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Humanity will find ways to adapt to climate change

人类将找到适应气候变化的方法

Climate issue: That is no reason to give up on stopping it

气候问题:没有理由放仍气候进一步恶化

Sep 21st 2019

AFTER DESTRUCTIVE storms like Hurricane Dorian, those affected have decisions to make. Should they invest in cellar pumps and better drainage? Should they rebuild with more robust design and materials? Should they move? These judgments are informed by a harsh reality: the weather will get worse. Seas will be higher, rain more diluvial and storms fiercer. People with means will naturally adjust—as they should. Adaptation is essential to reduce the human and economic costs of climate change. But spending on adaptation may further complicate already-confounding politics.

像卡特里娜飓风（Hurricane Dorian）这样的破坏性风暴过后，受影响的群众必须做出决定。他们是否应该斥资投建地下泵和更好的排水系统?他们的房屋应该用更坚固的设计和材料重建吗?他们应该搬家吗?这些判断来自一个严酷的现实:天气将变得更糟。海平面会更高，雨水会更泛滥，风暴会更猛烈。有经济能力的人自然会做出调整——这是他们应该做的。适应气候变化对减少气候变化的人力和经济成本至关重要。但是，在适应气候变化方面的支出可能会使本已混乱的政治局面进一步复杂化。

词汇

Cellar/地窖；地下

Drainage/排水系统

Diluvial/ 洪积的；洪水引起的

Mean/财产

Efforts to slow global warming must overcome devilish political obstacles. The benefits to reduced warming accrue over decades and centuries, whereas the cost of cutting emissions must be paid upfront by taxpayers who cannot expect to see much return in their lifetimes. And mitigation (as efforts to curb emissions are called) is subject to a vicious collective-action problem. Climate harms are determined much more by what everyone else does than by what you do. Each actor has an incentive to free-ride on the sacrifices of others. Cutting emissions requires every large country saddling voters with expense and inconvenience that will mostly help people elsewhere, or not yet born.

减缓全球变暖的努力必须克服邪恶的政治障碍。减少全球变暖带来的好处要经过几十年乃至几个世纪才能积累起来，然而减排的成本必须由纳税人预先支付，但是他们无法指望在有生之年看到多少回报。而减排(对于抑制排放的工作的简称)受制于一个恶性的集体行动问题。气候危害更多地是由其他人所做的而不是你所做的决定的。每一位行动者都有着牺牲他人利益来搭便车的意向。削减排放要求每个大国都要让选民来承担开支和随之而来的不便，而这会更多的帮助在他人身上，或者那些还未出生的人。

词汇

Devilish/邪恶的；精力旺盛的

Mitigation/缓解；减轻损失；减缓

Saddle/承受；使负担

Adaptation, by contrast, can pay off even when a person acts alone, out of pure self-interest. Homeowners who invest in air-conditioning or flood defences do so in the expectation of capturing most of the returns in the form of reduced harm to themselves, or perhaps higher property values. There are no political-economy problems to untangle (though without investment in green energy, air-conditioning adds to the general problem while mitigating it for individuals). Government actions are only slightly more complicated. It requires political consensus to spend public money on reinforcing infrastructure or building seawalls. But the benefits will mostly be felt in the place where the funds are raised. And at most a few governments and agencies will be required to co-operate, rather than tens or hundreds.

相比之下，即使一个人纯粹出于自身利益而单独行动，让自己适应，也能带来回报。那些给自己房子装配空调和防洪设施的房主们，希望借此尽可能减少自然灾害对他们的损害来得以回报；或是说，这样可以提高房屋价值。没有什么政治经济问题需要解决(尽管没有对绿色能源的投资，空调在减轻个人负担的同时也加剧了总体问题)。政府的行动只是稍微复杂一点。它需要政治共识，将公共资金用于加强基础设施或修建海堤。但是，收益将主要体现在资金筹集的地方。而且最多只有几个政府和机构需要合作，而不是几十个或几百个。

词汇

Untangle/清理；整顿

Mitigate/  使缓和，使减轻

All this means that adaptation is likely to play a large role in humanity’s response to climate change. Indeed, research suggests that the price of agricultural land already incorporates the expected impact of climate change. Consumers already react to extreme weather events. Purchases of air-conditioning systems rise after heatwaves, for example. Some adaptation plans are explicitly labelled as such—New York City’s proposal to construct a “Big U” of raised flood-control berms around the southern end of Manhattan, for example. Others are not, such as individual decisions to take a job in a place less prone to extreme weather.

所有这些都意味着，适应气候变化很可能在人类应对气候变化方面发挥重要作用。事实上，研究表明，农地价格已经包含了气候变化的预期影响。消费者已经对极端天气事件做出了反应。例如，热浪过后，空调系统的购买量上升。一些适应计划被明确地贴上了这样的标签——例如，纽约市提议在曼哈顿南端建造一个由抬高的防洪堤坝组成的“U型”堤坝。也有不这么做的，比如个人决定在不太容易发生极端天气的地方工作。

As demand rises for ways to ease the pain of climate change, supply will respond. A growing market for goods prompts producers to innovate—and work by Matthew Kahn of Johns Hopkins University and Daxuan Zhao of Renmin University suggests that the same logic applies to adaptation. Firms researching zero-emission energy and carbon sequestration hope to create a market (or are betting that governments will eventually do the job for them by getting serious about emissions). By contrast the market for better means of coping with climate change is already growing daily.

随着人们对缓解气候变化带来的痛苦的方法的需求上升，供应将会做出反应。不断增长的商品市场促使生产者进行创新——约翰霍普金斯大学的Matthew Kahn和人民大学的赵大川的研究表明，同样的逻辑也适用于适应。研究零排放能源和碳封存的公司希望创造一个市场(或者打赌政府最终会通过认真对待排放来为他们做这件事)。相比之下，更好地应对气候变化的市场已经每天都在增长。

词汇

Sequestration/隔离；扣押；退隐

That is in many ways a good thing. Predictions of the costs of climate change are often far higher when analysts rule out the possibility of adaptive behaviour. A study published last year considering the global costs of coastal flooding, for example, estimated that floods will reduce real global GDP in 2200 by 4.5%—unless the effects of adaptive investments and migration are considered, in which case the loss works out as just 0.11%. A new report by the Global Commission on Adaptation, a group convened by 20 advanced and emerging economies, identifies $1.8trn in potential adaptation investments which, if realised between 2020 and 2030, would yield estimated net benefits of $7.1trn.

这在很多方面都是一件好事。当分析人士排除适应性行为的可能性时，对气候变化代价的预测往往要高得多。例如，去年发表的一项考虑到全球沿海洪灾成本的研究估计，2200年洪水将使全球实际GDP减少4.5%——除非考虑到适应性投资和移民的影响，在这种情况下，实际损失仅为0.11%。由20个发达国家和新兴经济体组成的全球适应委员会(Global Commission on Adaptation)在一份新报告中指出，如果在2020年至2030年期间实现这一目标，预计将带来7.1万亿美元的净收益，其中180万亿美元用于潜在的适应投资。

The ark of history

历史的方舟

But the march to adaptation is not an unalloyed good. Just as better safety features in cars may make for less careful drivers, investments in adaptation that blunt the effects of climate change could reduce the appetite for spending on mitigation. Serious decarbonisation will impose significant cost and inconvenience on nearly everyone. People will be persuaded that it is in their interests only if there are tangible harms in the not-too-distant future that might reasonably be averted. Investments in adaptation that reduce the likelihood or severity of those looming harms undercut the case for accepting the hardship of decarbonisation. The longer governments fail to act to curb warming, the more people and firms will spend to safeguard themselves, and the less troubled they may be by governments’ failures to decarbonise.

但适应气候变化的进程并非一帆风顺。正如汽车上更好的安全性能可能导致驾驶员不那么小心一样，在减缓气候变化影响的适应方面的投资，可能会降低缓解气候变化的支出意愿。大量的脱碳将给几乎所有人带来巨大的成本和不便。只有在不远的将来出现可以合理避免的切实损害时，人们才会相信这符合他们的利益。减少这些若隐若现的危害的可能性或者说严重性的适应性投资削弱了接受脱碳困难的理由。政府未能采取行动遏制气候变暖的时间越长，就会有越多的人和企业投入更多资金来保护自己，政府未能实现脱碳可能给他们带来的麻烦也就越小。

词汇

Unalloyed/纯粹的；[材] 非合金的

Blunt/使迟钝

Serious/【如果表示‘严重’，觉得不大适合该句子，牛津词典有“大量”的表示含义，但是是一种非正式用法】

But even if some people can adapt to a warmer world, it is still a big problem. Unmitigated global warming could result in catastrophic scenarios that outstrip any capacity to adapt. Moreover, the ability to adapt varies dramatically from place to place. Rich people in North America and mainland Europe, both of which have relatively temperate climates, have money to spend on adaptation and can move from the worst-hit spots with relative ease. Poor people have little spare cash, mostly live in hotter places and face far more obstacles when they try to migrate. Indeed, some research suggests they may even migrate less when temperatures rise, because hotter, drier conditions harm agricultural yields, thus depriving them of the capital they would need to move.

但是，即使有些人能够适应一个更热的世界，这仍然是一个大问题。全球变暖如果得不到缓解，可能会导致灾难性的后果，超出任何适应能力。此外，适应能力因地而异。北美和欧洲大陆的富人都拥有相对温和的气候，他们有资金用于适应气候变化，而且可以相对轻松地从受灾最严重的地区撤离。穷人几乎没有闲钱，他们大多住在更热的地方，在试图移民时面临着更多的障碍。事实上，一些研究表明，当气温上升时，他们甚至可能减少迁徙，因为更热、更干燥的环境会损害农业产量，从而剥夺他们迁徙所需的资本。

词汇

Outstrip/超过；胜过

Part of the attraction of mitigation as a primary response is that the steps rich countries take to help themselves also help poorer ones, which are both less responsible for global warming and more vulnerable to its effects. Residents of advanced economies must recognise that spending to shield themselves increases, rather than decreases, their obligations to others.

减缓气候变化作为主要应对措施的部分吸引力在于，富裕国家采取的帮助自己的措施也帮助了贫穷国家。贫穷国家对全球变暖的责任更轻，也更容易受到其影响。发达经济体的居民必须认识到，保护自己的支出增加了，而不是减少了，他们有义务帮助他人。