A very very good book

snake

BBS 水木清华站 - 学术科学 - GreenEarth (绿色环保)版(进版画面 | 添加到收藏夹 | 我的百宝箱 ) GreenEarth(绿色环保) 版 版主 诚征版主中 在线 5 人 文摘区 | 精华区 | 版内查询 令狐冲精华区搜索引擎 搜索范围 全站 GreenEarth版 精华区文章阅读 发信人: igreen (青青子佩◎西瓜太郎), 信区: GreenEarth 标 题: 多疑的环境保护论者（1.1） 发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Tue Jul 2 19:29:30 2002) 注：这是别人发来的e－mail。估计还未翻译，姑且贴之。 多疑的环境保护论者 (The Skeptical Environmentalist) 第一部分 事情正在变好（Things are getting better） What kind of state is the world really in? Optimists proclaim the end of history with the best of all possible worlds a t hand, whereas pessimists（悲观主义者） see a world in decline and find doo msday lurking（潜伏） around the corner. Getting the state of the world righ t is important because it defines（详细说明） humanity’s problems and shows us where our actions are most needed. At the same time, it is also a scorec ard for our civilization – have we done well with our abilities, and is thi s a world we want to leave for our children? This book is the work of a skeptical environmentalist. Environmentalist, bec ause I – like most others – care for our Earth and care for the future hea lth and wellbeing of its succeeding generations. Skeptical, because I care e nough to want us not just to act on the myths of both optimists and pessimis ts. Instead, we need to use the best available information to join others in the common goal of making a better tomorrow. Thus, this book attempts to measure the real state of the world. Of course, it is not possible to write a book (or even lots and lots of books for that matter) which measures the entire state of the world. Nor is this my intent ion. Instead, I wish to gauge（测量） the most important characteristics of our state of the world – the fundamentals. And these should be assessed（评 估） not on myths but on the best available facts. Hence, the real state of the world. The Litany（连祷，冗长乏味的故事） The subtitle of my book is a play on the world’s best-known book on the env ironment, The State of the World. This has been published every year since 1 984 by the Worldwatch Institute and its leader Lester Brown,4 and it has sol d more than a million copies. The series attempts to identify（识别） the wo rld’s most significant challenges professionally and veraciously（诚实地）. Unfortunately, as we shall see, it is frequently unable to live up to（实践 ，做到） its objectives. In many ways, though, The State of the World is one of the best-researched and academically most ambitious environmental policy publications, and therefore it is also an essential participant in the disc ussion on the State of the World.5 On a higher level this book plays to our general understanding of the enviro nment: the Litany of our ever deteriorating（变坏） environment. This is the view of the environment that is shaped by the images and messages that conf ront us each day on television, in the newspapers, in political statements a nd in conversations at work and at the kitchen table. This is why Time magaz ine can start off an article in 2000, stating as entirely obvious how “ever yone knows the planet is in bad shape.”6 Even children are told the Litany, here from Oxford University Press’ Young Oxford Books: “The balance of nature is delicate but essential for life. H umans have upset that balance, stripping the land of its green cover, chokin g（使窒息） the air, and poisoning the seas.”7 Equally, another Time article tells us how “for more than 40 years, earth h as been sending out distress signals” but while “we’ve staged a processio n of Earth Days . . . the decline of Earth’s ecosystems has continued unaba ted.8 The April 2001 Global Environment Supplement from New Scientist talks about the impending “catastrophe” and how we risk consigning “humanity to the dustbin of evolutionary history.” Our impact is summarized with the he adline “Self-destruct”: We humans are about as subtle as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs . . . The damage we do is increasing. In the next 20 years, the population wi ll increase by 1.5 billion. These people will need food, water and electrici ty, but already our soils are vanishing, fisheries are being killed off, wel ls are drying up, and the burning of fossil fuels is endangering the lives o f millions. We are heading for cataclysm.9 This understanding of the environment is all pervasive. We are all familiar with the Litany:10 the environment is in poor shape here on Earth.11 Our res ources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and les s to eat. The air and the water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet’ s species are becoming extinct is vast numbers – we kill off more than 40,0 00 each year. The forests are disappearing, fish stocks are collapsing and t he coral reefs are dying. We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing, we are pavin g over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating（大批杀害） the biosphe re, and will end up killing ourselves in the process. The world’s ecosystem is breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability（ 生存能力）, and the limits of growth are becoming apparent.12 We know the Litany and have heard it so often that yet another repetition is , well, almost reassuring. There is just one problem: it does not seem to be backed up by the available evidence. （问题是，似乎有一些明显的证据不支持这 个结论） Things are better – but not necessarily good I will attempt over the course of this book to describe the principal areas which stake out humankind’s potentials, challenges and problems – in the past, the present and the future. These areas are selected either because it is immediately obvious that they are important (e.g. the number of people o n earth), because models show they will have a decisive influence on human d evelopment (air pollution, global warming) or because they are frequently me ntioned in the discussion on the state of the world (chemical fears, e.g. pe sticides). 13 （说他挑了一些主要的领域，比如地球上的人口、空气污染、全球变暖 ，杀虫剂，因为显而易见它们是重要的，影响人类发展的，或者是在讨论世界的状态时 经常被提到的。） In presenting this description I will need to challenge our usual conceptio n of the collapse of ecosystems, because this conception is simply not in ke eping with reality.（在进行这些描述时，我需要挑战通常的生态系统正在崩溃的信念 ，因为这个信念与事实不符） We are not running out of energy or natural resources.14 There will be more and more food per head of the world’s population. Fewer and fewer people ar e starving. In 1900 we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 6 7. According to the UN we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years tha n we did in the preceding 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country. （我们并没有在耗尽能源或自然资源。人均食物量会越来越多。越来越少的人 挨饿。1900年我们的人均寿命是30岁，现在是67岁。根据联合国的资料，我们在最近50 年里减少的贫穷比之前500年还要多，而且事实上每个国家的贫穷都减少了） Global warming, though its size and future projections are rather unrealisti cally pessimistic, is almost certainly taking place, but the typical cure of early and radical fossil fuel cutbacks is way worse than the original affli ction, and moreover its total impact will not pose a devastating problem for our future. Nor will we lose 25–50 percent of all species in our lifetime – in fact we are losing probably 0.7 percent. Acid rain does not kill the f orests, and the air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted. （几乎可以肯定全球变暖确实在发生，尽管它的尺度和未来前景被看得不切实际地悲观 ，但是那种减少化石燃料使用的早期的象征性的整治方法，却是比原始的苦恼更糟糕的 ，而且全球变暖总的影响不会给我们的未来带来全然破坏性的问题。在我们的有生之年 也不会失去25-50%的物种，实际上我们只失去了0.7%。酸雨不会杀死森林，我们周围的 空气和水污染程度也越来越轻。） Mankind’s lot has actually improved in terms of practically every measurabl e indicator. But note carefully what I am saying here: that by far the majority of indica tors show that mankind’s lot has vastly improved. This does not, however, m ean that everything is good enough. The first statement refers to what the w orld looks like whereas the second refers to what it ought to look like.15 9 （注意：到目前为止大部分证据表明人类的福祉大幅度地提高了，但这并不意味着，一 切已经足够好。首先说世界是什么样，然后再说它应该是什么样。） While on lecture tours I have discovered 4 Part I The Litany how vital it is to emphasize this distinction. Many people believe they can prove me wrong, for example by pointing out that a lot of people are still starving: “How can you say that things are continuing to improve when 18 percent of all peo ple in the developing world are still starving?” The point is that ever fewer people in the world are starving. In 1970, 35 percent of all people in developing countries were starving. In 1996 the fig ure was 18 percent and the UN expects that the figure will have fallen to 12 percent by 2010.16 This is remarkable progress: 237 million fewer people st arving. Till today, more than 2000 million more people are getting enough to eat. （要点在于世界上挨饿的人在不断减少。1970年，发展中国家35%的人在挨饿。1 996年，这个数字是18%，而且根据联合国的预测，到2010年，这个数字会降到12%。这是 显著的进步：挨饿的人减少了2亿3千700万。到今天，又有20亿人能得到足够的食物。） The food situation has vastly improved, but in 2010 there will still be 680 million people starving, which is obviously not good enough. （到2010年，还 会有6千8百万人挨饿，这显然并不足够令人满意。） The distinction is essential; when things are not going well enough we can s ketch out a vision: fewer people must starve. This is our political aim. But when things are improving we know we are on the right track. Although pe rhaps not at the right speed. Maybe we can do even more to improve the food situation, but the basic approach is not wrong. We are actually saving lives and can look forward to fewer people starving in future. Exaggeration and good management （夸张和好的管理） The constant repetition of the Litany and the often heard environmental exag gerations has serious consequences. It makes us scared and it makes us more likely to spend our resources and attention solving phantom problems while i gnoring real and pressing (possibly non-environmental) issues. This is why i t is important to know the real state of the world. We need to get the facts and the best possible information to make the best possible decisions. As t he lead author of the environmental report Our Common Future, Gro Harlem Bru ndtland, put it in the top scientific magazine Science: “Politics that disr egard science and knowledge will not stand the test of time. Indeed, there i s no other basis for sound political decisions than the best available scien tific evidence. This is especially true in the fields of resource management and environmental protection.”17 （那片不断重复的环境悼文和经常听到的关于环 境的夸张说法有严重的后果。它让我们害怕，很可能让我们把资源和注意力用来解决并 不存在的问题而忽视真正紧迫的（可能不是环境问题）的问题。这就是为什么知道世界 的现实状况很重要。我们需要知道事实和最可能的信息以做出可能做的最好的决定。正 如？？所说：忽视科学和知识的政治经不起时间的检验。确实，行政决定最可靠的基础 莫过于科学事实。在资源管理和环境保护方面就更是如此。） However, pointing out that our most publicized fears are incorrect does not mean that we should make no effort towards improving the environment. Far fr om it. It will often make good sense to make some effort towards managing ou r resources and tackling our problems in areas like forest and water managem ent, air pollution, and global warming. The point here is to give us the bes t evidence to allow us to make the most informed decision as to where we nee d to place most of our efforts. What I will show throughout the book is that our problems are often getting smaller and not bigger, and that frequently the offered solutions are grossly inefficient. What this information should tell us is not to abandon action entirely, but to focus our attention on the most important problems and only to the extent warranted by the facts.（然而 指出那种被广泛宣扬的恐慌是不正确的并不意味着我们应该在改善环境方面无所作为。 远不是这样。努力管理我们的资源，解决我们的问题，比如森林和水的管理，空气污染 和全球变暖等，总是具有好的意义。这里的焦点是，给出最好的证据，我们根据那些证 据做出了那些众所周知的决定，关于我们该把我们的大部分努力投向哪里。在本书中我 将告诉你们我们的问题经常是变小了而不是变大了，那些解决办法常常是很不奏效的。 这个信息告诉我们的，决不是全然放弃行动，而是把我们的注意力集中到那些最重要的 ，而且在某种程度上被事实所证实了的问题上去。） Fundamentals: trends （基本点：趋势） If we are to understand the real state of the world, we need to focus on the fundamentals and we need to look at realities, not myths. Let us take a loo k at both of these requirements, starting with the fundamentals. When we are to assess the state of the world, we need to do so through a com parison.18 Legend has it that when someone remarked to Voltaire, “life is h ard,” he retorted, “compared to what?”19 Basically, the choice of compari son is crucial. It is my argument that the comparison should be with how it was before. Such comparison shows us the extent of our progress – are we be tter or worse off now than previously? This means that we should focus on tr ends. （要知道世界的现实状况，必须运用比较，同过去比较，这样我们才知道进步的 程度，到底是比以前好还是坏，也就是说我们要注意趋势。） When the water supply and sanitation services were improved in cities throug hout the developed world in the nineteenth century, health and life expectan cy improved dramatically. 20 Likewise, the broadening of education from the early nineteenth century till today’s universal school enrolment has brough t literacy and democratic competence to the developed world.21 These trends have been replicated in the developing world in the twentieth century. Where as 75 percent of the young people in the developing world born around 1915 w ere illiterate, this is true for only 16 percent of today’s youth (see Figu re 41, p. 81). And while only 30 percent of the people in the developing wor ld had access to clean drinking water in 1970, today about 80 percent have ( see Figure 5, p. 22). These developments represent great strides forward in human welfare; they are huge improvements in the state of the world – becau se the trends have been upwards in life expectancy and literacy. （19世纪，当 发达国家的城市用水和卫生设施改善之后，健康水平和生活期望都显著地提高了。相似 地，从19世纪初期教育的普及到今天全体入学已经给发达国家带来了文化与民主能力。 然而1915年左右出生的发展中国家的年轻人，75%是未受教育的，今天的年轻人只有16% 没受教育。这些发展代表了人类福利的大踏步前进，它们是世界状况的巨大进步，因为 人们生活和教养的趋势都是向上的。） In line with the argument above, it is a vast improvement that people both i n the developed and in the developing world have dramatically increased thei r access to clean drinking water. Nevertheless, this does not mean that ever ything is good enough. There are still more than a billion people in the Thi rd World who do not have access to clean drinking water. If we compare the w orld to this ideal situation, it is obvious that there are still improvement s to be made. Moreover, such a comparison with an ideal situation sets a con structive, political ambition by showing us that if access has become univer sal in the developed world, it is also an achievable goal for the developing world. （净化饮用水方面都取地了进步，不论是在发达国家还是发展中国家。但是并 不足够好。） But it is important to realize that such a comparison constitutes a politica l judgment. Of course, when asked, we would probably all want the Third Worl d to have better access to clean drinking water, but then again, we probably all want the Third World to have good schooling, better health care, more f ood security, etc. Likewise, in the developed world we also want better reti rement homes for our elders, better kindergartens, higher local environmenta l investments, better infrastructure, etc. The problem is that it all costs money. If we want to improve one thing, such as Third World access to clean drinking water, we need to take the resources from other areas where we woul d also like to make things better. Naturally, this is the essence of politic s – we have to prioritize resources and choose some projects over many othe rs. But if we make the state of the world to be a comparison with an ideal s ituation we are implicitly making a political judgment as to what projects i n the world we should be prioritizing. （第三世界国家需要净化饮用水，更好的医 疗，食品更安全，而发达国家需要更好的养老院、幼儿园，但这些都需要钱。如果我们 想改善一样东西，我们就需要从其他地区获取资源，而那些地方可能也需要改善。自然 地，这就是政治的本质——我们要把资源的使用区分出先后顺序，从许多项目中选择一 些项目。但是如果我们把现实的世界和理想的世界做一比较的话，我们实际上也就是在 做政治判断，哪些项目将会优先执行。） Thus, with this assessment of the state of the world I wish to leave to the individual reader the political judgment as to where we should focus our eff orts. Instead, it is my intention to provide the best possible information a bout how things have progressed and are likely to develop in the future, so that the democratic process is assured the soundest basis for decisions. And this means focusing on trends. Fundamentals: global trends （基本点：全球趋势） The Global Environmental Outlook Report 2000 tells us much about the plight of Africa.22 Now, there is no doubt that Africa, and especially Africa below the Sahara, has done less well than other continents, an issue to which we will return (p. 65). Sub-Saharan Africa has by far the greatest numbers of s tarving people – almost 33 percent were starving in 1996, although this was down from 38 percent in 1970 and is expected to fall even further to 30 per cent in 2010.23 （亚撒哈拉 非洲，挨饿的人最多，1996年，大概33%的人挨饿，1970 年是38%，估计2010年会降到30%。） In the most staggering prediction of problems ahead, Global Environmental Ou tlook Report 2000 tells us that soil erosion is a pervasive problem, especia lly in Africa. Indeed, “in a continent where too many people are already ma lnourished, crop yields could be cut by half within 40 years if the degradat ion of cultivated lands were to continue at present 6 rates.”24 This, of co urse, would represent a tragedy of enormous proportions, causing massive sta rvation on the African continent. However, the background for this stunning prediction stems from a single, unpublished study from 1989, based on agricu ltural plot studies only in South Africa.25 And it is in stark opposition to the estimates of the major food production models from the UN (FAO) and IFP RI, expecting an annual 1.7 percent yield increase over the next 20–25 year s.26 Although the growth in yield in the 1990s was small but positive, the a bsolute grain production increased more than 20 percent.27 In many ways this is reminiscent（回忆往事的） of one of the most cited（引用 ） European soil erosion（土壤污染） estimates of 17 tons per hectare（公顷） .28 This estimate turned out – through a string of articles, each slightly inaccurately（不准确地） referring to its predecessor（前任） – to stem fro m a single study of a 0.11 hectare sloping plot of Belgian（比利时） farmlan d, from which the author himself warns against generalization（一般化）. 29 In both examples, sweeping（彻底的） statements are made with just a single example. Unfortunately, such problematic argumentation is pervasive, and we will see more examples below. The problem arises because in today’s global environment, with massive amounts of information at our fingertips, an infin ite number of stories can be told, good ones and bad. （问题产生的原因是在全 球环境问题上，已经有大量的信息就在我们手边，可以用它们讲出无数的故事，好的或 者坏的。） Should you be so inclined, you could easily write a book full of awful examp les and conclude that the world is in a terrible state. Or you could write a book full of sunshine stories of how the environment is doing ever so well. Both approaches could be using examples that are absolutely true, and yet b oth approaches would be expressions of equally useless forms of argumentatio n. They resemble the classic fallacy（谬误） that “my granddad smoked cigar s all his life and was healthy until he died at the age of 97, so smoking is n’t dangerous.” Such a fallacy is clearly not rectified（矫正） by accumul ating lots of examples – we could easily find many grandfathers who had smo ked heavily and lived into their late nineties, but still this is no argumen t for smoking not being dangerous. The argument fails because it systematica lly neglects all the men who smoked and died of lung cancer in their late fo rties, before they even got to be grandfathers.30 So if we are to demonstrat e the problems of smoking, we need to use comprehensive figures. Do smokers get lung cancer more or less often compared with non-smokers?31 In the same way we can only elucidate（阐明） global problems with global fi gures. （我们只有运用全球的数据才能阐明全球问题。）If we hear about Burundi（ 布隆迪，非洲国家） losing 21 percent in its daily per capita caloric intake over the past ten years,32 this is shocking information and may seem to reaf firm our belief of food troubles in the developing world. But we might equal ly well hear about Chad（乍得湖，非洲中部） gaining 26 percent, perhaps chan ging our opinion the other way.33 Of course, the pessimist can then tell us about Iraq（伊拉克共和国） loosing 28 percent and Cuba 19 percent, the optim ist citing Ghana（加纳） with an increase of 34 percent and Nigeria（尼日利亚 ） of 33 percent. With 120 more countries to go, the battle of intuition（直 觉） will be lost in the information overload.34 On average, however, the de veloping countries have increased their food intake from 2,463 to 2,663 calo ries per person per day over the last ten years, an increase of 8 percent.35 （然而，发展中国家在过去的10年里，人均每天热量摄入量已经从2463增加到了2663， 增长了8个百分点。） The point is that global figures summarize all the good stories as well as a ll the ugly ones, allowing us to evaluate how serious the overall situation is. Global figures will register the problems in Burundi but also the gains in Nigeria. Of course, a food bonanza in Nigeria does not alleviate food sca rcity in Burundi, so when presenting averages we also have to be careful onl y to include comparable countries like those in the developing world. Howeve r, if Burundi with 6.5 million people eats much worse whereas Nigeria with 1 08 million eats much better, it really means 17 Nigerians eating better vers us 1 Burundi eating worse – that all in all mankind is better fed. The poin t here is that global figures can answer the question as to whether there ha ve been more good stories to tell and fewer bad ones over the years or vice versa. Things are getting better 7 This is why in the following chapters I shall always attempt to present the most comprehensive figures in order to describe the development of the entir e world or the relevant regions. What we need is global trends. （这就是为什 么在以下的章节里，我将试图给出最全面的数据，来描述全球和相关地区的发展。我们 需要的是全球趋势。） Fundamentals: long-term trends（基本原理：长期趋势） In the environmental debate you often hear general discussion based on extr emely shortterm trends. This is dangerous – a lone swallow does not mean th at summer has arrived. （在讨论环境问题时，只看短期趋势是危险的。） Food prices have fallen dramatically during the last centuries (see Figure 2 5, p. 62). However, Lester Brown said in early 1998 that he could detect the beginnings of a historic increase in the price of wheat. From 1994 to 1996 wheat got more expensive and now we were headed for the abyss（深渊）. In Fi gure 49 (p. 94) you will see that he was wrong. The wheat price in 2000 was lower than ever before. （食品价格在过去的几个世纪里大大地下降了，见图25。然 而Lester Brown在1998年初曾说过，他可以探测到小麦价格历史性的升高的开端。从19 94年到1996年，小麦价格变得越来越贵，现在我们已经被引向深渊。从图49你可以看到 他错了。2000年的小麦价格比以往任何时候都低。） Unfortunately, looking at short-term counter- trends was already firmly esta blished in the first Worldwatch State of the World publication in 1984. Here , they worried about an international trade setback. “Nor is future growth in international trade likely to be rapid. According to the International Mo netary Fund, the value of world exports peaked at $1,868 billion in 1980 and fell to roughly $1,650 billion in 1983, a decline of nearly 12 percent.”36 This claim can be evaluated in Figure 1. The 12 percent trade setback occur red mainly because of the second oil crisis, and it hit trade in goods but n ot services. However, Worldwatch Institute measures only goods and only pres ents figures that are not corrected for inflation – actually the alleged tr ade setback for inflation-adjusted trade in both goods and services is almos t non-existent. Since 1983, international trade has more than doubled from $ 3.1 trillion to $7.5 trillion in 1997. And yes, the years 1980–83 show the only multi-year setback since data start in 1950.37 Equally, Lester Brown wants to tell us how grain yields are no longer growi ng as fast or have perhaps even stopped completely, because increasingly we are reaching the physiological limits of the plants39 (we will look more at this line of argument in chapter 9). Trying to discredit the World Bank grai n predictions, he points out that “from 1990 to 1993, the first three years in the Bank’s 20-year projection period, worldwide grain yields per hectar e actually declined.”40 This claim is documented in Figure 2. Here it is ev ident that while Brown’s claim is technically true (the grain yield did dec line from 2.51 t/ha to 2.49 t/ha), it neglects and misrepresents the longter m growth. Moreover, it ignores the fact that this decline did not take place in the more vulnerable developing countries, where yields have steadily gro wn. Actually, the reason Brown finds grain yield declines in the early 1990s is primarily due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, causing grain yields t here to plummet, but this is hardly an indication of physiological limits of the plants. Figure 1 World exports（出口） of goods in current US$ 1950–2000, in 1998 U S$ 1950–98, and goods and services 1960–97. Worldwatch Institute’s worry of declining trade from 1980 to 1983 is marked out. Source: WTO 2000:27, IMF 2000d:226, 2000e, WI 2000b:75, 2000c, World Bank 2000c.38 Figure 2 Grain yields for the world, the developing world and the USSR area, 1961–2000. Brown’s proof of declining grain yields from 1990 to 1993 is m arked out. Source: FAO 2001a. -- 我见青山多妩媚 料青山见我应如是 知子之好之 杂佩以报之 绿色环保是我家，齐心协力建设它 ~~ greenearth~~ ※ 来源:·BBS 水木清华站 smth.edu.cn·[FROM: 166.111.42.218] [返回顶部] [刷新] [同主题模式] [普通模式] [版内查询] [我的百宝箱] [返回首页] [上级目录] [根目录] [令狐冲精华区搜索] [返回顶部] [刷新] [返回]

snake

标 题: 多疑的环境保护论者 第一部分 第2节 Isaac Asimov, worrying about more hurricanes from global warming (something we will look into in Part V), cites some seemingly worrying statistics: “Th e twenty-three years from 1947 to 1969 averaged about 8.5 days of very viole nt Atlantic hurricanes, while in the period from 1970 to 1987 that dropped b y three-quarters, to only 2.1 days per year . . . and in 1988–1989 rose aga in to 9.4 days a year.”41 This seems threatening. Now the hurricane rate is higher than ever. But notice the timespans: 23 years, 17 years and then jus t two years at the end. Maybe the two years have been singled out just becau se they can be made spectacular? Well, at least the two years immediately pr eceding have 0 and 0.6 violent Atlantic hurricane days. And yes, the two yea rs just after had only 1 and 1.2 days.42 Documenting these trends, the origi nal researcher points out that Atlantic violent hurricane days “show a subs tantial decrease in activity with time.”43 Since then, only hurricane days have been documented, and they too show a decline of 1.63 days/decade.44 （I saac Asimov 担心由于全球变暖会出现更多的飓风，他引用了表面看来令人担忧的统计 学：“从1947到1969的23年间，平均每年有非常狂暴的大西洋飓风日8.5天，1970年到1 987年下降了3/4，只有2.1天……而1988年到1989年重新上升到了9.4天。”这似乎很危 险。现在飓风发生率比从前还高。但是，注意上述论述中的时间跨度：23年，17年，最 后是2年。也许那2年被挑出来仅仅是因为它们可以引人入胜？那么，至少那个2年前狂暴 的大西洋飓风天分别是0和1.2天。好的，那2年之后仅仅是1和1.2天。为证明这些趋势， 原始研究者指出，大西洋狂暴飓风天数显示了活动性随时间减少。那么，只有飓风天被 引用，而且他们都显示了每10年1.6天这种减少的趋势。？？？） In 1996 the World Wide Fund for Nature told us that the rate of forest loss in the Amazon（亚马逊河） rainforest had increased by 34 percent since 1992 to 1,489,600 hectares a year.45 What they did not tell us was that the 1994/ 5 year had been a peak year of deforestation, at an estimated 0.81 percent, higher than any other year since 1977.46 The year 1998/9 is estimated at 0.4 7 percent or nearly half of the top rate in 1994/5. （1996天，世界自然基金组 织告诉我们，亚马逊雨林的森林减少速率从1992年以来上升了34%，达到每年1,489,600 公顷。他们没告诉我们的是，1994/95年度是森林减少的高峰，据估计达到了0.81%，比 1977年以来的任何年份都高。1998/99年度据估计是0.47%，接近最高速率的一半。） In a highly interconnected world, statistical short-term reversals are bound to occur in long-term trends. If we allow environmental arguments – howeve r well-meaning – to be backed merely by purported（传说的） trends of two o r three carefully selected years, we invariably open the floodgates to any a nd every argument. Thus, if we are to appraise substantial developments we m ust investigate long periods of time. Not the two or five years usually used , but as far back as figures exist. Of course, we must be aware that a new t endency may be developing, and we must also be extra careful to include and analyze the latest available figures. But insisting on long-term trends prot ects us against false arguments from background noise and lone swallows. （在 一个高度联系的世界里，短期统计很可能被长期趋势所逆转。如果我们听任关于环境问 题的争论仅仅被一些精心挑选的两年或者三年的谣传的趋势所支持，那么我们会打开在 每一个问题上争论的闸门，而且任何争论都可能出现。这样，如果我们打算评价真实的 发展，我们必须做长期的调查。不是用常用的两年或者五年的数据，而是最大限度地用 已有数据做证据。当然，我们必须知道一种新的倾向可能正在发展中，我们在运用和分 析最新的可得到的数据时必须格外小心。但是坚持根据长期趋势来讨论使我们地以避免 由背景噪音和孤独的燕子而造成的错误的争论。） In the chapters that follow, I will endeavor always to show the longest and the newest time trends. Fundamentals: how is it important? （基本点：那有多重要？） When we are told that something is a problem we need to ask how important it is in relation to other problems. We are forced constantly to prioritize ou r resources, and there will always be good projects we have to reject. The o nly scarce good is money with which to solve problems. But when the Litany i s recited, it is often sufficient to point out that indeed there is a proble m. Then you have won. We all hear about pesticides getting into the groundwater. Since pesticides can cause cancer, we have a problem. Thus, they must be banned. Not many oth er fields would be able to sustain that sort of argument. “The Department o f Defense has uncovered that State X has developed so-called Y6 missiles（导 弹，发射物）, which is a problem. We will therefore have to develop and set up a missile defense system.” Most of us would probably ask how probable it was that State X would attack, how much damage a Y6 missile could do and h ow much the necessary defense system would cost. As regards pesticides, we s hould also ask how much damage they actually do and how much it would cost t o avoid their use. Recent research suggests that pesticides cause very littl e cancer. Moreover, scrapping pesticides would actually result in more cases of cancer because fruits and vegetables help to prevent cancer, and without pesticides fruits and vegetables would get more expensive, so that people w ould eat less of them. Likewise, when the World Wide Fund for Nature told us about the Amazon rainf orest loss increasing to 1,489,600 hectares a year, we also have to ask, how much is that?47 Is it a lot? One can naturally calculate the classical rate of “football pitches per hour.” But have we any idea how many football pi tches the Amazon can actually accommodate?48 And perhaps a more important pi ece of information is that the total forest loss in the Amazon since the arr ival of man has only amounted to 14 percent.49 （相似地，当世界自然基金组织告 诉我们，亚马逊雨林每年的减少量已经到了1,489,600公顷时，我们也要问，那是多少。 那很多吗？你能计算每小时足球pitches的比例，但是我们谁能知道亚马逊实际上能容纳 多少足球pitches？也许更重要的信息是，自从人类诞生以来，亚马逊雨林总的减少量仅 仅是14%？） The magazine Environment told us in May 2000 how we can buy a recyclable too thbrush to “take a bite out of landfill use.”50 At $17.50 for four toothbr ushes, each comes with a postage- paid recycling mailer, such that the entir e toothbrush can be recycled into plastic lumber to make outdoor furniture. The president of the company producing the toothbrush tells us how he “simp ly cannot throw plastic in the garbage. My hand freezes with guilt . . . The image of all that plastic sitting in a landfill giving off toxic gases puts me over the top.”51 Never mind that traditional plastics do not decompose and give off gases.52 The more important question is: how important will thi s toothbrush effort be in reducing landfill? If everyone in the US replaced their toothbrush four times a year as the dentists recommend (they don’t – the average is 1.7), Environment estimates the total waste reduction at 45, 400 tons – what the company thinks would “make a pretty significant impact on landfills.”53 Since the municipal waste generated in the US last year w as 220 million tons,54 the total change (if everyone brushed their teeth wit h new brushes four times a year and everyone bought the new recyclable tooth brush) is a reduction of 0.02 percent, at an annual cost of more than $4 bil lion. Equivalently, of the daily generated 4.44 pounds of waste per person, recycling one’s toothbrush would cut 0.001 pound of waste a day (a sixtieth of an ounce), down to 4.439 pounds of daily waste.55 Not even considering t he added environmental effects of the postal system handling another billion packages a year, the cost is huge, while the benefit seems slight at best. Moreover, as we shall see in the section on waste, we are not running out of storage space – the entire waste generated in the US throughout the rest o f the twenty-first century will fit within a square landfill less than 18 mi les on the side (see Figure 115, p. 208). In the following example Worldwatch Institute combines the problems of looki ng at short-term counter-trends and not asking what is important. In 1995 th ey pointed out how fertilizer use was declining. In their own words: “The e ra of substituting fertilizer for land came to a halt in 1990. If future foo d output gains cannot come from using large additional amounts of fertilizer , where will they come from? The graph of fertilizer use and grainland area per person may capture the human dilemma as the twenty-first century approac hes more clearly than any other picture could.”56 (We will deal with the qu estion of grainland area below.) The graph they showed us is the world ferti lizer consumption (upper line) in Figure 3. Figure 3 Fertilizer use, kg per person for the world (1950–99) and for the developing world (1962–99). Source: IFA 2000, WI 1999b. First, if we worry about food production, we should focus not on the world a verage, but on the average of where the potential food problem is – the dev eloping world. And here we see that the fertilizer use per person has been a lmost continuously increasing, hitting an alltime high at 17.7 kg/person in 1999. When Worldwatch Institute finds a trend to worry about, it is mainly b ecause they neglect to ask 10 Part I The Litany what information is importan t. Second, this “human dilemma” is also a product of looking at short-term trends. With their data naturally stopping in 1994, Worldwatch Institute fi nds a clear reversal of trends – but why? Mainly because of the breakdown o f the Soviet Union, which the Worldwatch Institute also acknowledges elsewhe re.57 Another neat example is the way many commentators merely regard one environm ental solution as the beginning of another problem. 58 Isaac Asimov informs us that “what has happened to the problem of air pollution is only what hap pens to most of the world’s environmental problems. The problems don’t get solved. They simply get pushed aside, because they are swamped with unexpec ted newer and even worse ones.”59 Of course, such a sweeping statement should at least have a good foundation in its example. Here, Asimov tells us how the British tried to solve London’ s air pollution by building “very tall smokestacks so that the particulate pollution rose high into the air and only fell to earth as soot hundreds of miles away. Like most technological fixes, that one didn’t really fix the p roblem, it only removed it to a different place. In the final analysis, all London had done was to export its smog, in the form of acid rain, to the lak es and forests of Scandinavia.”60 Former vice president Al Gore tells us th e exact same story: “Some of what Londoners used to curse as smog now burns the leaves of Scandinavian trees.”61 And since Britain and most other deve loped nations have begun removing the sulfur from the smokestack emissions, environmentalists now point out that depositing the removed sulfur slurry co nstitutes a major health hazard.62 In essence, first we had one problem (bad air in London), then we had anothe r (acid rain in Scandinavia), and then came a third (slurry waste). But we s till had a problem. So things are not getting better. Or, in the judgment of Asimov, the problem has apparently become even worse. But such argument ent irely avoids asking the question “how important?” Urban air pollution in L ondon has decreased by more than 90 percent since 1930.63 The former urban a ir pollution probably killed at least 64,000 extra people each year in the U K.64 Depositing slurry waste causes far less than one cancer death every fif ty years.65 Thus, to describe the transition from one problem to another as simply exchanging one problem for another is to miss the point entirely: tha t more than 63,999 people now live longer – every year. Without asking the essential question of “how important” we cannot priorit ize and use our resources where they make the most impact. Fundamentals: people （基本原理：人民） Counting lives lost from different problems also emphasizes a central assump tion in my argument: that the needs and desires of humankind represent the c rux of our assessment of the state of the world. This does not mean that pla nts and animals do not also have rights but that the focus will always be on the human evaluation.66 （在我的辩论中，要计算由于不同的问题而消失的生命要强 调一个重要的假定：人们的需要和愿望表现出了我们在评估世界的状态时的症结。这并 不意味着植物和动物没有权利，而是焦点将永远是人类的估价。） This describes both my ethical conception of the world – and on that accoun t the reader can naturally disagree with me – but also a realistic concepti on of the world: people debate and participate in decision-making processes, whereas penguins（企鹅） and pine trees do not.67 So the extent to which pe nguins and pine trees are considered depends in the final instance on some ( in democracies more than half of all) individuals being prepared to act on t heir behalf. When we are to evaluate a project, therefore, it depends on the assessment by people. And while some of these people will definitely choose to value animals and plants very highly, these plants and animals cannot to any great extent be given particular rights.68 （这描绘出了我对世界的伦理观 念，在这一点上，读者可能不同意我的看法，但是却是世界的现实的观念：人们参与做 决定的过程，在其中争论，但企鹅和松树并不。所以我们要考虑企鹅和松树到何种程度 取决于那些为了自己的利益而准备行动的人？的最终情况。当我们估价一个工程时，因 此，它取决于人类对它的估价。当这其中的某些人打算明确地选择给动物和植物很高的 价值，那么这些动物和植物也就不能给予任何程度上的特殊权利。） This is naturally an approach that is basically selfish on the part of human beings. But in addition to being the most realistic description of the pres ent form of decision-making it seems to me to be the only defensible one. Be cause what alternative do we have? Should penguins have the right to vote? I f not, who should be allowed to speak on their behalf? (And how should these representatives be selected?) （企鹅有权利投票吗？如果没有，谁应该成为它们的 代言人？这些代表应该怎样选出来呢？） It is also important to point out that this human-centered view does not aut omatically result in the neglect or elimination of many non-human life forms . （应该指出非常重要的一点是，人类中心观并不自动导致对其他生命形式的忽视和消 灭。）Man is in so many and so obvious ways dependent on other life forms, a nd for this reason alone they will be preserved and their welfare appreciate d.（人类在如此多的方面和运用如此多的方法利用其他生命形式，仅仅是出于这个原因 ，他们也应该得到保护，他们的安宁也应该得到尊重。） In many places man actual ly shares common interests with animals and plants, for example in their des ire for clean air. But it is also obvious that a choice frequently has to be made between what is good for humans and what is good for animals and plant s. If we choose to allow a forest to stand untouched this will be a great ad vantage to many animals but a lost opportunity for man to cultivate timber a nd grow food.69 Whether we want an untouched forest or a cultivated field de pends on man’s preferences with regard to food and undisturbed nature. （在 很多地方，其实人类和动植物有相同的兴趣，比如说都希望得到洁净的空气。但是显然 很多时候我们必须对人有利的和对动植物有利中做出选择。如果我们让森林不受打扰地 存在，这对很多动物来说是有利的，但是对人类来说却意味着失去了种树和种地以获取 食物的机会。） The conclusion is that we have no option but to use humans as a point of ref erence. How can we otherwise avoid an ethical dilemma? When Americans argue for cutting nitrogen emissions to the northern Gulf of Mexico to save the bo ttom-dwelling animals from asphyxiation, this is a statement of a human desi re or preference for living sea-floor fauna. It is not that such a cut is in itself mandated to save the sea-bed dwellers – not because they have inali enable rights in some way. If we were to use the inalienable rights argument we could not explain why we choose to save some animals at the bottom of th e sea while at the same time we slaughter cattle for beef. Why then should t hese cattle not have the same right to survive as the fauna at the bottom of the Gulf? Reality versus myths（真实和神话） It is crucial to the discussion about the state of the world that we consid er the fundamentals. This requires us to refer to long-term and global trend s, considering their importance especially with regard to human welfare. But it is also crucial that we cite figures and trends which are true. （考虑基 本原理，把握长期趋势很重要，同样重要的是引用正确的数据和趋势。） This demand may seem glaringly obvious, but the public environment debate ha s unfortunately been characterized by an unpleasant tendency towards rather rash treatment of the truth. This is an expression of the fact that the Lita ny has pervaded the debate so deeply and for so long that blatantly false cl aims can be made again and again, without any references, and yet still be b elieved. （这个要求似乎是无庸质疑的，但是不幸的是，在有关环境问题的争论中却存 在一种令人不快的趋势，那就是对待事实的态度相当轻率。） Take notice, this is not due to primary research in the environmental field; this generally appears to be professionally competent and well balanced.70 It is due, however, to the communication of environmental knowledge, which t aps deeply into our doomsday beliefs. Such propaganda is presented by many e nvironmental organizations, such as the Worldwatch Institute, Greenpeace and the 12 World Wide Fund for Nature, and by many individual commentators, and it is readily picked up by the media. （注意，这并不怪那些在环境领域做原始研 究，那似乎还是专业的，结果也是均衡的。相反问题出在环境知识的传播者身上，那些 知识已经被用于敲出世界末日的丧音。许多环境组织做出了这样的宣传，例如Worldwat ch Institute，绿色和平组织和世界自然基金会，还有许多个人评论员，这些又欣然地 被媒体精选出来。） The number of examples are so overwhelming that they could fill a book of th eir own. I will consider many of them in the course of this book, and we wil l look specifically at their connection to the media in the next chapter. Ho wever, let us here look at some of the more outstanding examples of environm ental mythmaking. Reality: Worldwatch Institute （现实：？协会） Often the expressions of the Litany can be traced – either directly or indi rectly – to Lester Brown and his Worldwatch Institute. Its publications are almost overflowing with statements such as: “The key environmental indicat ors are increasingly negative. Forests are shrinking, water tables are falli ng, soils are eroding, wetlands are disappearing, fisheries are collapsing, range-lands are deteriorating, rivers are running dry, temperatures are risi ng, coral reefs are dying, and plant and animal species are disappearing.”7 1 Powerful reading – stated entirely without references.72 Discussing forests, Worldwatch Institute categorically states that “the wor ld’s forest estate has declined significantly in both area and quality in r ecent decades.”73 As we shall see in the section on forests, the longest da ta series from the UN’s FAO show that global forest cover has increased fro m 30.04 percent of the global land area in 1950 to 30.89 percent in 1994, an increase of 0.85 percentage points over the last 44 years (see Figure 60, p . 111).74 Such global figures are not referred to, however; we are only told that “each year another 16 million hectares of forests disappear”75 – a figure which is 40 percent higher than the latest UN figure.76 Nor is refere nce made to figures regarding the forests’ quality – simply because no suc h global figures exist. Blatant errors are also made with unfortunate frequency. Worldwatch Institut e claims that “the soaring demand for paper is contributing to deforestatio n, particularly in the northern temperate zone. Canada is losing some 200,00 0 hectares of forest a year.”77 Reference is made to the FAO’s State of th e World’s Forests 1997, but if you refer to the source you will see that in fact Canada grew 174,600 more hectares of forest each year.78 In their 2000 overview, Worldwatch Institute lists the problems staked out i n their very first State of the World publication from 1984. Here is the com plete list: “Record rates of population growth, soaring oil prices, debilit ating levels of international debt, and extensive damage to forests from the new phenomenon of acid rain.”79 Naturally, assessing this list at the turn of the millennium could be a good place to take stock of the important issu es, asking ourselves if we have overcome earlier problems. However, Worldwat ch Institute immediately tells us that we have not solved these problems: “ Far from it. As we complete this seventeenth State of the World report, we a re about to enter a new century having solved few of these problems, and fac ing even more profound challenges to the future of the global economy. The b right promise of a new millennium is now clouded by unprecedented threats to humanity’s future.”80 Worldwatch Institute does not return to look at the list but merely tells us that the problems have not been solved and that we have added even more pro blems since then. But does the Litany stand up, if we check the data? The le vel of international debt may be the only place where we have not seen signi ficant improvement: although the level of debt declined steadily throughout the 1990s, it declined only slightly, from 144 percent of exports in 1984 to 137 percent in 1999.81 However, and as we shall see, acid rain while harming lakes did very little if any damage to forests. Moreover, the sulfur emissions responsible for aci d rain have declined in both Europe and the US – in the EU, emissions have been cut by a full 60 percent since 1984 (as you can also see in Figure 91, p. 172).82 Things are getting better 13 The soaring oil prices which cost th e world a decade of slow growth from the 1970s into the mid-1980s declined t hroughout the 1990s to a price comparable to or lower than the one before th e oil crisis (as can be seen in Figure 64). Even though oil prices have doub led since the all-time low in mid-1998, the price in the first quarter of 20 01 is on par with the price in 1990, and the barrel price of $25 in March 20 01 is still way below the top price of $60 in the early 1980s.83 Moreover, m ost consider this spike is a short-term occurrence, where the US Energy Info rmation Agency expects an almost steady oil price over the next 20 years at about $22 a barrel.84 Finally, speaking of record rates of population growth is merely wrong, sinc e the record was set back in 1964 at 2.17 percent per year, as you can see i n Figure 13, p. 47.85 Since that record, the rate has been steadily declinin g, standing at 1.26 percent in 2000, and expected to drop below 1 percent in 2016. Even the absolute number of people added to the world reached its pea k in 1990 with 87 million, dropping to 76 million in 2000 and still decreasi ng. Thus, in its shorthand appraisal of the state of the world since 1984, World watch Institute sets out a list of problems, all of which have improved sinc e then, and all but one of which have improved immensely, and one of which i s just plain wrong. Not a great score for 16 years that have supposedly been meticulously covered by the Worldwatch reports. The problem, of course, is not lack of data – Worldwatch Institute publishes fine data collections, wh ich are also used in this book – but merely a carelessness that comes with the ingrained belief in the Litany. Such belief is also visible in the future visions of the Worldwatch Institut e. After all, in their 2000 quote above, they promise us that we will face “ even more profound challenges” and “unprecedented threats,” clouding huma nity’s future.86 These threats are often summarized in a connection that ha s almost become a trademark of the Worldwatch Institute, namely that the eve r expanding economy will eventually undermine the planet’s natural systems. In the 2000 edition it proclaims: “As the global economy expands, local ec osystems are collapsing at an accelerating pace.”87 Of course, we should li ke to see such an accelerating pace being documented. But Worldwatch Institu te immediately continues: Even as the Dow Jones climbed to new highs during the 1990s, ecologists were noting that ever growing human demands would eventually lead to local break downs, a situation where deterioration would replace progress. No one knew w hat form this would take, whether it would be water shortages, food shortage s, disease, internal ethnic conflict, or external political conflict. 88 Notice, we are not being offered any documentation as to these breakdowns. M oreover, the (unnamed) ecologists are sure that they will come, but apparent ly “no one” knows what form this breakdown will take. And finally, creatin g a list as broad as above, including even internal ethnic conflicts, seems like hedging your bets, while they have an entirely unexplicated and undocum ented connection to ecological breakdown. But right after this, Worldwatch Institute gives us its main example of the breakdown, caused by an ever expanding economy crushing the local ecosystems : “The first region where decline is replacing progress is sub- Saharan Afr ica. In this region of 800 million people, life expectancy – a sentinel ind icator of progress – is falling precipitously as governments overwhelmed by rapid population growth have failed to curb the spread of the virus that le ads to AIDS.”89 To make the implication perfectly clear, Worldwatch Institu te points out that this AIDS infection “suggests that some countries may al ready have crossed a deterioration/decline threshold.”90 This prime example of an ecosystem collapse is surprising, to say the least. It is true that HIV/AIDS has decreased and is decreasing life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa, and 14 Part I The Litany within some states has caused shockingly great declines (this we will look at in Part II). However, is thi s caused by an ever increasing economy crushing the ecosystem? In one of the newest reviews of AIDS in Africa, the main cause is staked out fairly clear ly: The high levels of AIDS arise from the failure of African political and reli gious leaders to recognize social and sexual reality. The means for containi ng and conquering the epidemic are already known, and could prove effective if the leadership could be induced to adopt them. The lack of individual beh avioral change and of the implementation of effective government policy has roots in attitudes to death and a silence about the epidemic arising from be liefs about its nature and the timing of death.91 Equally, in a review in The Lancet, it is argued that: two principal factors are to blame [for the AIDS epidemic in the developing countries]: first, the reluctance of national governments to take responsibi lity for preventing HIV infection; and second, a failure by both national go vernments and international agencies to set realistic priorities that can ha ve an effect on the overall epidemic in countries with scarce resources and weak implementation capacity.92 To put it differently, the rapid spread of AIDS in Africa is primarily cause d by political and social factors. The tragedy is obvious and demands the at tention and efforts of the developed world, but it is not an indication of a n ecological collapse brought on by an ever expanding economy. Moreover, the Worldwatch Institute’s obsession with pointing out how they have finally f ound an example of concrete decline replacing progress seems ill placed and unfounded.93 But Worldwatch Institute also gives us another concrete example of ecologica l collapse, when pointing out the dangers of complex interactions. Let us qu ote the entire paragraph to see the extraordinary transition from general cl aims to concrete examples: The risk in a world adding nearly 80 million peop le annually is that so many sustainable yield thresholds will be crossed in such a short period of time that the consequences will become unmanageable. Historically, when early civilizations lived largely in isolation, the conse quences of threshold crossings were strictly local. Today, in the age of glo bal economic integration, a threshold crossing in one major country can put additional pressure on resources in other countries. When Beijing banned log ging in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River basin in 1998, for example, t he increased demand for forest products from neighboring countries in Southe ast Asia intensified the pressure on the region’s remaining forests.94 Thus , the best example that Worldwatch Institute can give us of the world’s unm anageable collapses is a change in timber production of an undocumented size , which by most economists would be described exactly as an efficient produc tion decision: essentially the Chinese government has discovered that produc ing trees in the upper reaches of the Yangtze is all in all a bad deal, beca use the trees are better used to moderate flooding. Ironically, Worldwatch I nstitute actually claims that this logging ban is a proof that “the princip les of ecology are replacing basic economics in the management of national f orests.”95 The reason is that the Beijing viewpoint “now is that trees sta nding are worth three times as much as those cut, simply because of the wate r storage and flood control capacity of forests.”96 Of course, this is just plain and simple (and probably sound) social cost-benefit analysis – good economics, and not ecology. Thus, the prominent and repeated statements of the Worldwatch Institute anal yzed here seem to indicate that the Litany’s claims of ecological collapse are founded on very fragile examples or merely offered on faith. (It is also worth pointing out how these quotes underline the danger of arguing from si ngle examples and not global trends, as pointed out above.) Things are getti ng better 15 Of course, while these quotes show some of the strongest arguments for the L itany in State of the World, Worldwatch Institute offers a long list of othe r examples and analyses within different areas, and we shall comment on thes e as we go through the subjects in this book. （当然，当这些引证显示出了关于 世界状况的悼文的激烈争论，Worldwatch Institute 提供一长串其他一些事例和不同领 域的分析，本书中相关章节将对此发表评论。 --

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标 题: 多疑的环境保护论者（1.3） 第一部分 第3节 Reality: World Wide Fund for Nature （真实：世界自然基金） World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) focused towards the end of 1997 on the Indo nesian forest fires which were pouring out thick clouds of smoke over much o f Southeast Asia. There is no doubt that these were obnoxious for city dwell ers, but WWF stressed how the forest fires were a signal that the world’s f orests were “out of balance” – tidings which the Worldwatch Institute act ually announced as one of the primary signs of ecological breakdown in 1997. 97 WWF proclaimed 1997 as “the year the world caught fire,” because “in 1997 , fire burned more forests than at any other time in history.”98 Summing up , the WWF president Claude Martin stated unequivocally that “this is not ju st an emergency, it is a planetary disaster.” 99 But on closer inspection, as can be seen in the forests section later in the book, the figures do not substantiate this claim: 1997 was well below the record, and the only reason that 1997 was the year when Indonesia’s forest fires were noticed was that it was the first time they really irritated city dwellers.100 In all, Indon esia’s forest fires affected approximately 1 percent of the nation’s fores ts. Likewise, WWF in 1997 issued a press release entitled “Two-thirds of the wo rld’s forests lost forever.”101 Both here and in their Global Annual Fores t Report 1997, they explained how “new research by WWF shows that almost tw o-thirds of the world’s original forest cover has been lost.”102 This seem ed rather amazing to me, since most sources estimate about 20 percent.103 I therefore called WWF in England and spoke to Rachel Thackray and Alison Luca s, who had been responsible for the press release, and asked to see WWF’s r esearch report. All they were able to tell me, however, was that actually, n o report had ever existed and that WWF had been given the figures by Mark Al drich of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Apparently, they had look ed at some maximum figures, and because of problems of definition had includ ed the forests of the northern hemisphere in the original overview of forest cover, but not in the current one.104 From this non-report, WWF tells us that: “now we have proof of the extent o f forest already lost . . . The frightening thing is that the pace of forest destruction has accelerated dramatically over the last 5 years and continue s to rise.”105 The UN, however, tells us that the rate of deforestation was 0.346 percent in the 1980s and just 0.32 percent in the period 1990–5 – n ot a dramatic increase in pace, but a decrease.106 WWF confides in us that nowhere is deforestation more manifest than in Brazi l, which “still has the highest annual rate of forest loss in the world.”1 07 In actual fact the deforestation rate in Brazil is among the lowest as fa r as tropical forest goes; according to the UN the deforestation rate in Bra zil is at 0.5 percent per year compared to an average of 0.7 percent per yea r.108 In more recent material, WWF has now lowered their estimate of original cove r from 8,080 million hectares to 6,793 million hectares (some 16 percent), w hile they have increased their estimate of the current forest cover from 3,0 44 million hectares to 3,410 million (some 12 percent), although their curre nt estimate is still some 100 million hectares lower than the UN estimate.10 9 This means that WWF has lowered its estimates from 62.3 percent to 49.8 pe rcent of the earth’s forest that have been lost.110 Still, this is much more than the 20 percent commonly estimated. However, tw o independent researchers at the University of London and the University of Sussex111 have tried to 16 Part I The Litany assess the sources and data use d by WWF, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre and others in making such gloomy estimates of vast forest reductions. Considering the enormous amount of data, they have focused on the assessments of forest loss in West Africa , a place where WWF/WCMC estimates a forest loss of 87 percent or some 48.6 million hectares. 112 However, when looking at the documentation, it turns o ut to be based mainly on problematic bio-climatic forest zones, essentially comparing today’s forests with where there may have been forests earlier. I n general, the researchers find that “the statistics for forest loss in gen eral circulation today massively exaggerate deforestation during the twentie th century.”113 The result is that for West Africa the actual deforestation is about 9.5–10.5 million hectares, or about five times less than what is estimated by WWF/WCMC.114 Finally, WWF uses among other measures these forest estimates to make a so-c alled Living Planet Index, supposedly showing a decline over the past 25 yea rs of 30 percent – “implying that the world has lost 30 per cent of its na tural wealth in the space of one generation.” 115 This index uses three mea sures: the extent of natural forests (without plantations), and two indices of changes in populations of selected marine and freshwater vertebrate speci es. The index is very problematic. First, excluding plantations of course en sures that the forest cover index will fall (since plantations are increasin g), but it is unclear whether plantations are bad for nature overall. Planta tions produce much of our forest goods, reducing pressure on other forests – in Argentina, 60 percent of all wood is produced in plantations which const itute just 2.2 percent of the total forest area, thus relieving the other 97 .8 percent of the forests.116 While WWF states that plantations “make up la rge tracts of current forest area,”117 they in fact constitute only 3 perce nt of the world’s total forest area.118 Second, when using 102 selected marine and 70 selected freshwater species th ere is naturally no way of ensuring that these species are representative of the innumerable other species. Actually, since research is often conducted on species that are known to be in trouble (an issue we will return to in th e next chapter, but basically because troubled species are the ones on which we need information in order to act), it is likely that such estimates will be grossly biased towards decline. Third, in order to assess the state of the world, we need to look at many mo re and better measures. This is most clear when WWF actually quotes a new st udy that shows the total worth of the ecosystem to be $33 trillion annually (this problematic study estimating the ecosystem to be worth more than the g lobal production at $31 trillion we will discuss in Part V).119 According to WWF, it implies that when the Living Planet Index has dropped 30 percent, t hat means that we now get 30 percent less from the ecosystem each year – th at we now lose some $11 trillion each year.120 Such a claim is almost nonsen sical.121 Forest output has not decreased but actually increased some 40 per cent since 1970.122 And the overwhelming value of the ocean and coastal area s are in nutrient recycling, which the Living Planet Index does not measure at all. Also, marine food production has almost doubled since 1970 (see Figu re 57, p. 107). Thus, by their own measures, we have not experienced a fall in ecosystem services but actually a small increase. Reality: Greenpeace （现实：绿色和平组织） In the Danish press I pointed out that we had long been hearing figures for the extinction of the world’s species which were far too high – that we wo uld lose about half of all species within a generation. The correct figure i s closer to 0.7 percent in 50 years. This led to the Danish chairman of Gree npeace, Niels Bredsdorff, pointing out that Greenpeace had long accepted the figure of 0.7 percent.123 However, Greenpeace’s official biodiversity Thin gs are getting better 17 report stated that “it is expected that half the E arth’s species are likely to disappear within the next seventy-five years.” 124 The chairman has never officially commented on this report, but he did m anage to persuade Greenpeace International to pull the report off the intern et, because it did not contain one single scientific reference. Norwegian television also confronted Greenpeace in Norway with this report a nd rather forced them into a corner. Four days later they decided to hold a press conference in which they raised all the general points which I had men tioned and reevaluated their effort. The Norwegian daily Verdens Gang report ed: We have had problems adapting the environment movement to the new reality, s ays Kalle Hestvedt of Greenpeace. He believes the onesided pessimism about t he situation weakens the environment organizations’ credibility. When most people do not feel that the world is about to fall off its hinges at any mom ent, they have problems taking the environmental organizations seriously, He stvedt maintains.125 By way of summary Greenpeace says in brief: “The truth is that many environ mental issues we fought for ten years back are as good as solved. Even so, t he strategy continues to focus on the assumption that ‘everything is going to hell’.”126 Reality: wrong bad statistics and economics（真实：错误的有害的统计学和经济学 ） There is an amazing amount of incorrect statements in many other sources. Le t us just try to summarize a few, and also display the often lax attitude to economic arguments. One of the new anxieties, about synthetic chemicals mimicking human and anim al hormones, has received a great boost with the publication of the popular scientific book Our Stolen Future.127 We will look at the arguments in Part V, but here we can state that the book hinges（转移） a large part of its ar gument on a purported connection between synthetic hormones and breast cance r（乳癌）. It states, that “by far the most alarming health trend for women is the rising rate of breast cancer, the most common female cancer.”128 Th e link? “Since 1940, when the chemical age was dawning, breast cancer death s have risen steadily by one percent per year in the United States, and simi lar increases have been reported in other industrial countries. Such inciden ce rates are adjusted for age, so they reflect genuine trends rather than de mographic changes such as a growing elderly population.”129 A 1 percent inc rease since 1940 would mean a 75 percent increase in breast cancer deaths by publication in 1996.130 However, this claim is plain wrong, as you can also see in Figure 119, p. 220. At the time of writing Our Stolen Future, the ag e-adjusted death rate had dropped some 9 percent since 1940; the latest figu res for 1998 indicate a drop of 18 percent.131 （反驳乳癌和化学合成激素的关系 ） The Global Environmental Outlook Report 2000 also tells us of the Earth’s m any water problems. 132 These we shall look at in Part IV, but when GEO 2000 actually mentions numbers, it gets carried away. “Worldwide, polluted wate r is estimated to affect the health of about 1200 million people and to cont ribute to the death of about 15 million children under five every year.”133 However, the total number of deaths among children under 5 is estimated by WHO to be about 10 million.134 Equally, the report claims that “the growth of municipal and industrial demands for water has led to conflicts over the distribution of water rights. Water resources are now a major constraint to growth and increased economic activities envisioned by planners, especially in the west and southwestern arid lands of the United States.”135 But its o nly reference does not even mention water constraints influencing economic g rowth in the US.136 Virtually every year, Worldwatch Institute makes much of the fact that the u se of renewable energy sources grows much faster than use of conventional fu els – in the 1990s at 22 18 Part I The Litany percent compared to oil at le ss than 2 percent. 137 But comparing such growth rates is misleading, becaus e with wind making up just 0.05 percent of all energy, double-digit growth r ates are not all that hard to come by. In 1998, the amount of energy in the 2 percent oil increase was still 323 times bigger than the 22 percent increa se in wind energy.138 Even in the unlikely event that the amazing wind power growth rate could continue, it would take 46 consecutive years of 22 percen t growth for wind to outgrow oil.139 Likewise, the environmental movement would love renewable energy to be cheap er than fossil fuels. But using economic arguments, there often seems to be an astounding（令人惊骇的） lack of rigor（严格、严厉、精确）. Many argue si mply on faith that if the costs on environment and humans from coal pollutio n and waste products were taken into account, renewable energy would indeed be cheaper.140 However, three of the largest projects – one European and tw o American – have attempted to examine all costs associated with electricit y production, all the way from the mortal risks of mining coal, the traffic hazards of transportation and occupational hazards of production including c onsequences of acid rain, soot, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and ozone on lakes, crops, buildings, children and old people and up to the consequences of tax codes and occupation plus a long, long list of similar consideration s and costs.141 And they still find the extra costs to be less than the gap between renewables and fossil fuels (see also the discussion in Part III).14 2 However, there is no doubt that renewables will be cheaper in the near-to- medium future, and this will probably be a big part of the reason why we nee d to worry less about global warming in the long run (see Part V). An equivalent laxness in economic arguments is obvious when Worldwatch Insti tute tells us that “wind power is now economically competitive with fossil fuel generated electricity.” 143 However, they also tell us that in the fut ure it is necessary that “sufficiency replaces profligacy as the ethic of t he next energy paradigm.” 144 But according to Worldwatch Institute this wi ll be okay, since it is not a major cut-back: “Modest changes, such as owni ng smaller cars and homes, or driving less and cycling more, would still lea ve us with lifestyles that are luxurious by historical standards.”145 Thus, while it may be true that if we merely accept less convenience we will stil l be better off than by “historical standards,” it nevertheless means that we will be less well off. Possibly, it will be a more sustainable society w ith a better environment, but at least the choice should be stated clearly a s a trade-off. Likewise, Worldwatch Institute wants to downplay the costs of avoiding globa l warming by reducing CO2 emissions. Quoting Thomas Casten, a CEO from a sma ller renewable energy firm, they point out that “the small, extraordinarily efficient power plants his company provides can triple the energy efficienc y of some older, less efficient plants. The issue, he says, is not how much it will cost to reduce carbon emissions, but who is going to harvest the eno rmous profits in doing so.”146 However, Worldwatch Institute also envisions how in the twenty-first century “the climate battle may assume the kind of strategic importance that wars – both hot and cold – have had during” th e twentieth Century.147 Backed up by a number of leading scientists writing in Nature, Worldwatch Institute actually asserts that to develop the necessa ry technologies to combat climate change will require a monumental research effort, conducted with the urgency of the Manhattan Project.148 It is perhap s as well to note that both the cold war and the Manhattan Project were rath er expensive projects. Reality: water problems （现实：水问题） A lot of worries go into the question of water – do we have enough, will sc arcity cause water wars, etc. In recent years water scarcity has become one of Worldwatch Institute’s favorite examples of future problems. While we wi ll discuss these water questions more thoroughly in chapter 13, we will here look at two of the most common claims. （许多担忧是关于水的，我们是否有足够 的水，缺乏会不会导致水战争等等。近几年水缺乏成了Worldwatch最喜欢的未来问题的 例子之一。虽然我们将在第13章更全面地讨论水的温暖体，这里我们先看两个最普通的 结果。 Figure 4 Two attempts at showing the development of access to clean water an d sanitation. Left, number of people unserved 1980–2000. OBS: Numbers for 1 990–2000 are incorrect. Right, number of people unserved 1980–90, 1990–4, 1990–2000 in broken lines. OBS: Solid lines for 1980–94 are incorrect. So urce: Gleick 1993:10, 187–9. 1998:262, 264, 1999, Annan 2000:5. One of the most widely used college books on the environment, Living in the Environment, claims that “according to a 1995 World Bank study, 30 countrie s containing 40 percent of the world’s population (2.3 billion people) now experience chronic water shortages that threaten their agriculture and indus try and the health of their people.”149 This World Bank study is referred t o in many different environment texts with slightly differing figures.150 Un fortunately, none mentions a source. （生活在环境中，这本使用最广的环境学大学 教材，宣称：根据1995年世界银行的研究，拥有全球40%全球人口（23亿）的三十个国家 正在经历缓慢的水资源缺乏，这威胁到了他们的农业、工业和人民健康。这项世界银行 的研究在许多不同的环境学课本中都有略微不同的数据，但不幸的是，没有一个指出了 出处。） With a good deal of help from the World Bank, I succeeded in locating the fa mous document. It turns out that the myth had its origin in a hastily drawn up press release. The headline on the press release was: “The world is faci ng a water crisis: 40 percent of the world’s population suffers from chroni c water shortage.”151 If you read on, however, it suddenly becomes clear th at the vast majority of the 40 percent are not people who use too much water but those who have no access to water or sanitation facilities – the exact opposite point. If one also reads the memo to which the press release relat es, it shows that the global water crisis which Lester Brown and others are worried about affects not 40 percent but about 4 percent of the world’s pop ulation. 152 And, yes, it wasn’t 30, but 80 countries the World Bank was re ferring to. （在世界银行的大力协助下，我终于找到了这份文件。事实证明那个神话 出自一份匆忙写就的新闻稿。标题是：“世界正面临水问题的紧要关头，40%的世界人口 正经受缓慢的水短缺的捆饶。”如果你继续读，就回突然明白，所谓40%不是那些用了太 多水的人，而是那些没有权使用水和卫生设施的人——正好和论点相反。如果你也读一 下那份新闻稿的备忘录，就会发现Lester Brown和其他人所担忧的全球水短缺不是影响 了40%而是4%的世界人口。而且，世界银行提到的不是30个国家，而是80个。） However, it is true that the most important human problem with water today i s not that we use too much but that too many have no access. It is estimated that if we could secure clean drinking water and sanitation for everyone, t his would avoid several million deaths every year and prevent half a billion people becoming seriously ill each year.153 The one-off cost would be less than $200 billion or less than four times the annual global development aid. 154 Thus, the most important water question is whether access to water and sanit ation has been improving or declining. Peter Gleick, one of the foremost wat er experts, has edited a substantial, engaged book about water, Water in Cri sis, an erudite Oxford publication of almost 500 large pages. However, when estimating water and sanitation access, Gleick seems to stumble on the Litan y, as illustrated in Figure 4. From 1980 to 1990, Gleick makes the same general point as this book, i.e. t hat things have become better: fewer people in the world are denied access t o water, and because 750 million more souls came into the developing countri es in the same period, 1.3 billion more people have actually gained access t o water. The proportion of people in developing countries with access to wat er has thus increased from 44 percent to 69 percent, or by more than 25 perc entage points. As far as sanitation is concerned, more or less the same numb er of people are denied access (about 6 million more), but once again, becau se of the growth in the population, almost three-quarters of a billion more people have access to sanitation – making the proportion increase from 46 p ercent to 56 percent.155 However, the period from 1990 to 2000 in the left s ide of Figure 4 indicates that things will now get worse. Far more people wi ll end up without water or sewage facilities. In fact the proportion will ag ain fall by 10–12 percentage points. But if you check the figures it turns out that all Gleick has done is to expect that 882 million more people will be born in the nineties. Since none of these from the outset will have acces s to water or sewage facilities their number has simply been added to the to tal number of unserved.156 Of course, this is an entirely unreasonable assum ption. In essence, Gleick is saying that in the decade from 1980 to 1990, 1. 3 billion people had water supplies installed, so we should assume that for the period 1990 to 2000 the figure will be zero? However, the graph has been reproduced in many places, and has for instance been distributed in a semin al article on the shortage of water.157 In 1996, the UN published its offici al estimates for access to water and sanitation in the period 1990 to 1994.1 59 What constitutes water and sanitation access is naturally a question of d efinition. (How close to the dwelling need a water pump be? Is a hole in the ground sanitation?) In 1996, the UN used its most restrictive definition of access on both 1990 and 1994.160 This caused the UN estimate for the 1990 n umber of unserved to increase substantially. 161 Thus, in the right-hand sid e of Figure 4 we can see how the number of people without access to water in 1990 was no longer 1.2 billion but 1.6 billion, now declining to 1.1 billio n in 1994. Equally, the number of people without sanitation was not 1.7 bill ion but 2.6 billion, increasing to 2.9 billion in 1994. Gleick gives us both sets of numbers in his academic book,162 but when presenting the evidence i n a popular magazine only the original 1980 and the revised 1994 figures are presented. 163 This, of course, compares two entirely non-comparable figure s. It suggests that the decline in the number of waterunserved has been much smaller than it really is, and suggests that the increase in sanitation- un served has been much higher than it really is. In April 2000, the UN’s latest estimate for 1990–2000 was published, indic ating that unserved of both water and sanitation had indeed declined over th e decade.164 Since the decade added some 750 million people to the developin g world, this means that more than three-quarters of a billion more people g ot access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Thus, the share of people with access increased substantially. In Figure 5 you can see how the share o f people in the developing countries with access to drinking water has incre ased from 30 percent in 1970 to 80 percent in 2000. Equally, the share of pe ople with access to sanitation has increased from 23 percent in 1970 to 53 p ercent in 2000. Although there is still much left to do, especially in sanitation, the most important water problem is indeed improving. Reality: Pimentel and global health I （真实：Pimentel和全球健康I） Most basic environmental research is sound and unbiased（没有偏见的）, produ cing numbers and trends as inputs to evaluations such as Worldwatch Institut e’s State of the World or indeed this Things are getting better 21 book. Ho wever, there is a significant segment of papers even in peer-reviewed journa ls trying to make assessments of broader areas, where the belief in the Lita ny sometimes takes over and causes alarmist and even amazingly shoddy work. Most of these poor statements are documented throughout this book, but never theless it might be instructional to take a look at the anatomy of such argu ments. As I do not want just to show you a single example or pick out a lone error, but to show you the breadth and depth of the shoddiness, we will act ually have to touch a number of bases that we will return to during the book . Figure 5 Percentage of people in the Third World with access to drinking wat er and sanitation, 1970–2000. Light, broken lines indicate individual, comp arable estimates, solid lines is a logistic best fit line – a reasonable at tempt to map out the best guess of development among very different definiti ons.158 Source: World Bank 1994:26 (1975–90), WHO 1986:15–18 (1970–83), G leick 1998:262, 264 (1980–90, 1990–4), Annan 2000:5 (1990–2000). Professor David Pimentel of Cornell University is a frequently cited and wel lknown environmentalist, responsible – among many other arguments – for a global erosion estimate far larger than any other (we will discuss this in P art III) and for arguing that the ideal population of a sustainable US would be 40–100 million (i.e. a reduction of 63–85 percent of the present popul ation).165 In October 1998, Professor Pimentel published as lead author an article on t he “Ecology of increasing disease” in the peerreviewed journal BioScience. 166 The basic premise of the paper is that increasing population will lead t o increasing environmental degradation, intensified pollution and consequent ly more human disease. Along the way, many other negative events or tendenci es are mentioned, even if many have very little bearing on the subject. The Pimentel article repeatedly makes the mistakes we have talked about abov e, but most importantly it is wrong and seriously misleading on all of its c entral conclusions. However, this has not hindered the article in being cite d and frequently used in pointing out the decline of the world.167 Figure 6 Number and rate of tuberculosis cases in the US, 1945–99. The two years, 1985 and 1991, picked by Pimentel, are indicated. Source: CDC 1995:69–79,

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标 题: 多疑的环境保护论者（1.4） 第一部分 第4节 When looking at trends, Pimentel happily uses very short-term descriptions. He looks at the biggest infectious disease killer, tuberculosis, claiming it has gone from killing 2.5 million in 1990 to 3 million in 1995, and citing an expected 3.5 million dead in 2000.168 However, in 1999, the actual death toll from tuberculosis was 1.669 million, and the WHO source that Pimentel m ost often uses estimates an almost stable 2 million dead over the 1990s.169 Although predictions can excusably prove wrong, Pimentel’s comparison with tuberculosis in the US is seriously problematic: “Patterns of TB infection in the United States are similar to the world situation, in which TB cases i ncreased by approximately 18 percent from 1985 to 1991.”170 While technical ly true, it is obvious from Figure 6 that this quote is misleading. Pimentel has taken the lowest number of tuberculosis cases (22,201 cases in 1985) an d compared it with the almost top in 1991 (26,283 cases). But using almost a ny other years would more correctly have indicated a decline. Even in 1996, two years before Pimentel’s article, the total number was below 1985. The l atest figures from 1999 show 17,531 cases. Moreover, comparing absolute numbers is problematic; when the population in the US increased 6 percent from 1985 to 1991,171 we should expect tuberculos is cases to increase equivalently. If we look at the rate per 100,000, the i ncrease from 1985 to 1991 almost disappears (slightly less than 12 percent) and the rate has since dropped some 31 percent since 1985, some 38 percent s ince 1991. Similarly, the tuberculosis death rate has declined more than 40 percent since 1985.172 The only reason Pimentel can find an increase in tube rculosis cases is because he picks the exact years to show a counter-trend. Equally, pointing out the danger of chemicals and pesticides, Pimentel tries to make a connection by pointing out that “in the United State, cancer-rel ated deaths from all causes increased from 331,000 in 1970 to approximately 521,000 in 1992.”173 However, this again ignores an increasing population ( 24 percent) and an aging population (making cancers more likely). The age-ad justed cancer death rate in the US was actually lower in 1996 than in 1970, despite increasing cancer deaths from past smoking, and adjusted for smoking the rate has been declining steadily since 1970 by about 17 percent. You ca n see the data in Part V (Figure 117, p. 217) where we will discuss such arg uments in more detail. Pimentel picks and chooses a lot of numbers to show that things are getting worse, as when he accepts that malaria incidence outside Africa has declined till 1980 and remained stable since then – and then nevertheless only list s countries where malaria cases have been increasing.174 However, as inciden ce has been approximately stable, this curiously neglects the countries with dramatic decreases in malaria, such as the world’s largest country, China, where incidence has decreased 90–99 percent since the early 1980s.175 Sometimes the numbers are also just plain wrong, as when Pimentel claims tha t “in Thailand the prevalence of HIV infections in males increased from 1 p ercent to 40 percent between 1988 and 1992.”176 Not even the socalled comme rcial sex workers have ever had 40 percent prevalence since measuring starte d in 1989.177 Even male STD patients measured since 1989, habitually with th e highest rates, have “only” reached 8–9 percent.178 UNAIDS estimates the adult population prevalence at 2.15 percent, with young males a bit lower.1 79 Also, Pimentel claims that “although the use of lead in US gasoline has dec lined since 1985, yearly emissions of lead into the atmosphere from other so urces remain near 2 billion kg.”180 However, the total emissions from the U S have declined by 83 percent since 1985 and now constitute 3,600 tons, or m ore than 500 times less than claimed.181 It turns out that the reference (fr om 1985, no less) is referring to the entire world emission at that time.182 Reality: Pimentel and global health II （真实：Pimentel 和全球健康Ⅱ） We have looked at a lot of low-quality, individual claims. But the reason we take time to go through them is to point out how they are used to buttress the central arguments. Figure 7 People undernourished, 1949–2030, in numbers (million) and percent age (of developing world). Prediction for 1998–2030. Estimates for 1949–79 count as undernourished individuals with less than 20 percent above physica l minimum (1.2BMR), whereas estimates for 1970–2030 use a somewhat more inc lusive definition of 55 percent above physical minimum (1.55BMR). Source: Gr igg 1993:50, WFS 1996:1:Table 3, FAO 1999:29, 2000c:27, 2000d:20. The reason Pimentel gives us all these – sometimes incorrect – claims is t o show us that the prevalence of human disease is increasing.183 The cause i s more humans, causing an “unprecedented increase in air, water and soil po llutants, including organic and chemical wastes” as well as malnutrition.18 4 And Pimentel finds that now more than 3 billion people are malnourished, “ the largest number and the highest rate in history.”185 And he finds that 4 0 percent of all deaths are caused by “various environmental factors, espec ially organic and chemical pollutants.” 186 The consequence of more malnutr ition and more pollution then is more disease and more infectious disease.18 7 Surprisingly, all these central points in Pimentel’s paper are wrong and/ or seriously misleading. Let us look at the intermediate findings first. Pimentel maintains that maln utrition has become ever worse: “In 1950, 500 million people (20 percent of the world population) were considered malnourished. Today more than 3 billi on people (one-half of the world population) suffer from malnutrition, the l argest number and the highest rate in history.” 188 This is the entire argu ment, and Pimentel has repeated it as late as in 2000, adding that the numbe r of malnourished “increases every year.”189 The source for the 1950 figur e is The World Food Problem by David Grigg (1993), whereas the 1996 figure c omes from a press release of the WHO. However, these two sources are using dramatically different definitions of l acking food. Grigg uses the most common definition, calories. If a person ge ts less than 20 percent above physical minimum, she is counted as undernouri shed or starving. The development is shown in Figure 7 from 1949 to 1979. Th e number of undernourished first goes up from 550 million to 650 million, an d then declines to 534 million. Because the developing world increased by mo re than 1.6 billion people from 1949 to 1979, this implies that many more pe ople in the Third World were well nourished, or that the percentage of starv ing people dropped from 34 percent to 17 percent. Since 1970, the UN FAO has produced a similar statistic, only using a more i nclusive definition of 55 percent above physical minimum, making the numbers higher. Thus, the number of undernourished has declined from 917 million in 1970 to 792 million in 1997, and is expected to hit 680 million in 2010 and 401 million in 2030. Again because the developing world has increased by so me 1.9 billion people since 1970, this means that the percentage of starving people has dropped even faster, from 35 percent to 18 percent in 1996, and further down to 12 percent in 2010 and 6 percent in 2030. Thus, if we want t o compare the entire interval, we can imagine pushing the left-hand side of Figure 7 up to align with the right-hand side. This shows that the number of starving people has declined, and the percentage of starving people has dro pped dramatically. Grigg also looks at two other ways of measuring malnutrition, finding that “ between 1950 and 1980 available food supply per [person] rose in the world a s a whole, in the developed world, in the developing world, and in all the m ajor regions.”190 The press release from WHO talks about micronutrient malnutrition. This is p rimarily lack of iodine, iron and vitamin A.191 While the two are about equa lly important measured in human death,192 they are two entirely different me asures. Solving the micronutrient problems is generally much cheaper than pr oducing more calories, because all it takes is basically information and sup plements either in the food or in a vitamin pill.193 Since there has only be en attention to the micronutrient question within the past decade, we mainly have information for this past decade.194 Here there has been a 40 percent decline in the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency, and likewise more than 60 percent of all salt is now fortified with iodine.195 Thus, it is simply wrong when Pimentel compares the 500 million undernourish ed with 3 billion lacking micronutrients. Moreover, it is wrong to say that there are more and more malnourished. Actually, both indicators show great i mprovement since records began. Equally, Pimentel’s article contends from the outset that “we have calcula ted that an estimated 40 percent of world deaths can be attributed to variou s environmental factors, especially organic and chemical pollutants.” 196 T his has become the most cited point of the paper, because it so clearly seem s to support that pollution is killing us.197 Actually, in one citation from the Centers for Disease Control newsletter, the article is summed up in a s ingle bullet-point: The increasing pollution “points to one inescapable con clusion: life on Earth is killing us.”198 Using an estimate of 50 million deaths a year (the article does not even mak e an estimate), 40 percent means that Pimentel expects 20 million deaths fro m pollution.199 But strangely, the 40 percent calculation is never made expl icit. It is all the stranger because WHO estimates that the total deaths fro m outdoor air pollution, which constitutes by far the most dangerous public pollution, is a little more than half a million per annum.200 However, on th e next page, Pimentel almost repeats his point: “Based on the increase in a ir, water, and soil pollutants worldwide, we estimate that 40 percent of hum an deaths each year result from exposure to environmental pollutants and mal nutrition.”201 Surprisingly, the 40 percent is now caused not only by pollu tants but also by malnutrition. Finally, in the conclusion, all the factors are included: “Currently, 40 percent of deaths result from diverse environm ental factors, including chemical pollutants, tobacco, and malnutrition.”20 2 In an interview, Pimentel makes it clear that tobacco is really “smoke fr om various sources such as tobacco and wood fuels.”203 According to Pimentel’s own references, Things are getting better 25 malnut rition costs 6–14 million lives, fuelwood cooking smoke in the Third World costs 4 million lives, and smoking costs 3 million lives.204 Since the estim ate for malnutrition is more likely to be close to the high end of 14 millio n lives,205 this means that those three issues alone account for the entire 40 percent. Thus, while the presentation of the data is so nebulous that it is hard to claim that they are absolutely false, it is clear that the much q uoted 40 percent deaths caused by pollution is at least seriously misleading . Figure 8 Infectious disease death rates, 1970–2020. Source: Bulatao 1993:50 , Murray and Lopez 1996:465, 648, 720, 792. Finally, we get to Pimentel’s central claim that infections have increased and will continue to increase. Both of these are false. The reason Pimentel tells us all these (sometimes incorrect) stories and giv es examples of many and new diseases is to make us feel that disease frequen cy must be increasing. After all, with so many names of diseases, it must be true, no? It is an argument that several other debaters have used.206 We mu st, however, wonder how life expectancy can be going up and up if we keep ge tting more and more sick? (We will look into the discussion of life expectan cy and illness in Part II.) And would it not be easier to look at the actual , total disease rates? Pimentel claims that the growth in diseases is expected to continue, and according to Murray and Lopez (1996), disease prevalence is projected to increase 77 percent during the period from 1990 to 2020. Infectious diseases, which cause 37 percent of all deaths throughout the world, are also expected to rise. Deaths in the U nited States from infectious diseases increased 58 percent between 1980 and 1992, and this trend is projected to continue. 207 It is not true, that diseases will increase. Actually, deaths will decrease from 862 per 100,000 in 1990 to 764 per 100,000 in 2020, according to Murray and Lopez.208 And if we more correctly adjust for an aging population, the disease prevalence will decline even more steeply from 862 to 599 per 100,00 0.209 When Pimentel can tell us that disease should increase 77 percent it i s because he has misread the book (neglecting infectious disease and only co unting non-infectious diseases, which will increase because we get ever olde r, dying of old-age diseases) and counting diseases in absolute numbers (whi ch of course will increase, since the world population will grow by about 2. 5 billion).210 The claim about increasing infectious disease is downright wr ong, as can be seen in Figure 8. Infectious diseases have been decreasing si nce 1970 and probably much longer, though we only have evidence from some co untries (in Figure 20, p. 56, you can see US infectious disease prevalence o ver the twentieth century).211 Likewise infectious disease is expected to de crease in the future, at least until 2020. Even in absolute numbers, infecti ous deaths are expected to drop from 9.3 million to 6.5 million.212 And the final claim for the US is also wrong. It only works because Pimentel chooses 1980 as the absolute bottom, and because most of the increase is du e to rising age and increasing pneumonia. If we correct this for aging, the death risk was similar in 1980 and 1997.213 Pimentel concludes, “to prevent diseases, 26 Part I The Litany Figure 8 Inf ectious disease death rates, 1970–2020. Source: Bulatao 1993:50, Murray and Lopez 1996:465, 648, 720, 792. 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 1970 19 80 1990 2000 2010 2020 Infectious disease, deaths per 100,000 Bulatao Murray & Lopez poverty, and malnutrition from worsening” we need population contr ol and “effective environmental management programs.” Otherwise, “disease prevalence will continue its rapid rise throughout the world and will dimin ish the quality of life for all humans.”214 Of course, Pimentel has not even discussed whether poverty would be increasi ng. In Figure 33, (p. 72) you will see that poverty incidence has actually b een decreasing. Likewise, we have seen that both diseases, especially infect ious diseases, and malnutrition have – contrary to Pimentel’s claims – be en decreasing. Thus, while some effective environmental programs may constitute good policy decisions, they should certainly not be based on such recitations of a Lita ny of incorrect information. Reality versus rhetoric and poor predictions （真实与花言巧语的卑鄙的预言） When we present an argument, there is never enough space or time to state al l assumptions, include all data and make all deductions. Thus, to a certain extent all argument relies on metaphors and rhetorical shortcuts. However, w e must always be very careful not to let rhetoric cloud reality. (当我们提出 一种论点，通常没有足够的时间和空间陈述所有的假设，运用所有的数据、做出所有的 推导。这样，所有的论证在某种程度上都依赖于比喻或带有修辞色彩的简化。然而我们 应该当心别让花言巧语遮蔽事实的真相。) One of the main rhetorical figures of the environmental movement is to pass off a temporary truism as an important indicator of decline. Try to see what your immediate experience is of the following quote from the Worldwatch Ins titute: “As a fixed area of arable land is divided among ever more people, it eventually shrinks to the point where people can no longer feed themselve s.” 215 This statements sounds like a correct prediction of problems to com e. And yes, it is evidently true – there is a level (certainly a square inc h or a speck of soil) below which we could not survive. However, the importa nt piece of information is entirely lacking because we are not told what thi s level is, how close we are to it, and when we expect to cross it.216 Most people would probably be surprised to know that, with artificial light, each person can survive on a plot of 36 m2 (a 6 m square), and that companies pr oduce commercially viable hydroponic food with even less space.217 Moreover, FAO finds in its newest analysis for food production to 2030 that “land fo r food production is seen to have become less scarce, not scarcer.”218 Thus , the argument as stated is merely a rhetorical trick to make us think, “oh yes, things must be getting worse.” This rhetorical figure has been used a lot by Worldwatch Institute. Talking about increasing grain yields (which we will discuss in Part III), Lester Br own tells us that “there will eventually come a point in each country, with each grain, when the farmers will not be able to sustain the rise in yields .”219 Again, this is obviously true, but the question is how far away is th e limit? This question remains unanswered, while Brown goes on to conclude t he somewhat unimaginative rerun of the metaphor: “Eventually the rise in gr ain yields will level off everywhere, but exactly when this will occur in ea ch country is difficult to anticipate.” 220 Likewise, Lester Brown tells us that “if environmental degradation proceeds far enough, it will translate into economic instability in the form of rising food prices, which in turn w ill lead to political instability.” 221 Again, the sequence is probably cor rect, but it hinges on the untold if – is environmental degradation taking place and has it actually proceeded that far? That information is never demo nstrated. Greenpeace, in its assessment of the Gulf War, used the same rhetorical figu re: “Any environment consists of many complex dynamic interactions, but the system will gradually, sometimes almost imperceptibly, break down once a th reshold of damage has been passed. Whether this has happened in the Gulf onl y time will tell.”222 Certainly it sounds ominous, but the important inform ation of whether that threshold has been crossed, or is close to being cross ed, is left out. In Part IV, you will see that the ecosystem of Things are g etting better 27 the Gulf, despite the largest oil spill in history, is almo st fully restored. Other rhetorical figures are often employed. In one of the background docume nts for the UN assessment on water, the authors see two “particularly disco mforting” alternatives for the arid, poor countries: “Either by suffering when the needs for water and water-dependent food cannot be met, manifested as famines, diseases and catastrophes. Or, in the opposite case, by adapting the demand to the available resources by importing food in exchange for oth er, less water-dependent products.”223 Now that sounds like a choice betwee n the plague and cholera, until you think about it – they are essentially a sking whether an arid country should choose starvation or partake in the glo bal economy. Worldwatch Institute wants us to change to renewable energy sources, as we h ave already described. Some of these arguments are entirely powered by rheto ric, as when they tell us: “From a millennial perspective, today’s hydroca rbon-based civilization is but a brief interlude in human history.”224 This is obviously true. A thousand years ago we did not use oil, and a thousand years from now we will probably be using solar, fusion or other technologies we have not yet thought of. The problem is that this does not really narrow down the time when we have to change energy supply – now, in 50 years or i n 200 years? When seen from a millennial perspective, many things become bri ef interludes, such as the Hundred Years War, the Renaissance, the twentieth century and indeed our own lives. Likewise, when we argue about the consequences of ecosystem changes it is ea sy to think of and mention only all the negative consequences. This is perha ps most evident when we discuss global warming and global climate change. Ta ke for instance this description of climate change from Newsweek: There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to cha nge dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in foo d production – with serious political implications for just about every nat ion on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 1 0 years from now. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In Englan d, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1 950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 10 0,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around th e equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some are as can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outb reak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people an d caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states. To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance sig ns of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. Meteorologists disagree a bout the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity.225 While this sounds surprisingly familiar with the greenhouse worries we hear today, it is actually a story from 1975 entitled “The Cooling World” – fr om a time when we all worried about global cooling. Of course, today there a re better arguments and more credible models underpinning our worry about gl obal warming (which we will discuss in Part V), and since our societies are adjusted to the present temperature, either cooling or warming will entail l arge costs. But notice how the description conspicuously leaves out any positive consequ ences of cooling. Today, we worry that global warming will increase the outr each of malaria – consequently, a world believing in cooling should have ap preciated the reduction of infected areas. Equally, if we worried about a sh ortening of growing seasons with a cooling world, we should be glad that glo bal warming will lengthen the growing season.226 Obviously, 28 Part I The Li tany more heat in the US or the UK will cause more heat deaths, but it is se ldom pointed out that this will be greatly outweighed by fewer cold deaths, which in the US are about twice as frequent. 227 Notice, this argument does not challenge that total costs, certainly worldwide, will outweigh total ben efits from global warming, but if we are to make an informed decision we nee d to include both costs and benefits. If we rhetorically focus only on the c osts, it will lead to inefficient and biased decisions. Another recurrent environmental metaphor is the likening of our current situ ation with that of Easter Island. A small island situated in the Pacific Oce an more than 3,200 km west of Chile, Easter Island is most well know for its more than 800 gigantic heads cut in volcanic stone, set all over the island .228 Archaeological evidence indicates that a thriving culture, while produc ing the stunning statues, also began reducing the forests around 900 CE, usi ng the trees for rolling the statues, as firewood and as building materials. In 1400 the palm forest was entirely gone; food production declined, statue production ceased in 1500, and apparently warfare and hunger reduced the po pulation by 80 percent before an impoverished society was discovered in 1722 by Dutch ships. Since then, Easter Island has been an irresistible image fo r the environmentalists, showcasing a society surpassing its limits and cras hing devastatingly. A popular book on the environment uses Easter Island as its repeated starting point, even on the front cover.229 Worldwatch Institut e tells us in its millennium edition: As an isolated territory that could not turn elsewhere for sustenance once i ts own resources ran out, Easter Island presents a particularly stark pictur e of what can happen when a human economy expands in the face of limited res ources. With the final closing of the remaining frontiers and the creation o f a fully interconnected global economy, the human race as a whole has reach ed the kind of turning point that the Easter Islanders reached in the sixtee nth century.230 Isaac Asimov merely tells us that “if we haven’t done as b adly as the extinct Easter Islanders, it is mainly because we have had more trees to destroy in the first place.”231 Again, the problem with this rhetorical figure is that it only indicates tha t crashing is indeed possible, but it makes no effort to explain why such cr ashing should be likely. It is worth realizing that of the 10,000 Pacific is lands, only 12, including Easter Island, seem to have undergone declines or crashes, whereas most societies in the Pacific have indeed been prosperous.2 32 Moreover, a model of Easter Island seems to indicate that its unique traj ectory was due to a dependence on a particularly slow-growing palm tree, the Chilean Wine palm, which takes 40 to 60 years to mature.233 This sets Easte r Island apart from all the other Polynesian islands, where fastgrowing coco nut and Fiji fan palms make declines unlikely. Moreover, the models predicti ng an ecological collapse need increasing populations with increasing resour ces to produce an overshoot. But in the modern world, such a scenario seems very unlikely, precisely because increased wealth has caused a fertility dec line (we will discuss this so-called demographic transition in Part II).234 And finally, it is worth pointing out that today’s world is much less vulne rable, precisely because trade and transport effectively act to reduce local risks. The consequences of relying on rhetoric instead of sound analysis are many, primarily poor forecasts and consequent biased decisions. Perhaps the most f amous set of predictions came from the 1972 global best-seller Limits to Gro wth, that claimed we would run out of most resources. Indeed, gold was predi cted to run out in 1981, silver and mercury in 1985, and zinc in 1990,235 th ough as we shall see in Part III, most resources actually have become more a bundant. Needless to say, gold, silver, mercury and zinc are still here too. Throughout this book, we will see a lot of poor predictions, often based on little more Things are getting better 29 than rhetorically pleasing argument s. So, let us just end this section with two examples from one of America’s foremost environmentalists, Professor Paul Ehrlich, a prolific writer and d iscussant, whom we shall meet again later. In 1970, as the first Earth Day approached, Paul Ehrlich wrote an article in The Progressive as a fictitious report to the US President, looking back fr om the year 2000.236 The ostensible report underlines how environmental scie ntists in the 1960s and 1970s had “repeatedly pointed out” that overcrowdi ng, hunger and environmental deterioration would lead to “environmental and public health disasters.” 237 Unfortunately, people had not heeded the war nings, and Ehrlich tells us of a US that is almost unrecognizable, with a se verely decimated population at 22.6 million (8 percent of current population ) with a diet of 2,400 daily calories per person (less than the current Afri can average).238 As an almost ironic glimmer of hope, Ehrlich does not expec t that the US is faced with any immediate limits-togrowth threat of running out of resources, because of the “small population size and continued avail ability of salvageable materials in Los Angeles and other cities which have not been reoccupied.”239 This view was fleshed out in the book The End of Affluence from 1974, writte n by Ehrlich with his wife Anne.240 Here they worried about how global cooli ng would diminish agricultural output241 (which has since increased 53 perce nt; see Figure 51, p. 95) and forecast trouble with the fisheries, because t he global catch had reached its maximum242 (since then the global catch has increased by 75 percent, as you can see in Figure 57, p. 107). They saw a so ciety which was driven by deluded economists “entrapped in their own unnatu ral love for a growing gross national product.”243 The ultimate consequence was clear: “It seems certain that energy shortages will be with us for the rest of the century, and that before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity in which many things besides energy will be in short supply . . . Such diverse commodities as food, fresh water, copper, and paper will beco me increasingly difficult to obtain and thus much more expensive . . . Starv ation among people will be accompanied by starvation of industries for the m aterials they require.”244 Though rhetorically eloquent, time has not been kind to these predictions. T hus, when we evaluate the data on the state of the world, it is important no t to be swayed merely by rhetoric or simplistic models, but to use and prese nt the best indicators and the best models.

snake

标 题: 多疑的环境保护论者（1.5） 第一部分 第5节 Reality Matter-of-fact discussion of the environment can be very difficult because e verybody has such strong feelings on the issue. But at the same time even as environmentalists it is absolutely vital for us to be able to prioritize ou r efforts in many different fields, e.g. health, education, infrastructure a nd defense, as well as the environment. （关于环境要做基于事实的讨论可能是困 难的，因为每个人对这个话题都怀有强烈的感情。但同时即使作为一个环保主义者，能 够给不同领域的事情排出次序也是至关重要的，比如说健康，教育，下层组织，防御， 还有环境。） In the course of the last few decades we have developed a clear impression t hat the Litany is an adequate and true description of the world. We know tha t the environment is not in good shape. This is also why it has been possibl e for people to make erroneous claims, such as those we have seen above, wit hout needing to provide the evidence to authenticate them. For that reason w e also tend to be extremely skeptical towards anyone who says that the envir onment is not in such a bad state. To me this indicates a natural and health y reaction. This is also why I have gone to great lengths to document my cla ims. （在过去几十年中，我们已经建立了一个清晰的印象，那就是那篇环境祷文是适当 的，正确地描述了世界的样子。我们知道环境的情形不好。这就是为什么人们，比如我 们上面提到过的那些人，回做出错误的宣称而不用提供鉴别这些宣称的证据。因为这个 原因，我们倾向于对那些说环境状况不是非常差的人？保持极端怀疑的态度。对我来说 ，这是自然的，健康的反应。这也就是我为什么要花那么长的篇幅论证我的观点。） This means that this book has an unusually large number of notes. At the sam e time, however, I have endeavored to enable readers to enjoy the book witho ut necessarily having to read the notes, so as to achieve reading fluency in the knowledge that you can always check my information if you feel that som ething sounds a little too hard to believe. 30 The book also has more than 1,800 references. However, I have tried to sourc e as much of the information from the Internet as possible. If people are to check what I write, it is unreasonable to expect them to have a research li brary at their disposal. Instead it is often sufficient to go on to the Inte rnet and download the relevant text to see from where I have retrieved my da ta and how I interpret that information. Of course there will always be book s and articles central to the relevant literature which are not available on the net. In addition, the Internet has made it possible for me to bring the book right up to date, with data accessed and updated up to May 2001. But for me the most important thing is that there is no doubt about the cred ibility of my sources. For this reason most of the statistics I use come fro m official sources, which are widely accepted by the majority of people invo lved in the environment debate. This includes our foremost global organizati on, the United Nations, and all its subsidiary organizations: the FAO (food) , the WHO (health), the UNDP (development) and the UNEP (environment). Furth ermore, I use figures published by international organizations such as the W orld Bank and the IMF, which primarily collate economic indicators. Two organizations work to collect many of the available statistics; the Worl d Resources Institute, together with the UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank, publishes every other year an overview of many of the world’s most importan t data. The Worldwatch Institute also prepares large amounts of statistical material every year. In many fields the American authorities gather informat ion from all over the world, relating for example to the environment, energy , agriculture, resources and population. These include the EPA (environment) , USDA (agriculture), USGS (geological survey) and the US Census Bureau. Fin ally, the OECD and EU often compile global and regional figures which will a lso be used here. As for national statistics, I attempt to use figures from the relevant countries’ ministries and other public authorities. Just because figures come from the UNEP does not of course mean that they ar e free from errors – these figures will often come from other publications which are less “official” in nature. It is therefore still possible to be critical of the sources of these data, but one does not need to worry to the same degree about the extent to which I simply present some selected result s which are extremely debatable and which deviate from generally accepted kn owledge. At the same time, focusing on official sources also means that I av oid one of the big problems of the Internet, i.e. that on this highly decent ralized network you can find practically anything. So when you are reading this book and you find yourself thinking “That can’ t be true,” it is important to remember that the statistical material I pre sent is usually identical to that used by the WWF, Greenpeace and the Worldw atch Institute. People often ask where the figures used by “the others” ar e, but there are no other figures. The figures used in this book are the off icial figures everybody uses. When Lester Brown and I met in a TV debate on the State of the World one of the things we discussed was whether overall forest cover had increased or de creased since 1950.245 Brown’s first reaction was that we should get hold o f the FAO’s Production Yearbook, which is the only work to have calculated the area of forest cover from 1949 up to 1994. This is the same book I had u sed as a reference and so we agreed on the standard. In reality we were mere ly discussing who could look up a number correctly. Lester Brown believed there was less forest whereas I thought there was more . I offered Lester Brown a bet, which he reluctantly declined. He would also have lost. In 1950, FAO estimated that the world had 40.24 million km2 of forest, while in 1994 it had 43.04 million km2 (as you can see in Figure 60, p. 111).246 Things are getting better 31 Reality and morality (现实和道德) Finally we ought to touch on the moral aspects of the environment debate. （ 最后我们不得不面对环境争论的道德因素。） In the same way as you can only be for peace and freedom and against hunger and destruction, it is impossible to be anything but for the environment. Bu t this has given the environment debate a peculiar status. Over the past few decades there has been an increasing fusion of truth and good intentions in the environmental debate.247 Not only are we familiar with the Litany, and know it to be true. We also know that anyone who claims anything else must h ave disturbingly（令人不安的） evil intentions.248 （同样地，正像你只能追求和 平和自由，反对饥饿和破坏，任何事情都可能，只是除了环境？。这给环境问题的争论 带来了一种特殊的情形。在过去的几十年里，在关于环境状况的争论中，事实和良好的 愿望已经越来越融合在一起。我们不仅熟悉那篇祷文，而且知道它是正确的。我们同样 知道任何敢于说出别的话的人一定有令人不安的邪恶的目的。） It is therefore not surprising, albeit（虽然） a little depressing, that sev eral environmental pundits（博学者）, and indeed the Danish Secretary of the Environment, have tried to claim that I am probably just a right-wing radic al – or at least a messenger boy for the right.249 But of course such argum ent is blatantly irrelevant. My claim is that things are improving and this is necessarily a discussion which has to be based on facts. （我的观点是，情 况正在改善，如果要和我讨论的话，所依据的一定是事实。） My motives for writing this book are neither evil nor covert. My understandi ng, in all simplicity, is that democracy functions better if everyone has ac cess to the best possible information. It cannot be in the interest of our s ociety for debate about such a vital issue as the environment to be based mo re on myth than on truth. （我写这本书的动机既不是邪恶的，也不是见不得人的。 我的理解，一言以蔽之，就是如果每个人都能接触有可能取得的最好的信息，那么民主 就行使得更好。如果在诸如环境这样紧要的问题上将争论更多地基于神话而不是事实， 那不可能有利于我们的社会。） Many people have pointed out at lectures that although I may be right in cla iming that things are not as bad as we thought they were, such arguments sho uld not be voiced in public as they might cause us to take things a bit too easy. Although one can argue such a position, it is important to understand how antidemocratic such an attitude really is: we (the few and initiated) kn ow the truth, but because general knowledge of the truth will cause people t o behave “incorrectly” we should refrain from broadcasting it. Moreover, s uch a course of argument will also be harmful to the environmental movement in the long run, since it will erode its most valuable asset, its credibilit y. I think that, in general, pretty strong arguments have to be presented fo r it to be permissible to withhold the truth for the sake of some elitist, g eneral good. This does not mean that I am a demonic little free-market individualist. I b elieve that there are many circumstances in which environmental intervention is necessary if we are to prevent unnecessary pollution and avoid people sh unning their responsibilities. However, we should only intervene if it is re asonable to do so, not simply because myth and worries lead us to believe th at things are going downhill. Often we will hear that environmental worry is an important reason why the e nvironment gets cleaned up – essentially that many of the graphs in this bo ok go in the right direction exactly because people worried in earlier times . However, this is often misleading or even incorrect. Air pollution in Lond on has declined since the late nineteenth century (see Figure 86, p. 165), b ut for the greater part of the twentieth century this has been due to a chan ge in infrastructure and fuel use and only slightly, if at all, connected to environmental worries expressed in concrete policy changes. Moreover, even to the extent that worries have mattered in policy decisions, as they undoub tedly have during the past 30 years in, say, air pollution, this does not as sure us that our resources could not have been put to better use.250 To the extent that worries have prodded us to spend more money on the environment t han we would have done with merely the best available information, the argum ent for environmental worries is a replay of the democratic dilemma above. A lthough kindling public concern clearly makes people choose more “correctly ” as seen from an environmental viewpoint, it leads to an “incorrect” pri oritization as seen from a democratic viewpoint, as it skews the unbiased ch oice of the electorate. In general we need to confront our myth of the economy undercutting the envi ronment. 251 We have grown to believe that we are 32 Part I The Litany faced with an inescapable choice between higher economic welfare and a greener en vironment. 252 But surprisingly and as will be documented throughout this bo ok, environmental development often stems from economic development – only when we get sufficiently rich can we afford the relative luxury of caring ab out the environment. On its most general level, this conclusion is evident i n Figure 9, where higher income in general is correlated with higher environ mental sustainability.253 This also has implications for our discussions on prioritization. Many peopl e love to say that we should have a pollution-free environment. Of course th is is a delightful thought. It would likewise be nice to have a country with no disease, or the best possible education for all its young people. The re ason why this does not happen in real life is that the cost of getting rid o f the final disease or educating the slowest student will always be ridiculo usly high. We invariably choose to prioritize in using our limited resources . Figure 9 The connection for 117 nations between GDP per capita (current 1998 PPP$) and the 2001 Environmental Sustainability Index, measuring 22 environ mental dimensions on 67 variables.254 A best-fit line is displayed and vario us nations have been marked out. Source: WEF 2001a&b, World Bank 2000c. One American economist pointed out that when we do the dishes we are aiming not to get them clean but to dilute the dirt to an acceptable degree.255 If we put a washed plate under an electron microscope we are bound to see lots of particles and greasy remnants. But we have better things to do than spend the whole day making sure that our plates are a little cleaner (and besides , we will never get them completely clean). We prioritize and choose to live with some specks of grease. Just how many specks we will accept depends on an individual evaluation of the advantages of using more time doing dishes v ersus having more leisure time. But the point is that we – in the real worl d – never ask for 100 percent. （一位美国经济学家曾经指出，我们洗盘子的时候 ，我们不是要把它洗干净，而是要把它上面的污垢稀释到可以接受的程度。如果我们把 一个洗过的盘子放到显微镜下，会看到很多微粒和油污残留。但是我们还有比耗费整天 的时间确保盘子上更干净一点更重要的事（除此之外，我们不可能让它们彻底干净）。 我们要讲先后次序，忍受那些油脂斑点。只是我们接受多少油脂斑点取决于我们的利益 估算，是用更多的时间做饭，还是拥有更多的休闲时光。问题就在这儿，在真实的世界 里，别要求100%。） Similarly, we have to find a level at which there is sufficiently little pol lution, such that our money, effort and time is better spent solving other p roblems. This calls for access to the best possible and least myth-based kno wledge, which is the whole purpose of this book. （相似地，我们必须弄清楚一个 标准，满足这个标准就可以说污染足够小了，以便于我们可以腾出钱、精力和时间去更 好地解决其他问题。这就需要运用可能得到的最好的知识，越少依据神话越好，这就是 本书的目的。） --

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激辩环境危机 南方周末　 　2002-05-09 11:18:25 就在人们为环境危机是否被夸大而争论不休时，今年2 月，一块比美国罗得岛还大的冰架从南极大陆脱离，崩塌为一块块像小型船队似 的冰山群（左图为崩塌之前的卫星照片）。这是全球变暖向人类发出的又一严重 的警告。 □王颖　陈明强　李超 　　丹麦学者比尤恩?隆伯格抛出一本《多疑的环境 保护论者》，认为人类普遍夸大了环境危机。这一有悖于主流思想的言论犹如一 枚重磅炸弹，在全球范围内掀起轩然大波，包括《自然》、《科学美国人》在内 的著名杂志纷纷卷入这场争论中。该书是继蕾切尔?卡逊的《寂静的春天》之后 的又一部力作吗？ 　　1962年，当人类普遍漠视环境问题时，美国学者 蕾切尔?卡逊写出了《寂静的春天》，提出人类应当限制使用杀虫剂。这本惊世 之作“犹如旷野中的一声呐喊”，引发了人类对环境问题的关注。 　　2001年，当环保呼声日益高涨时，丹麦学者比尤 恩?隆伯格抛出一本《多疑的环境保护论者》，认为人类普遍夸大了环境危机。 这一有悖于主流思想的言论，犹如一枚重磅炸弹，很快在全球范围内掀起一场轩 然大波。 　　 隆伯格要干什么 　　隆伯格1994年在丹麦哥本哈根大学政治科学系获 得博士学位，后任丹麦阿胡斯大学统计学副教授，还曾经是“绿色和平组织”的 成员。 　　2001年9月，英国剑桥大学出版社出版了隆伯格的 《多疑的环境保护论者》（TheSkepticalEnvironmentalist）。这本书引用了大 量官方数据，然后向人们广为信奉的环境危机论发起了挑战。 隆伯格说，在全球变暖、人口增长、物种灭绝、??br /> 资源枯竭等焦点问题上，绝大多数环境保护论者选择性地利用一些科学证据，给 公众形成了许多错误印象。而他这位“多疑的环境保护论者”想要告诉公众的是 ，环境问题并没有想象的那么糟糕。 　　例如，他认为依靠限制使用燃料来抑制全球变暖 是得不偿失，《京都议定书》根本没有执行的必要；世界范围内的人口增长率正 呈下降趋势，人类的生活质量和福利也在逐步提高，人均寿命已经从1900年的30 岁提高到现在的67岁；物种灭绝的速度并不像媒体宣传的那样危言耸听，今后50 年中将减少的物种大概只有0.7％；资源并不会因为人们的利用而日益枯竭等等。 　　隆伯格为什么要“冒天下之大不韪”提出这些观 点呢？该书的副题给出了说法：“向读者展示世界真实的面目”。他认为，人类 应当抛开党派之争，省察自己的言行。 　　在环境问题上，人类不能漠不关心和无所作为， 但目前弥漫的夸大其辞和悲观论调，只会给人类带来不必要的恐慌，并且把有限 的资源和精力浪费在一些臆想的问题上，或者去搞一些所谓的运动，从而忽略真 正亟待解决的问题，例如非洲的饥荒。 　　 喝彩与愤怒 　　该书一经出版，随即从许多媒体传来喝彩之声。 　　英国《经济学人》称：“这是过去10年中公共政 策——不仅仅是环境政策——领域最有价值的书之一……它是一个胜利。” 　　美国《华盛顿邮报》的评论更是不吝溢美之词： “它是继蕾切尔?卡逊《寂静的春天》1962年出版以来，环境问题上最杰出的作 品。这是一项伟大的成就。” 　在媒体的炒作之下，《多疑的环境保护论者》成为了一本畅销书。 到2002年2月，剑桥大学出版社已经加印了7次。 　　 然而，对这本书的驳斥之声也不绝于耳。 许多人愤怒地表示，隆伯格对科学似懂非懂，歪 曲了真实的科学研究结果，断章取义来迎合其狭隘偏倚的观点；还有人指责他利 用统计学知识以及第二手资料，玩弄数字游戏来迷惑读者。 　　英国牛津大学的一些环境保护论者，自发组织了 “反比尤恩?隆伯格协会”，建立专门网站对隆伯格的观点一一进行反驳。该书 刚刚出版时，在牛津大学的一家书店里，该协会一位作家甚至用馅饼“款待”隆 伯格。 　　英国《自然》、美国《科学》等著名学术杂志先 后发表了针对该书的质疑文章。世界资源研究所将隆伯格干脆称为“伪学者”， 并在自己的网站上，发布了一个指南，供新闻记者报道时参考。 　　美国《哥伦比亚新闻评论》2002年3／4月号上的 一篇文章，还对媒体如获至宝式的跟风炒作提出了批评，并指出媒体大多忽略了 这样一个事实：早在1998年，隆伯格就出版了一个丹麦版本，当时也引来了包括 隆伯格那些阿胡斯大学同行的激烈批评，这一次不过是旧事重提。 　　 《科学美国人》奋起反击 　　在对隆伯格的反击中，最具代表性的是美国高级 科普杂志《科学美国人》。2002年1月，该杂志用11个页码，刊发了一篇题为《令 人误解的地球统计数据》的社论，以及四位环境专家的署名文章，声称这是“科 学自身对《多疑的环境保护论者》的反击”。 　　这四位环境专家分工合作，围绕四个焦点环境问 题对隆伯格进行了丝毫不留情面的批评。 　　斯坦福大学生物学教授史蒂文?施耐德称，该书 通篇除了“我本人不是环境问题的专家”这句话，再也找不到更加真实的语句了 。例如，隆伯格只注意到人类为了治理全球变暖而投入的成本，却忽略了任由这 种状况恶化而造成的损失。 　　纽约市人口委员会政策研究部约翰?伯恩格阿茨 认为，虽然现在全球的人口增长率有所下降，但由于人口基数很大，人口的绝对 增长数还是很大的，再加上人均寿命的增加，人口的大量流动，由此引发的一系 列社会、经济问题是不能忽视，千万不要以为人口问题已经离我们远去。 　　世界银行生物多样性问题首席顾问托马斯?拉伍 乔依指出，隆伯格把判定物种灭绝的过程与灭绝率混为一谈。例如，如果一个物 种赖以生存的环境不复存在，那么这个物种也就可以看作是濒临灭绝的物种，因 为它的生存期已经为时不长了。 　　哈佛大学环境学教授约翰?侯德伦说，隆伯格对 环境学家所关注的“枯竭”问题的理解大错特错，环境学家所指的枯竭并非“能 源”的枯竭，而是“环境”的枯竭，即空气、水、土壤生成和容纳这些能源的能 力正在枯竭。 　　 争论再度升温 　　《科学美国人》专题文章发表后，这场争论再度 升温。一开始就支持隆伯格的《经济学人》发表社论，讽刺《科学美国人》所谓 “科学自身对《多疑的环境保护论者》的反击”的说法，因为隆伯格并没有对科 学提出质疑，质疑的只是那些贩卖环境危机论并从中获利的人，以及被这些人利 用的媒体。 　　而当初发表文章批评隆伯格的《自然》杂志，在 以后发表的读者来信和评论文章中，也出现了为隆伯格辩护的声音。 　　隆伯格本人更是针对《科学美国人》的专题文章 ，进行了详尽的辩护，并连同专题文章放在了自己的网站上。《科学美国人》随 即表示，隆伯格侵犯了杂志社的版权。隆伯格屈于压力，从网站中删除了专题文 章的内容。 　　就在这时，绿色和平组织创建人之一、现为绿色 精神组织主席的帕特里克?穆尔博士站了出来，为隆伯格鸣不平。穆尔称，隆伯 格为自己辩护，当然要引用《科学美国人》的原文。他虽然不完全赞同隆伯格的 观点，但隆伯格为环境问题的公开争论带来了清新的空气。于是，穆尔在绿色精 神的网站上放上了隆伯格的辩护词和《科学美国人》的原文，以示支持。 　　2002年3月6日，《科学美国人》致函绿色精神组 织，称绿色精神组织侵犯版权，要求在2天内在网站上删掉该杂志的原文。绿色精 神组织没有理睬，反而在4月7日得意地向新闻界表示《科学美国人》后来并没有 追究。 　　后来，《科学美国人》又作出了让步，在2002年5 月用1个页码刊登了隆伯格的辩护，并将更为详尽的辩护放在自己的网站上，但同 时用多个页码配发了主编约翰?伦尼撰写的评论。 　　在辩护词中，隆伯格引用《经济学家》的评论说 ，在《科学美国人》发表署名文章的四位环境专家“有的只是蔑视和嘲笑，缺乏 实质性的内容”，并称《科学美国人》从根本上误读了他写的那本书。例如，他 并没有否认全球变暖的趋势，只不过认为《京都议定书》并不是帮助发展中国家 的最好办法，因为执行议定书在2100年前只能使全球变暖时间减缓6年，而每年需 花费1500亿到3500亿美元。 　　伦尼则回应说，如果说《科学美国人》的文章缺 乏实质性的内容，那么，这些文章在《自然》、《科学》等杂志也产生了共鸣， 而《自然》和《科学》并不是一个产生空洞批评的地方。说到《京都议定书》， 并不是靠它解决所有问题，而是建立解决全球变暖问题的全球合作框架，隆伯格 的投入产出分析也不合理。 　　 到底应该相信谁 　　2002年2月26日，丹麦政府宣布成立环境评估研究 所，专门评估各种环保费用的有效性。并由隆伯格担任所长。这又引来一场风波 。《科学》杂志称，许多人担心，丹麦任命了一个不懂科学的人，将成为国际社 会的笑柄。隆伯格则认为，“如果政治家们愿意倾听，这个研究所将发挥强大的 作用”。 　　关于隆伯格，关于《多疑的环境保护论者》，争 论还在继续。 　　在2002年3月28日《自然》杂志上，美国科罗拉多 大学科技政策研究中心的罗杰?皮尔克发表评论说，隆伯格事件中最引人注目的 ，并不是各种猛烈的批评，而是它有可能成为一个科学应当如何影响决策和政治 的分水岭。科学问题常常与政治利益、经济利益交织在一起，有人会寻找对他们 有利的所谓“科学证据”来支持自己的利益。因此，科学家必须分清楚，哪些是 分析，哪些是鼓吹，同时在各种事务中发挥积极影响，而不是让科学成为利益妥 协的牺牲品。 　　2002年4月22日，又一个世界地球日，这天美国总 统布什手持利斧，以一个环保卫士的形象出现在冰天雪地中，立誓要推动“清洁 蓝天”提案的通过。他的老对手、前副总统戈尔却写道，“布什政府一贯都是为 了短期政治利益而出卖美国的未来”，“布什政府不惜损害自然环境和公共健康 ，每天都在采取行动，回报掏钱资助他们竞选的利益集团”。 　　《寂静的春天》刚出版的时候，蕾切尔?卡逊面 临的攻击丝毫不逊于《物种起源》刚出版时达尔文受到的攻击，《时代》周刊甚 至指责她“煽情”。蕾切尔?卡逊受到攻击的一个原因是，她的观点侵犯了那些 以破坏环境为代价获取经济利益的人。那么，《多疑的环境保护论者》是不是侵 犯了那些贩卖环境危机论并从中获利的人？是不是继《寂静的春天》之后的又一 部力作呢？但是，隆伯格的批评者中，有很多严肃的学者和学术杂志。那么，《 多疑的环境保护论者》会不会干扰原本正确的环境政策？会不会是一个“伪学者 ”活色生香的表演呢？ 　　我们到底应该相信谁？ 　　 　　 隆伯格因其不合时宜的言论而被人用馅饼涂抹 了

snake

标 题: 关于这本书 by 吴燕 丹麦学者隆伯格的书叫做《多疑的环境保护论者》。主要观点是说环境保护论者夸大了 环境危机，而他作为“多疑的环境保护论者”企图揭示世界的真实状况。 > 首先，他认为人口问题不是问题，因为从人类这100年的历史来看，人口增长了很 多，但人类的福利反而大大改善了，他列出了诸如人均寿命，婴儿死亡率，人均摄入卡 路里量等指标来论证这个观点。应该说，看起来也很有道理。 > 其次，他认为不存在能源危机，因为人是有能动性的，我们能够发现更多的埋藏在 地下的能源，我们很能创造出新的可再生能源。这一点他用资源价格下降来论证。 > 第三，他认为全球变暖不值得花那么多钱去遏制。他认为全球变暖的原因还并不清 楚，气候到底是不是变暖了，到底人为活动排放的温室气体对变暖的影响占多大比例， 还都不清楚，在这个时候就要花那么多的钱去遏制它，根本不值得。应该说这个观点美 国等拒绝履行〈京都议定书〉的国家会很喜欢听的。 > 第四，他认为森林砍伐和生物多样性的消失并没有那么严重。他认为环境保护论者 们选择性地使用了数据，而这些数据有些是没有经过核实的，有些是运用得不正确（比 如只说亚马孙雨林减少的面积而不说减少的比例） > 他的矛头指向并不是那些从事环境研究的人，他认为他们还是基本客观的，他要批 评的是利用环境问题获得资助的科学家和组织，是他们选择性地使用了数据，编织了一 套“环境祷文”，再经过媒体的错误宣传，把这套关于世界的错误认识灌输给了公众。 > 隆伯格说了这么一个例子，说我们洗盘子，并不是要把盘子洗干净，而只是把盘子 上的污垢、油脂稀释到可以容忍的范围。如果我们把一个洗过的盘子放到显微镜下，会 看到很多微粒和油污残留，但是我们还有比耗费整天的时间去确保盘子更干净一点儿更 重要的事。我们要讲先后次序，忍受那些油脂斑点。在真实的世界里，别要求100%。 > 这段话很好地代表了他的态度，在他的心目中，环境问题就好像盘子上残留的油脂 微粒。我相信这种态度或者这种观点的结果，就是有意无意地忽略环境问题。 > 公众生活在众口一词地要保护环境，环境问题再不得到重视，人类就要灭亡的气氛 中，忽然有个人说一切并没有那么严重，大家可能是会惶惑的（虽然专家们知道争论一 直存在）。所以我想这个节目的任务不是不由分说一通揭批，而是有理有据地对它的一 些观点和论据进行分析，揭示环境问题的真实状况（到底是不是盘子上的油脂微粒）， 以及在这些乐观背后的人类与自然的对立关系。

mistforest

so long， I have no patience.