富，日后定能还清欠款。在技术领域，债务从内部被偿还，至少在理论上总能还清或者有时会被消除。相反，当债务以技术圈制造的环境污染的形式出现，然后又转嫁到生态圈时，这种债务将永远无法消除。造成的破坏是不可避免的。切尔诺贝利核事故泄漏的放射性物质和弥漫在博帕尔的有毒化学物都是无法消除的债务。它们只是被转嫁给其受害者，并以其受害者病亡的形式得以偿还。

既然生活在两个世界中，人们就陷于生态圈和技术困的激烈冲突中。我们所说的环境危机——一系列从地方性的倾倒毒物到全球性气候受到破坏，这些关键而又未得到解决的问题——是一种激烈冲突的产物。这种冲突就存在于循环、保守而又和谐的生态圈进程与线性的、创新的却破坏生态和谐的技术圈进程之间。

既然环境危机是由人类社会生存的两大世界的战争所引发的，那么要想正确理解它就必须着眼于两者的相互作用。当然，若是在传统战争中，通过袒护一方就能将问题简单化，即忽视任意一方的利益，但这种做法却是以我们的理解为代价的。如果忽略生态圈，就能把环境危机定义在控制技术圈的因素之内：生产、价格、利润及协调它们之间相互作用的经济程序。然后还可以制定类似布什总统近日提出的方案，即工厂享有放出可接受标准数量的污染物的权利（被仿拟为“自由市场”），并可买卖这些权利。传统市场经营好货——具有一定用途和目的东西，但这一方案创建了一个市场经营“烂货”不仅毫无用途还具有致命的危害。除了道德问题，应指出这一方案仍无法操作，除非执行可以生产污染物的权利——几乎不能消除它们。

若忽略技术圈，就可以将环境危机仅定义在生态范围内。人类被看作生物界一个特殊的物种，一个注定要破坏其生存空间的物种。将问题如此简单化必然导致解决方式的简单化：减少人口；限制人类对自然资源的拥有部分；赋予所有其他物种“权利”来保护它们不受人类的掠夺。

这一方法引发了一个深刻而又不可避免的道德问题：保护生态圈不受破坏是为了生态圈本身，还是提升依赖于它的人类的幸福感。这又引出一个关于“幸福”的更深层次的问题。一些环保支持者认为：要想提升幸福感，人类就得少依赖技术圈中的人工制品并与区域生态系统更亲密和谐生活在一起，自烤面包而不买面包，散步或骑车而不开车，居住在小城镇而不是大城市。这种方式就是否认其社会价值，比如说，一位妇女买面包而不自己动手烤制，节省的时间可以作为管理员在城市博物馆里工作。而且省时省力技术也不可能与环境的整体性相容。假使技术圈，无论怎样设计，都必定是提供给人们与环保相违背的生态小环境中不具备的资源。但如我们所见，这种假设是错误的；虽然现存技术圈中几乎每个方面都是与生态相对抗的，但与生态相容的技术必定存在，虽然到目前为止很少被使用。

单纯地把人认为是生态圈中成分的观点往往会导致极端和非人性的建议。以全球变暖问题为例，人文主义方式强令积极努力阻止其进程，因为全球变暖问题会极大地威胁人类社会：城市被淹没，农业备受干旱之苦和热波延长。

但是若仅从生态方面判断，全球变暖尽管更迅速些，但又仅仅是一种全球生态系统的变化，这与伴随上一个后世纪冰川时代的变暖现象相似。从这一点上看，便没有理由再去大力反对全球变暖，而应一如既往地仅仅对冰川时代和全球温度的最终上升表示不快。再远点说，正如一个叫“地球第一！”的组织发表的一篇文章中所列举的，这种不人道的立场还会变成反人道的。此文认为，艾滋病的传播能有效地降低人口数量又不会对其他物种造成威胁，因而对其大力支持。当然另一种极端看法是未来毁灭论：认为现代生产技术对人类社会的价值使其可以肆意破坏生态圈。

由我们生存的双重环境引发的多重问题引起了广泛的反应。对人类社会居住的两大世界关系的极端理解——以及间或很多令人费解的妥协性的立场有力地证明了我们仍没有正确理解两大系统的冲突，因而也无法解决这一冲突。

理解生态圈与技术圈之间的冲突——与对其做出反应不同——是寻求和平的唯一途径。这样做的目的不是深切哀悼已经造成的大量损失，而是寻求避免将来更多损失的方法；不是声讨一方或另一方，而是开辟结束战争的道路——并与地球和平相处。

Key Words:

thrust [θrʌst]

n. 推力，刺，力推

intense [in'tens]

adj. 强烈的，剧烈的，热烈的

overt ['əuvə:t]

adj. 公开的，明显的，公然的

species ['spi:ʃiz]

n. （单复同）物种，种类

hawk [hɔ:k]