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A 3°C world has no safe place
气温升幅至3°C,世界将不再有安全的地方
In 1745, as the river Liffey, having broken its banks, clawed at the foundations of the house in which he sat, the young Edmund Burke experienced a strange, perverse thrill. The man who would go on to found modern conservatism drew inspiration from this experience in a later essay on the sublime, writing of the unmatched delight that terrible destruction could stir—provided that it is watched from a certain distance.
1745年,当利菲河决堤,河水冲刷着他(埃德蒙·伯克)房子的地基时,年轻的埃德蒙·伯克感受到一种奇怪的、反常的兴奋。这位后来创立了现代保守主义的人从这次经历中获得了灵感,后来他在一篇关于崇高的文章中写道,只要从一定的距离观看,可怕的破坏可以带来无与伦比的快乐。
The most terrible thing about the spectacular scenes of destruction that have played out around the world over the past weeks is that there is no safe place from which to observe them. The ground under the German town of Erftstadt is torn apart like tissue paper by flood waters; Lytton in British Columbia is burned from the map just a day after setting a freakishly high temperature record; cars float like dead fish through the streets-turned-canals in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou. All the world feels at risk, and most of it is.
在过去的几周里,世界各地上演了惊人的毁灭景象,最可怕的是,没有一个安全的地方可以观察它们。德国埃尔夫施塔特镇的地下像纸巾一样被洪水撕裂; 不列颠哥伦比亚省的利顿在创下异常高温记录的一天后就从地图上消失了,大火烧毁了整个镇子; 在中国郑州,汽车像死鱼一样漂浮在街道变成的运河中。整个世界都处于危险之中,大部分地区都是如此。
Unfortunately, 2021 will probably be one of the 21st century's coolest years. If temperatures rise by 3°C above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades—as they might even if everyone manages to honour today's firm pledges—large parts of the tropics risk becoming too hot for outdoor work. Coral reefs and the livelihoods that depend on them will vanish and the Amazon rainforest will become a ghost of itself. Severe harvest failures will be commonplace. Ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will shrink past the point of no return, promising sea rises measured not in millimetres, as today's are, but in metres.
不幸的是,2021年可能是21世纪最冷的年份之一。在未来的几十年里,如果气温比工业化前的水平上升3°C (即使每个人都能兑现今天强有力的承诺,气温也有可能上升3°C),热带地区的大部分区域将面临太热而无法进行户外工作的风险。珊瑚礁和依赖它们的生计将消失,亚马逊雨林自身将成为一个幽灵。严重歉收将司空见惯。南极洲和格陵兰岛的冰原将缩小到不可逆转的程度,这意味着海平面上升的单位将不再是今天的毫米,而是米。