Chris Anderson: Al, welcome. So look, just six months ago -- it seems a lifetime ago, but it really was just six months ago -- climate seemed to be on the lips of every thinking person on the planet. Recent events seem to have swept it all away from our attention. How worried are you about that?
克里斯·安德森(Chris Anderson): 阿尔(Al),欢迎你。 就在 6 个月之前—— 虽然恍如隔世, 但其实就只在 6 个月之前—— 气候好像是世界上每个 喜欢思考的人都会谈论的话题。 最近发生的事情似乎让它 完全离开了我们的视线。 你对此有多担忧?
Al Gore: Well, first of all Chris, thank you so much for inviting me to have this conversation. People are reacting differently to the climate crisis in the midst of these other great challenges that have taken over our awareness, appropriately. One reason is something that you mentioned. People get the fact that when scientists are warning us in ever more dire terms and setting their hair on fire, so to speak, it's best to listen to what they're saying, and I think that lesson has begun to sink in in a new way. Another similarity, by the way, is that the climate crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, has revealed in a new way the shocking injustices and inequalities and disparities that affect communities of color and low-income communities.
阿尔·戈尔(Al Gore):首先, 克里斯,非常感谢你邀请我 参与此次的访谈。 针对这场气候危机, 与其伴随着的 适当引起了我们关注的 其它严峻挑战, 人们的态度是不同的。 其中的一个原因是, 正如你提到的, 人们非常明白 当科学家们正以更可怕的术语, 并且可以说是火烧眉毛时, 最好还是听从他们的建议, 同时我认为这个道理已被人们 用一种新的方式所理解。 顺便提一句,另一个相似处 是正如新冠肺炎大流行, 气候危机已经用一种新的方式 暴露出侵害着 有色人种与低收入群体的 令人瞠目结舌的不公正, 不平等和阶级悬殊。
There are differences. The climate crisis has effects that are not measured in years, as the pandemic is, but consequences that are measured in centuries and even longer. And the other difference is that instead of depressing economic activity to deal with the climate crisis, as nations around the world have had to do with COVID-19, we have the opportunity to create tens of millions of new jobs. That sounds like a political phrasing, but it's literally true. For the last five years, the fastest-growing job in the US has been solar installer. The second-fastest has been wind turbine technician. And the "Oxford Review of Economics," just a few weeks ago, pointed the way to a very jobs-rich recovery if we emphasize renewable energy and sustainability technology. So I think we are crossing a tipping point, and you need only look at the recovery plans that are being presented in nations around the world to see that they're very much focused on a green recovery.
它们之间存在不同之处。 气候危机的影响 不像大流行病那样 以年来衡量, 而是要以世纪, 甚至更长的时间尺度来衡量。 另一个不同之处是, 与全世界各国为对抗新冠肺炎 而不得不采取 压制经济活动的行为相比, 对于气候危机, 我们有机会 创造出数千万个工作岗位。 这听上去像是政治上的用语, 但的确是事实。 过去的五年间, 在美国,增速最快的工作 是太阳能安装工。 增速第二快的是 风力发电机技术员。 就在几周前, 《牛津经济政策评论》杂志还提到, 如果我们着力于可再生能源 和可持续发展技术的话, 就会有一次 充满就业机会的经济复苏。 我认为我们正在跨越一个转折点, 并且你只需要查看正在全世界 各国提出的经济复苏计划, 就知道大家都非常关注 绿色的经济复苏。
CA: I mean, one obvious impact of the pandemic is that it's brought the world's economy to a shuddering halt, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I mean, how big an effect has that been, and is it unambiguously good news?
克里斯·安德森: 这场流行病的显著影响 是其使世界经济陷入停滞, 从而导致温室气体的排放下降。 其影响究竟有多大, 是个明确的好消息吗?
AG: Well, it's a little bit of an illusion, Chris, and you need only look back to the Great Recession in 2008 and '09, when there was a one percent decline in emissions, but then in 2010, they came roaring back during the recovery with a four percent increase. The latest estimates are that emissions will go down by at least five percent during this induced coma, as the economist Paul Krugman perceptively described it, but whether it goes back the way it did after the Great Recession is in part up to us, and if these green recovery plans are actually implemented, and I know many countries are determined to implement them, then we need not repeat that pattern. After all, this whole process is occurring during a period when the cost of renewable energy and electric vehicles, batteries and a range of other sustainability approaches are continuing to fall in price, and they're becoming much more competitive.
阿尔·戈尔:克里斯, 这其实有点像是一种错觉, 你只需要回看 2008 年 和 2009 年发生的经济危机, 当时的排放量出现了 1% 的下降, 但到了 2010 年, 排放量在经济复苏期间, 强劲反弹了 4% 。 最新的预测是, 在此次人为的经济萧条期间, 排放量将至少减低 5% , 这正如经济学家 保罗·克鲁格曼(Paul Krugman) 预见的那样, 但排放量是否会像 经济危机之后那样反弹 取决于我们的努力, 并且如果这些绿色的 经济复苏计划真的被实施, 同时我知道许多国家 也下决心要执行它们, 那么我们就不必 再重复上次衰退后的规律。 毕竟这整个过程 都发生在可再生能源、 电动车和电源, 以及一系列其它 可持续发展手段的 成本在持续不断下降 这一期间内, 并且它们都在变得更有竞争力。
Just a quick reference to how fast this is: five years ago, electricity from solar and wind was cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels in only one percent of the world. This year, it's cheaper in two-thirds of the world, and five years from now, it will be cheaper in virtually 100 percent of the world. EVs will be cost-competitive within two years, and then will continue falling in price. And so there are changes underway that could interrupt the pattern we saw after the Great Recession.
我想用一个简单的对比 来说明发展速度有多快: 5 年前, 太阳与风力产生的电力 比化石燃料得到的电力更便宜。 只占全世界的 1%。 今年,其在全世界 2/3 的地方都更加便宜, 而且在 5 年之后, 基本上在全世界所有地方 都会更便宜。 电动车在两年会在成本上 变得更有竞争力, 然后在价格上会有所下降。 所以这些正在进行的变化 会中断我们在经济危机后 看到的规律。
CA: The reason those pricing differentials happen in different parts of the world is obviously because there's different amounts of sunshine and wind there and different building costs and so forth.
克里斯·安德森:这些出现在全世界 不同地区的价格差异的成因 很明显是因为存在着 不同总量的日照和风力 以及不同的建筑成本等等。
AG: Well, yes, and government policies also account for a lot. The world is continuing to subsidize fossil fuels at a ridiculous amount, more so in many developing countries than in the US and developed countries, but it's subsidized here as well. But everywhere in the world, wind and solar will be cheaper as a source of electricity than fossil fuels, within a few years.
阿尔·戈尔:是的, 政府政策也占很大比重。 全世界在继续以荒唐的金额 补贴着化石燃料, 虽然许多发展中国家比 美国和一些发达国家补贴得更多, 但在这儿, 我们同样在补贴化石燃料。 但在全世界任何地方, 风能和太阳能在几年内, 就会成为比化石燃料 更便宜的电力来源。
CA: I think I've heard it said that the fall in emissions caused by the pandemic isn't that much more than, actually, the fall that we will need every single year if we're to meet emissions targets. Is that true, and, if so, doesn't that seem impossibly daunting?
克里斯·安德森: 我听说过, 如果我们是要满足排放目标, 那么由此次大流行 引起的温室气体排放量下降, 实际并不比我们 每年的目标下降量多多少。 这种说法是事实吗, 如果是的话, 这个目标会不会有些不太现实?
AG: It does seem daunting, but first look at the number. That number came from a study a little over a year ago released by the IPCC as to what it would take to keep the Earth's temperatures from increasing more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. And yes, the annual reductions would be significant, on the order of what we've seen with the pandemic. And yes, that does seem daunting. However, we do have the opportunity to make some fairly dramatic changes, and the plan is not a mystery. You start with the two sectors that are closest to an effective transition -- electricity generation, as I mentioned -- and last year, 2019, if you look at all of the new electricity generation built all around the world, 72 percent of it was from solar and wind. And already, without the continuing subsidies for fossil fuels, we would see many more of these plants being shut down. There are some new fossil plants being built, but many more are being shut down.
阿尔·戈尔:它的确看上去很难实现, 但我们首先关注一下数据。 这个数据是来自一年前 政府间气候变化专门委员会 (IPCC)的一项研究, 该研究讨论了如何控制 地球温度上升不超过 1.5 摄氏度。 而且,按照我们 所看到的疫情规律, 每年的减少量将是巨大的。 是的,这的确看上去很艰难。 但我们确实可以做出一些 相当巨大的改变 而且其计划并不神秘。 你可以从两个 最接近有效过渡的领域开始—— 发电,正如我提到的—— 去年,2019 年, 如果你去看看全世界 所有新增的发电厂中, 72 % 来自太阳能和风能。 而且,如果没有 对化石燃料的持续补贴, 我们会看到更多的化石燃料发电厂 被关掉。 虽然有些新的化石燃料发电厂 依然在建造当中, 但更多的发电厂正在被关闭。
And where transportation is concerned, the second sector ready to go, in addition to the cheaper prices for EVs that I made reference to before, there are some 45 jurisdictions around the world -- national, regional and municipal -- where laws have been passed beginning a phaseout of internal combustion engines. Even India said that by 2030, less than 10 years from now, it will be illegal to sell any new internal combustion engines in India. There are many other examples.
而对交通而言 第二个领域已经准备好了, 除了我之前 提到过的更廉价的电子汽车 世界各地的 45 个司法管辖区—— 国家、地区和城市—— 在这些地方, 一些已被通过的法律 开始逐步停止内燃机的使用。 甚至,印度已经决定 在 2030 年前, 也就是不到 10 年的时间内, 在印度销售任何新的内燃机 都是违法的。 还有很多其他的例子。
So the past small reductions may not be an accurate guide to the kind we can achieve with serious national plans and a focused global effort.
因此,过去的小规模减排 可能无法准确地去指导我们 通过严谨的国家计划 和集中的全球努力 实现我们的减排目标。
CA: So help us understand just the big picture here, Al. I think before the pandemic, the world was emitting about 55 gigatons of what they call "CO2 equivalent," so that includes other greenhouse gases like methane dialed up to be the equivalent of CO2. And am I right in saying that the IPCC, which is the global organization of scientists, is recommending that the only way to fix this crisis is to get that number from 55 to zero by 2050 at the very latest, and that even then, there's a chance that we will end up with temperature rises more like two degrees Celsius rather than 1.5? I mean, is that approximately the big picture of what the IPCC is recommending?
克里斯·安德森:阿尔, 请你帮我们理解一下全局。 我认为在这场疫情发生之前, 全世界大约排放着 550 亿吨 人们所谓的“二氧化碳当量”, 其包括比如像会变为 二氧化碳等价物的甲烷 等其它温室气体。 我这样说是否正确, 全球科学家组织的 IPCC 正提出建议, 解决这场气候危机的唯一方法 就是最迟在 2050 年前 将 550 亿吨排放变为 0 , 而且即使是这样, 全球气温还是有可能 增加超过 2 摄氏度 而不是 1.5 摄氏度。 这是 IPCC 所建议的大致重点吗?
AG: That's correct. The global goal established in the Paris Conference is to get to net zero on a global basis by 2050, and many people quickly add that that really means a 45 to 50 percent reduction by 2030 to make that pathway to net zero feasible.
阿尔·戈尔:没错。 巴黎会议上制定的全球目标 是 2050 年在全球范围内 将排放量净值减至零, 很多人快速地计算出 这实际上意味着在 2030 年前 完成 45% 到 50% 的下降 才有可能让排放量最终减至零。
CA: And that kind of timeline is the kind of timeline where people couldn't even imagine it. It's just hard to think of policy over 30 years. So that's actually a very good shorthand, that humanity's task is to cut emissions in half by 2030, approximately speaking, which I think boils down to about a seven or eight percent reduction a year, something like that, if I'm not wrong.
克里斯·安德森: 那样的时间线 是人们根本无法想象的, 去思考跨度长达 30 年的政策 是非常困难的。 所以应该可以这样概括, 人类的任务是 到 2030 年减少一半的排放量, 大概是这个意思, 如果我没说错的话, 我认为可以归结为 每年减少 7% 或 8%。
AG: Not quite. Not quite that large but close, yes.
阿尔·戈尔:不完全是, 下降率没有那么大, 但是的,很接近了。
CA: So it is something like the effect that we've experienced this year may be necessary. This year, we've done it by basically shutting down the economy. You're talking about a way of doing it over the coming years that actually gives some economic growth and new jobs. So talk more about that. You've referred to changing our energy sources, changing how we transport. If we did those things, how much of the problem does that solve?
克里斯·安德森:所以说, 我们今年所经历的事件 可能是必须的。 今年,我们通过 经济停摆实现了这个目标, 我们谈论的是在未来几年 实现这一目标的一种方式, 这种方式实际上会带来 一些经济增长和新的就业机会。 能不能就这个话题展开一下? 你提到了改变我们的能源来源, 改变我们的交通方式。 如果我们做了这些事情, 能解决多少问题?
AG: Well, we can get to -- well, in addition to doing the two sectors that I mentioned, we also have to deal with manufacturing and all the use cases that require temperatures of a thousand degrees Celsius, and there are solutions there as well. I'll come back and mention an exciting one that Germany has just embarked upon. We also have to tackle regenerative agriculture. There is the opportunity to sequester a great deal of carbon in topsoils around the world by changing the agricultural techniques. There is a farmer-led movement to do that. We need to also retrofit buildings. We need to change our management of forests and the ocean.
阿尔·戈尔: 在我之前提到的 两个领域可以进行尝试之外, 我们同样也面临着 制造所有需要 1000 摄氏温度的用例, 这方面其实也有解决方案。 我稍后还会提到 德国刚刚启动的一个激动人心的计划。 我们同样必须解决再生农业问题。 有一种方法, 通过改变农业种植技巧, 我们可以 在世界各地的表层土壤中 吸收大量的碳。 这是一场由农民领导的运动。 我们同样需要改造建筑。 我们需要改变 我们对森林和海洋的管理。
But let me just mention two things briefly. First of all, the high temperature use cases. Angela Merkel, just 10 days ago, with the leadership of her minister Peter Altmaier, who is a good friend and a great public servant, have just embarked on a green hydrogen strategy to make hydrogen with zero marginal cost renewable energy. And just a word on that, Chris: you've heard about the intermittency of wind and solar -- solar doesn't produce electricity when the sun's not shining, and wind doesn't when the wind's not blowing -- but batteries are getting better, and these technologies are becoming much more efficient and powerful, so that for an increasing number of hours of each day, they're producing often way more electricity than can be used. So what to do with it? The marginal cost for the next kilowatt-hour is zero. So all of a sudden, the very energy-intensive process of cracking hydrogen from water becomes economically feasible, and it can be substituted for coal and gas, and that's already being done. There's a Swedish company already making steel with green hydrogen, and, as I say, Germany has just embarked on a major new initiative to do that. I think they're pointing the way for the rest of the world.
但让我先简短提两件事。 首先,高温的例子。 就在 10 天前, 默克尔总理在她的部长 彼得·阿尔特迈尔 (Peter Altmaier)—— 我的好朋友,也是 一位伟大的人民公仆—— 在他的领导下, 刚刚启动了一项绿色氢战略, 以零边际成本的 可再生能源生产氢。 我还想补充一点,克里斯: 你已经可能听过 太阳能和风能的间歇性—— 没有阳光时, 就无法用太阳能发电, 没风时,也无法用风能发电—— 但是电池的性能越来越好, 这些技术也变得更加高效和强大, 所以在每天每时, 它们产生的电量, 往往远远超过了可用的电量。 那么我们下来要做什么? 下一个千瓦时的边际成本为零。 所以突然间, 从水中裂解氢气 这一需要密集能源的项目 在经济上层面上变得可行, 它可以取代煤和天然气, 并且这项技术已经实现了。 有一个瑞典的公司 已经开始用绿色氢能源来炼钢, 就像刚才我说的,针对这一领域, 德国刚刚开始了一项重大的新计划。 我认为他们正在 为世界其他国家指明方向。
Now, where building retrofits are concerned, just a moment on this, because about 20 to 25 percent of the global warming pollution in the world and in the US comes from inefficient buildings that were constructed by companies and individuals who were trying to be competitive in the marketplace and keep their margins acceptably high and thereby skimping on insulation and the right windows and LEDs and the rest. And yet the person or company that buys that building or leases that building, they want their monthly utility bills much lower. So there are now ways to close that so-called agent-principal divide, the differing incentives for the builder and occupier, and we can retrofit buildings with a program that literally pays for itself over three to five years, and we could put tens of millions of people to work in jobs that by definition cannot be outsourced because they exist in every single community. And we really ought to get serious about doing this, because we're going to need all those jobs to get sustainable prosperity in the aftermath of this pandemic.
现在,我们来稍微 谈一下建筑改造, 因为在全球和美国, 造成全球变暖的排放物中, 约 20 - 25 % 是来自个人和企业 为了在市场上保持竞争力 和保持自己的高利润 所建造的低效建筑 (inefficient buildings), 因此,在绝缘材料, 节能窗户、LED 灯和其他方面 投入就相对较少。 然而购买或租赁大楼的 个人或公司, 则希望每月的水电费 尽可能的少。 所以现在有办法 去解决所谓的代理问题 (agent-principal), 拥有针对建造者和所有者的 不同激励机制, 我们确确实实可以创建一个 能在 3 到 5 年内 回本的模式, 并且我们可以为 数千万的人提供 不用外包的工作, 因为它们存在于每个社区中。 我们真的应该认真地做这件事, 因为我们需要所有这些工作, 以在这次的疫情后 实现可持续的繁荣。
CA: Just going back to the hydrogen economy that you referred to there, when some people hear that, they think, "Oh, are you talking about hydrogen-fueled cars?" And they've heard that that probably won't be a winning strategy. But you're thinking much more broadly than that, I think, that it's not just hydrogen as a kind of storage mechanism to act as a buffer for renewable energy, but also hydrogen could be essential for some of the other processes in the economy like making steel, making cement, that are fundamentally carbon-intensive processes right now but could be transformed if we had much cheaper sources of hydrogen. Is that right?
克里斯·安德森: 让我们回到你刚刚提到的氢经济, 当有些人听到这个概念, 他们会想, “哦,你是在说氢燃料汽车吗?” 他们听说这可能 不是一个会成功的策略。 但是你的眼界要比他们更宽广, 我认为, 这不仅仅是因为氢是一种 为可再生能源作缓冲的存储机制, 而且氢气对于钢铁和水泥 这样的一些其他经济领域来说, 也是至关重要的, 这些现在基本上还是 碳密集型的项目, 如果我们有更廉价的氢能源, 这些完全可以改变。 我说的对吗?
AG: Yes, I was always skeptical about hydrogen, Chris, principally because it's been so expensive to make it, to "crack it out of water," as they say. But the game-changer has been the incredible abundance of solar and wind electricity in volumes and amounts that people didn't expect, and all of a sudden, it's cheap enough to use for these very energy-intensive processes like creating green hydrogen. I'm still a bit skeptical about using it in vehicles. Toyota's been betting on that for 25 years and it hasn't really worked for them. Never say never, maybe it will, but I think it's most useful for these high-temperature industrial processes, and we already have a pathway for decarbonizing transportation with electricity that's working extremely well. Tesla's going to be soon the most valuable automobile company in the world, already in the US, and they're about to overtake Toyota. There is now a semitruck company that's been stood up by Tesla and another that is going to be a hybrid with electricity and green hydrogen, so we'll see whether or not they can make it work in that application. But I think electricity is preferable for cars and trucks.
阿尔·戈尔:是的, 我一直对氢持怀疑态度,克里斯, 主要是因为制造它的成本太高了, 就像他们说的, “从水里裂解出来”。 但是大量的太阳能和风能 改变了这一现状, 这是人们没有预料到的, 而且突然之间, 它们的成本也降低到 能够用于能源密集的项目, 比如制造绿色氢。 但我仍有点怀疑 氢能源在交通工具上能否推广。 丰田在这方面逆行了 25 年的研究, 但他们并没有成功。 并不是说不可能, 也许他们会成功, 但我认为氢能源对这些 高温工业过程的用处最大, 而且我们已经有了一条 用电力进行脱碳运输的途径, 而且其运行效果非常好。 特斯拉很快就会成为世界上 最有价值的汽车公司, 它在美国已经是 最有价值的汽车公司了, 而且他们即将在世界上超过丰田。 现在有一家由特斯拉赞助的 单轴拖车公司, 还有一家制造 电力和绿色氢的混合动力车的公司, 所以我们会看看他们 是否能在这个方面取得成功。 但是我认为电力驱动 是汽车和卡车的首选。
CA: We're coming to some community questions in a minute. Let me ask you, though, about nuclear. Some environmentalists believe that nuclear, or maybe new generation nuclear power is an essential part of the equation if we're to get to a truly clean future, a clean energy future. Are you still pretty skeptical on nuclear, Al?
克里斯·安德森:我们稍后 会回答一些观众的提问。 我还想问一下关于核能的问题。 一些环保主义者认为, 如果我们是要获得 真正干净的未来, 是使用着清洁能源的未来, 那么核能或者新一代的核动力 就是其中的重要因素。 阿尔,你是否对核能 仍然十分怀疑呢?
AG: Well, the market's skeptical about it, Chris. It's been a crushing disappointment for me and for so many. I used to represent Oak Ridge, where nuclear energy began, and when I was a young congressman, I was a booster. I was very enthusiastic about it. But the cost overruns and the problems in building these plants have become so severe that utilities just don't have an appetite for them. It's become the most expensive source of electricity. Now, let me hasten to add that there are some older nuclear reactors that have more useful time that could be added onto their lifetimes. And like a lot of environmentalists, I've come to the view that if they can be determined to be safe, they should be allowed to continue operating for a time.
阿尔·戈尔:其实是市场 对核能抱怀疑态度,克里斯。 我和其他很多人 都对其感到非常失望。 当核能刚起步时,我曾代表过 最早研究核能的橡树岭国家实验室。 当我还是一名年轻的议员时, 我曾是核能的热心拥护者。 我过去对此非常有热情。 但是其成本的超标, 以及核电厂内的各种问题 已经严重到电力公司 都开始对核能失去了兴趣 。 核能已变为了 成本最高的电力来源。 我现在还想补充一下, 一些旧的核反应堆有着更长的 可以被添加到它们现有 使用寿命上的有效使用时间。 正如许多环保主义者一样, 我认为这些旧的反应堆 如果可以被判定是安全的, 那么它们应该被允许 继续运行一段时间。
But where new nuclear power plants are concerned, here's a way to look at it. If you are -- you've been a CEO, Chris. If you were the CEO of -- I guess you still are. If you were the CEO of an electric utility, and you told your executive team, "I want to build a nuclear power plant," two of the first questions you would ask are, number one: How much will it cost? And there's not a single engineering consulting firm that I've been able to find anywhere in the world that will put their name on an opinion giving you a cost estimate. They just don't know. A second question you would ask is: How long will it take to build it, so we can start selling the electricity? And again, the answer you will get is, "We have no idea." So if you don't know how much it's going to cost, and you don't know when it's going to be finished, and you already know that the electricity is more expensive than the alternate ways to produce it, that's going to be a little discouraging, and, in fact, that's been the case for utilities around the world.
但是,新的核电站担心的是, 我们可以这样看待这个问题: 克里斯,你曾经就担任过 CEO, 如果你是公司的 CEO—— 我猜你现在还是。 假设你是 一家电力公司的 CEO, 你告诉高层管理团队, “我想建一个核能发电厂,” 两个你首先会问的问题, 第一个是: 建发电厂要花多少钱? 在全世界范围内, 我都还没有找到任何一家 会对他们的意见负责的 工程咨询公司, 会给你做一个成本估算。 因为他们根本不知道答案。 第二个你会问的问题是: 建成和可以开始输出电力 需要多长时间? 同样的,你将会得到的答案是, “我们不知道。” 所以如果你不知道其耗资是多少, 也不知道竣工的时间, 同时你已经知道 通过核能得到的电力 比其它方法的生产成本更高, 这有点令人沮丧, 而且事实上, 世界各地都是这样的。
CA: OK. So there's definitely an interesting debate there, but we're going to come on to some community questions. Let's have the first of those questions up, please. From Prosanta Chakrabarty: "People who are skeptical of COVID and of climate change seem to be skeptical of science in general. It may be that the singular message from scientists gets diluted and convoluted. How do we fix that?"
克里斯·安德森:是的。 所以这中间显然 存在一个有趣的争议, 但是我们接下来 会讨论一些观众的提问。 让我们来看看第一个问题。 普罗桑塔·查克拉巴蒂 (Prosanta Chakrabarty)问道: “对冠状病毒病以及气候变化 持怀疑态度的人们 似乎通常也怀疑科学。 可能是这些从科学家那里 得到的重大信息 被稀释了,或者过于晦涩难懂。 我们该如何补救呢?”
AG: Yeah, that's a great question, Prosanta. Boy, I'm trying to put this succinctly and shortly. I think that there has been a feeling that experts in general have kind of let the US down, and that feeling is much more pronounced in the US than in most other countries. And I think that the considered opinion of what we call experts has been diluted over the last few decades by the unhealthy dominance of big money in our political system, which has found ways to really twist economic policy to benefit elites. And this sounds a little radical, but it's actually what has happened.
阿尔·戈尔:普罗桑塔的 这个问题很好。 我得想想怎么能 解释得更简明扼要。 我认为有这样一种感觉, 专家们这个群体让美国失望了, 这种感觉在美国 比在大多数其他国家更明显。 我认为,在过去的几十年里, 我们所谓的“专家们 经过深思熟虑的观点” 已经被我们政治体系中 不健康的资金所稀释, 这些钱使精英们扭曲经济政策, 以使自己受益。 这听起来有点激进, 但事实就是如此。
And we have gone for more than 40 years without any meaningful increase in middle-income pay, and where the injustice experienced by African Americans and other communities of color are concerned, the differential in pay between African Americans and majority Americans is the same as it was in 1968, and the family wealth, the net worth -- it takes 11 and a half so-called "typical" African American families to make up the net worth of one so-called "typical" White American family. And you look at the soaring incomes in the top one or the top one-tenth of one percent, and people say, "Wait a minute. Whoever the experts were that designed these policies, they haven't been doing a good job for me."
过去的 40 多年间, 中产阶级的收入 几乎没有明显的增长, 黑人和其他有色人种群体 所受到的不公待遇很令人担忧, 而且非裔美国人 与大多数美国人现在的 工资、财富 和净财产的差异 与 1968 年相比几乎毫无变化—— 一个所谓的“典型” 美国白人家庭的净资产 是所谓的“典型” 美国黑人家庭的 11.5 倍。 当你看到那些 最富有的人,或者 最富有的十分之一的人的收入飙升时, 人们会说,“等一下。 不管设计这些政策的专家是谁, 他们并没有为我服务。”
A final point, Chris: there has been an assault on reason. There has been a war against truth. There has been a strategy, maybe it was best known as a strategy decades ago by the tobacco companies who hired actors and dressed them up as doctors to falsely reassure people that there were no health consequences from smoking cigarettes, and a hundred million people died as a result. That same strategy of diminishing the significance of truth, diminishing, as someone said, the authority of knowledge, I think that has made it kind of open season on any inconvenient truth -- forgive another buzz phrase, but it is apt. We cannot abandon our devotion to the best available evidence tested in reasoned discourse and used as the basis for the best policies we can form.
克里斯,最后一点: 这是对理性的攻击。 这是一场反对真理的斗争。 有一种策略, 其最有名的例子也许是 几十年前烟草公司雇佣演员, 把他们打扮成医生,错误地向 人们保证吸烟 不会对健康造成影响, 结果导致 1 亿人死亡。 就像有人说的那样, 这是一个 削弱真理的重要性, 削弱知识权威性的策略, 我认为,这让任何 难以忽视的真相 都成了公开的话题—— 请原谅这个时髦的说法, 但这很恰当。 我们不能放弃去寻找 在合理的资源下检验 作为我们所能够制定的 最佳政策的基础的 最佳证据。
CA: Is it possible, Al, that one consequence of the pandemic is actually a growing number of people have revisited their opinions on scientists? I mean, you've had a chance in the last few months to say, "Do I trust my political leader or do I trust this scientist in terms of what they're saying about this virus?" Maybe lessons from that could be carried forward?
克里斯·安德森: 阿尔,有没有可能 大流行的一个后果 就是越来越多的人 开始重新审视 他们对科学家的看法? 毕竟,几个月前人们有机会说, “我应该相信政客对病毒的言论, 还是相信科学家 对这种病毒的言论?” 也许从中吸取的教训 可以使我们继续前进?
AG: Well, you know, I think if the polling is accurate, people do trust their doctors a lot more than some of the politicians who seem to have a vested interest in pretending the pandemic isn't real. And if you look at the incredible bust at President Trump's rally in Tulsa, a stadium of 19,000 people with less than one-third filled, according to the fire marshal, you saw all the empty seats if you saw the news clips, so even the most loyal Trump supporters must have decided to trust their doctors and the medical advice rather than Dr. Donald Trump.
阿尔·戈尔: 如果民调数据是准确的, 那么我认为人们 确实会更加相信医生, 而非一些对假装大流行病不存在 似乎有着既得利益的政客。 如果你看看 特朗普总统在塔尔萨的集会上 令人难以置信的场面, 根据消防局长的数据, 一个 19000 人的体育场里 只有不到三分之一的人, 可以在新闻里看到 体育馆里很多的空位, 所以即使是 最忠诚的特朗普支持者 也一定更相信 医生和医学上的建议, 而不是 “唐纳德·特朗普医生”。
CA: With a little help from the TikTok generation, perchance.
克里斯·安德森: 也许是在抖音一代的帮助下。
AG: Well, but that didn't affect the turnout. What they did, very cleverly, and I'm cheering them on, what they did was affect the Trump White House's expectations. They're the reason why he went out a couple days beforehand and said, "We've had a million people sign up." But they didn't prevent -- they didn't take seats that others could have otherwise taken. They didn't affect the turnout, just the expectations.
阿尔·戈尔:(笑) 但这并没有影响投票率。 他们的做法让我 不得不拍手叫好, 他们的行为影响了 特朗普政府的预期。 这就是为什么 他提前几天大肆宣扬, “我们已经有100万人注册了。” 但是他们没有阻止—— 他们没有成功占据足够的位置, 他们没有影响投票率, 只是影响了人们的期望。
CA: OK, let's have our next question here. "Are you concerned the world will rush back to the use of the private car out of fear of using shared public transportation?"
克里斯·安德森: 好的,我们来看看下一个问题。 “你是否担心,由于害怕使用 共享的公共交通工具, 全世界都将重新使用私家车?”
AG: Well, that could actually be one of the consequences, absolutely. Now, the trends on mass transit were already inching in the wrong direction because of Uber and Lyft and the ridesharing services, and if autonomy ever reaches the goals that its advocates have hoped for then that may also have a similar effect. But there's no doubt that some people are going to be probably a little more reluctant to take mass transportation until the fear of this pandemic is well and truly gone.
阿尔·戈尔: 当然,这可能是其中一个结果。 目前,由于优步、Lyft 和拼车服务的出现, 公共交通的趋势 已经在朝着错误的方向缓慢发展, 如果自动驾驶真的达到了 它的倡导者所希望的目标, 那可能也会产生类似的效果。 但毫无疑问,一些人可能会 更不愿意乘坐公共交通工具, 直到他们对流感大流行的恐惧 完全消失。
CA: Yeah. Might need a vaccine on that one.
克里斯·安德森:对,我们可能 需要能够消除恐惧的疫苗
AG: (Laughs) Yeah.
阿尔·戈尔: (笑) 对。
CA: Next question. Sonaar Luthra, thank you for this question from LA. "Given the temperature rise in the Arctic this past week, seems like the rate we are losing our carbon sinks like permafrost or forests is accelerating faster than we predicted. Are our models too focused on human emissions?" Interesting question.
克里斯·安德森: 下一个问题。 索纳尔·路斯拉(Sonaar Luthra), 谢谢你从洛杉矶发来的问题。 “考虑到过去一周 北极气温的上升, 看起来我们失去 永冻层或森林等碳汇的速度 似乎比我们预计的要快。 我们的模型 是否过于关注人类排放了?” 很有趣的问题。
AG: Well, the models are focused on the factors that have led to these incredible temperature spikes in the north of the Arctic Circle. They were predicted, they have been predicted, and one of the reasons for it is that as the snow and ice cover melts, the sun's incoming rays are no longer reflected back into space at a 90 percent rate, and instead, when they fall on the dark tundra or the dark ocean, they're absorbed at a 90 percent rate. So that's a magnifier of the warming in the Arctic, and this has been predicted. There are a number of other consequences that are also in the models, but some of them may have to be recalibrated.
阿尔·戈尔: 这个模型关注的是导致北极圈 这些令人难以置信的 温度峰值的因素。 他们预测的 其中一个原因是, 随着冰雪融化, 太阳的入射光线 不再是以90 % 的速率 反射回太空, 相反,当阳光落在 黑色的苔原或者黑色的海洋, 它们被吸收速率是 90 %。 所以北极变暖的扩大, 已经被预测到了。 模型中还存在许多其他后果, 但其中一些可能需要重新校准。
The scientists are freshly concerned that the emissions of both CO2 and methane from the thawing tundra could be larger than they had hoped they would be. There's also just been a brand-new study. I won't spend time on this, because it deals with a kind of geeky term called "climate sensitivity," which has been a factor in the models with large error bars because it's so hard to pin down. But the latest evidence indicates, worryingly, that the sensitivity may be greater than they had thought, and we will have an even more daunting task. That shouldn't discourage us. I truly believe that once we cross this tipping point, and I do believe we're doing it now, as I've said, then I think we're going to find a lot of ways to speed up the emissions reductions.
科学家们最近开始担心, 冻土带解冻所产生的 二氧化碳和甲烷的排放量 可能比他们预期的要大。 还有一项全新的研究。 虽然我不会在这上面花时间, 因为它涉及到一个叫 “气候敏感性”的令人讨厌的术语, 这一直是模型中 一个有很大误差的因素, 因为它很难被确定。 但令人担忧的是, 最新的证据表明, 敏感性可能比他们想象的要高, 我们将面临一项更艰巨的任务。 这不应该使我们气馁。 我确信,一旦我们 越过了这个临界点, 而且我确信我们会越过, 就像我说过的, 之后我认为我们会找到很多方法 来加速减排。
CA: We'll take one more question from the community. Haha. "Geoengineering is making extraordinary progress. Exxon is investing in technology from Global Thermostat that seems promising. What do you think of these air and water carbon capture technologies?" Stephen Petranek.
我们再回答一个观众提问。 这个有意思: “地球工程正在取得非凡的进展。 Exxon 正在投资 Global Thermostat 公司的 一项似乎有很有前景的技术。 你怎么看 这些空气和水的碳捕获技术?” 来自斯蒂芬·彼得拉内克 (Stephen Petranek)。
AG: Yeah. Well, you and I have talked about this before, Chris. I've been strongly opposed to conducting an unplanned global experiment that could go wildly wrong, and most are really scared of that approach. However, the term "geoengineering" is a nuanced term that covers a lot. If you want to paint roofs white to reflect more energy from the cityscapes, that's not going to bring a danger of a runaway effect, and there are some other things that are loosely called "geoengineering" like that, which are fine. But the idea of blocking out the sun's rays -- that's insane in my opinion. Turns out plants need sunlight for photosynthesis and solar panels need sunlight for producing electricity from the sun's rays. And the consequences of changing everything we know and pretending that the consequences are going to precisely cancel out the unplanned experiment of global warming that we already have underway, you know, there are glitches in our thinking. One of them is called the "single solution bias," and there are people who just have a hunger to say, "Well, that one solution, we just need to latch on to that and do that, and damn the consequences." Well, it's nuts.
阿尔·戈尔:好的。 我们以前谈过这个问题,克里斯。 我一直强烈反对 进行一项可能出现 严重错误的无计划的全球实验, 而且大多数人 真的很害怕这种方法。 然而,“地球工程”是个 微妙的术语,其涵盖了很多内容。 如果你想把屋顶刷成白色, 以反射更多来自城市的能量, 这不会带来失控效应的危险, 一些其他类似的, 被宽泛地称为“地球工程”的项目, 通常是没有问题的。 但是阻挡太阳光线的想法—— 在我看来是疯狂的。 植物需要光照来进行光合作用, 太阳能电板 也需要光照来发电。 而改变我们所知道的一切 并假装这些后果将恰好抵消 我们已经在进行的关于 全球变暖的无计划实验的后果, 要知道,我们的想法中 有一些小的缺陷。 其中一种缺陷 被称为“单一解决方案偏见”, 有些人就会迫不及待地说, “好吧,那种解决方案, 我们只需要依靠它,然后去做, 让产生的后果见鬼去吧。” 这太疯狂了。
CA: But let me push back on this just a little bit. So let's say that we agree that a single solution, all-or-nothing attempt at geoengineering is crazy. But there are scenarios where the world looks at emissions and just sees, in 10 years' time, let's say, that they are just not coming down fast enough and that we are at risk of several other liftoff events where this train will just get away from us, and we will see temperature rises of three, four, five, six, seven degrees, and all of civilization is at risk. Surely, there is an approach to geoengineering that could be modeled, in a way, on the way that we approach medicine.
克里斯·安德森: 让我再解释一下, 假设我们一致认为, 在地球工程上孤注一掷的 单一解决方案是疯狂的。 但是在一些情况下, 当世界停下来观察排放物时会发现, 比方说在 10 年里, 它们下降速度就是不够快, 并且我们还面临着 其他几个棘手的问题 使这个机遇离我们而去, 我们会看到温度 上升 3、4、5、6、7 度, 整个文明都处于危险之中。 当然,在某种程度上, 有一种方法可以处理地球工程, 就像我们处理医学一样。
Like, for hundreds of years, we don't really understand the human body, people would try interventions, and some of them would work, and some of them wouldn't. No one says in medicine, "You know, go in and take an all-or-nothing decision on someone's life," but they do say, "Let's try some stuff." If an experiment can be reversible, if it's plausible in the first place, if there's reason to think that it might work, we actually owe it to the future health of humanity to try at least some types of tests to see what could work. So, small tests to see whether, for example, seeding of something in the ocean might create, in a nonthreatening way, carbon sinks. Or maybe, rather than filling the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide, a smaller experiment that was not that big a deal to see whether, cost-effectively, you could reduce the temperature a little bit. Surely, that isn't completely crazy and is at least something we should be thinking about in case these other measures don't work?
比如说,几百年来, 我们并不真正了解人体, 人们尝试干预人体, 有些有效,有些无效。 医学界没有人会说, “我们要去做一个孤注一掷的决定, 来决定一个人的生活,” 而是会说,“让我们尝试一些东西。” 如果一个实验是可逆的, 如果它在一开始就看似合理, 如果有理由认为它可能会起作用, 为了人类未来的健康, 我们实际上应该尝试 一些类型的试验,看看能否成功。 所以,一些小测试, 比如说, 以一种没有威胁的方式, 在海洋中播种某种物质, 看看是否会产生碳汇。 或者,与其让大气中 充满二氧化硫, 不如做一个经济实惠的小实验, 来看看是否可以降低一点温度。 当然,这不是完全疯狂的, 至少我们应该考虑一下, 以防这些其他的措施不起作用?
AG: Well, there've already been such experiments to seed the ocean to see if that can increase the uptake of CO2. And the experiments were an unmitigated failure, as many predicted they would be. But that, again, is the kind of approach that's very different from putting tinfoil strips in the atmosphere orbiting the Earth. That was the way that solar geoengineering proposal started. Now they're focusing on chalk, so we have chalk dust all over everything. But more serious than that is the fact that it might not be reversible.
阿尔·戈尔: 事实上已经有这样的实验, 人们在海洋中“播种”海洋植物, 看看是否能吸收更多的二氧化碳。 正如许多人预测的那样, 这些实验完全失败了。 但是,这是一种 与在地球的大气层中 放置锡箔条非常不同的方法。 那是太阳地球工程提出的方式。 现在他们关注的是粉笔, 所有的东西上都有粉笔灰。 但更严重的是, 它可能是不可逆的。
CA: But, Al, that's the rhetoric response. The amount of dust that you need to drop by a degree or two wouldn't result in chalk dust over everything. It would be unbelievably -- like, it would be less than the dust that people experience every day, anyway. I mean, I just --
克里斯·安德森:但是,阿尔, 这只是言辞上的回应。 你所需要减少的 一到两度的灰尘量 不会导致所有东西 都被粉笔尘覆盖。 这将是难以置信的—— 比如说,这会比 人们每天接触的灰尘要少得多。 我的意思是,我认为——
AG: First of all, I don't know how you do a small experiment in the atmosphere. And secondly, if we were to take that approach, we would have to steadily increase the amount of whatever substance they decided. We'd have to increase it every single year, and if we ever stopped, then there would be a sudden snapback, like "The Picture of Dorian Gray," that old book and movie, where suddenly all of the things caught up with you at once. The fact that anyone is even considering these approaches, Chris, is a measure of a feeling of desperation that some have begun to feel, which I understand, but I don't think it should drive us toward these reckless experiments. And by the way, using your analogy to experimental cancer treatments, for example, you usually get informed consent from the patient.
阿尔·戈尔:首先, 我不知道如何在大气中 做一个小实验。 其次, 如果我们要采取这种方法, 我们就必须稳步增加 他们决定的任何物质的数量。 我们必须每一年 都增加这个数量, 如果我们停止了, 那么它就会突然反弹, 就像那本老书和那部老电影, 《道林·格雷的照片》 (The Picture of Dorian Gray) 里的场景。 有人甚至已经在考虑 这些方法的这个事实, 克里斯,体现出的是 一种绝望的感觉, 一些人已经开始感到绝望, 这我理解, 但我认为它不应该促使我们 进行这些鲁莽的实验。 顺便说一下, 我在这里做个类比, 比方说对于癌症治疗实验, 你通常会得到病人的知情同意。
Getting informed consent from 7.8 billion people who have no voice and no say, who are subject to the potentially catastrophic consequences of this wackadoodle proposal that somebody comes up with to try to rearrange the entire Earth's atmosphere and hope and pretend that it's going to cancel out, the fact that we're putting 152 million tons of heat-trapping, manmade global warming pollution into the sky every day. That's what's really insane. A scientist decades ago compared it this way. He said, if you had two people on a sinking boat and one of them says, "You know, we could probably use some mirrors to signal to shore to get them to build a sophisticated wave-generating machine that will cancel out the rocking of the boat by these guys in the back of the boat." Or you could get them to stop rocking the boat. And that's what we need to do. We need to stop what's causing the crisis.
想让 78 亿无法表达自己观点的人 去同意接受 一个可能需要他们承受 潜在的灾难性后果的 疯狂的提议, 试图重新构造 整个地球的大气层, 并假装希望 它会抵消掉所有的后果, 但事实上, 我们每天向大气 排放 1.52 亿吨的 人造温室气体—— 这真的很疯狂。 几十年前, 一位科学家做过这样比较。 他说,如果两个人 坐在正在晃动下沉的船里, 其中一个人说, “我们可以用镜子 来反射一些信号到岸上, 告诉人们去建造一个 可以抵消在船后的人制造出的 摇摆效应的 精密的波浪制造仪。” 但是你明明可以 直接停止晃动这个船。 这就是我们需要做的。 我们需要阻止可能引发危机的因素。
CA: Yeah, that's a great story, but if the effort to stop the people rocking in the back of the boat is as complex as the scientific proposal you just outlined, whereas the experiment to stop the waves is actually as simple as telling the people to stop rocking the boat, that story changes. And I think you're right that the issue of informed consent is a really challenging one, but, I mean, no one gave informed consent to do all of the other things we're doing to the atmosphere. And I agree that the moral hazard issue is worrying, that if we became dependent on geoengineering and took away our efforts to do the rest, that would be tragic. It just seems like, I wish it was possible to have a nuanced debate of people saying, you know what, there's multiple dials to a very complex problem. We're going to have to adjust several of them very, very carefully and keep talking to each other. Wouldn't that be a goal to just try and have a more nuanced debate about this, rather than all of that geoengineering can't work?
克里斯·安德森: 这故事听上去不错。 但如果让船后的人 去停止摇晃船 和你列出的科学建议 一样复杂, 也就是说,如果停止晃动的实验 和告诉后面的人 不要晃动船身一样简单, 那就完全是另一个故事了。 我认为你对于 征求人们的同意这个问题 非常具有挑战性的见解是对的, 但是我认为,没有人同意 去做我们正在 对气候做的所有其他事情。 我同意道德风险问题 是非常令人担忧的, 如果我们变得依赖于地球工程 而不去做其他的事情, 那就非常可悲了。 我觉得, 我希望能有一场细致入微的辩论, 人们会说,你知道吗, 这是一个非常复杂的问题, 存在很多因素。 我们必须非常非常 小心地调整其中的几个, 然后保持相互交流。 我们的目标难道不是 应该就这个问题 进行更细致的讨论, 而不是草率断言 所有的地球工程 都行不通吗?
AG: Well, I've said some of it, you know, the benign forms that I've mentioned, I'm not ruling those out. But blocking the Sun's rays from the Earth, not only do you affect 7.8 billion people, you affect the plants and the animals and the ocean currents and the wind currents and natural processes that we're in danger of disrupting even more. Techno-optimism is something I've engaged in in the past, but to latch on to some brand-new technological solution to rework the entire Earth's natural system because somebody thinks he's clever enough to do it in a way that precisely cancels out the consequences of using the atmosphere as an open sewer for heat-trapping manmade gases. It's much more important to stop using the atmosphere as an open sewer. That's what the problem is.
阿尔·戈尔:好吧, 我已经说了其中的一些, 我提到的那些良性的形式, 我不排除它们。 但是阻挡太阳光这种事, 不仅仅会影响 78 亿人, 也会影响植物、 动物、 洋流、 风流, 以及可能会破坏 更多的自然过程。 我过去是一个技术乐观主义者, 但是总有人认为自己很聪明, 觉得自己可以抓住一些 全新的技术解决方案, 重塑整个地球的自然系统, 并精确抵消其后果, 然后利用大气作为 露天下水道温室人造气体。 更重要的是,不要再 把大气当作露天下水道。 这就是问题所在。
CA: All right, well, we'll agree that that is the most important thing, for sure, and speaking of which, do you believe the world needs carbon pricing, and is there any prospect for getting there?
克里斯·安德森:是的, 我们都同意这是最重要的事情, 当然,说到这一点, 你认为世界需要碳定价吗? 有可能实现吗?
AG: Yes. Yes to both questions. For decades, almost every economist who is asked about the climate crisis says, "Well, we just need to put a price on carbon." And I have certainly been in favor of that approach. But it is daunting. Nevertheless, there are 43 jurisdictions around the world that already have a price on carbon. We're seeing it in Europe. They finally straightened out their carbon pricing mechanism. It's an emissions trading version of it. We have places that have put a tax on carbon. That's the approach the economists prefer. China is beginning to implement its national emissions trading program. California and quite a few other states in the US are already doing it. It can be given back to people in a revenue-neutral way.
阿尔·戈尔: 我对这两个问题的答案都是肯定的。 几十年来, 几乎所有 关心环境危机的经济学家 都会说:“我们应该给碳定价。” 我当然支持这种方法。 但听起来有点吓人。 尽管如此, 世界上仍有 43 个司法管辖区 已经对碳排放进行了定价。 我们在欧洲看到了这种情况, 他们最终理顺了碳定价机制。 这是一个碳排放交易版本。 世界上已经有一些地方 对碳排放征税了。 这是经济学家更喜欢的办法。 中国正在开始实施 国家排放权交易计划。 加州和美国其他几个州 已经开始这样做了。 它可以以一种 收入中立的方式返还给人们。
But the opposition to it, Chris, which you've noted, is impressive enough that we do have to take other approaches, and I would say most climate activists are now saying, look, let's don't make the best the enemy of the better. There are other ways to do this as well. We need every solution we can rationally employ, including by regulation. And often, when the political difficulty of a proposal becomes too difficult in a market-oriented approach, the fallback is with regulation, and it's been given a bad name, regulation, but many places are doing it. I mentioned phasing out internal combustion engines. That's an example. There are 160 cities in the US that have already by regulation ordered that within a date certain, 100 percent of all their electricity will have to come from renewable sources. And again, the market forces that are driving the cost of renewable energy and sustainability solutions ever downward, that gives us the wind at our back. This is working in our favor.
但是,克里斯, 你刚才提到的反对意见, 已经足够令人印象深刻, 我们不得不采取其他方法, 我想说,大多数 气候活动人士现在都在说, 我们不要让“最好” 成为“更好”的敌人。 当然,对这件事 还有其他解决方法。 我们需要一切 可以合理采用的解决方案, 包括监管。 通常情况下, 当一项提议的政治难度 在市场导向的方法中 变得过于困难时, 可以用监管作为退路, 尽管“监管”这个词的名声不太好, 但很多地方都在这么做。 我提到过逐步淘汰内燃机。 这是一个例子。 美国有 160 个城市 已经根据规定, 在一个确定的日期内, 他们所有的电力来源必须 采用 100% 可再生能源。 就像我刚才说的, 推动可再生能源和 可持续性解决成本的方案的 市场力量, 给我们提供了支持。
CA: I mean, the pushback on carbon pricing often goes further from parts of the environmental movement, which is to a pushback on the role of business in general. Business is actually -- well, capitalism -- is blamed for the climate crisis because of unrelenting growth, to the point where many people don't trust business to be part of the solution. The only way to go forward is to regulate, to force businesses to do the right thing. Do you think that business has to be part of the solution?
克里斯·安德森: 对碳定价的抵制通常会 从环保运动的一部分 延伸到对商业角色的抵制。 事实上,由于持续的经济增长, 商业——或者说资本主义—— 被指责为气候危机的罪魁祸首, 以至于许多人都不相信 商业是解决气候危机的一部分。 前进的唯一途径就是监管, 迫使企业做正确的事情。 你认为商业必须是 解决方案的一部分吗?
AG: Well, definitely, because the allocation of capital needed to solve this crisis is greater than what governments can handle. And businesses are beginning, many businesses are beginning to play a very constructive role. They're getting a demand that they do so from their customers, from their investors, from their boards, from their executive teams, from their families. And by the way, the rising generation is demanding a brighter future, and when CEOs interview potential new hires, they find that the new hires are interviewing them. They want to make a nice income, but they want to be able to tell their family and friends and peers that they're doing something more than just making money. One illustration of how this new generation is changing, Chris: there are 65 colleges in the US right now where the College Young Republican Clubs have joined together to jointly demand that the Republican National Committee change its policy on climate, lest they lose that entire generation. This is a global phenomenon. The Greta Generation is now leading this in so many ways, and if you look at the polling, again, the vast majority of young Republicans are demanding a change on climate policy. This is really a movement that is building still.
阿尔·戈尔:当然, 因为解决这场危机 所需的资本配置, 超出了政府的能力范围。 很多企业 开始发挥建设性的作用。 他们的客户、 投资者、董事会、 管理团队和家人 都要求他们这么做。 顺便说一下, 年轻一代要求更光明的未来, 当 CEO 们面试新员工时, 他们发现新员工 同时也在面试他们。 他们想要一份不错的收入, 但他们想要能够 告诉他们的家人、朋友和同龄人, 他们所做的不仅仅是赚钱。 我来举一个新一代 是如何改变的例子,克里斯: 现在美国有 65 所大学的 年轻共和党俱乐部 正在联合起来, 共同要求共和党全国委员会 改变其气候政策, 以免他们失去这一代人。 这是一个全球都有的现象。 现在,格蕾塔(Greta Thunberg) 一代在很多方面 都在领导着这一切。 如果你看看民调, 你会发现, 绝大多数年轻的共和党人 都在要求改变气候政策。 这是一场 仍在发展中的运动。
CA: I was going to ask you about that, because one of the most painful things over the last 20 years has just been how climate has been politicized, certainly in the US. You've probably felt yourself at the heart of that a lot of the time, with people attacking you personally in the most merciless, and unfair ways, often. Do you really see signs that that might be changing, led by the next generation?
克里斯·安德森: 我正想问你这个问题, 因为在过去的 20 年里, 最痛苦的事情之一就是 气候如何被政治化了, 在美国尤其如此。 很多时候,你可能会觉得 你自己处于这种情绪的中心, 人们常常会用 最无情、最不公平的方式来攻击你 你看到了这种情况 在下一代的领导下 可能发生改变的迹象吗?
AG: Yeah, there's no question about it. I don't want to rely on polls too much. I've mentioned them already. But there was a new one that came out that looked at the wavering Trump supporters, those who supported him strongly in the past and want to do so again. The number one issue, surprisingly to some, that is giving them pause, is the craziness of President Trump and his administration on climate. We're seeing big majorities of the Republican Party overall saying that they're ready to start exploring some real solutions to the climate crisis. I think that we're really getting there, no question about it.
阿尔·戈尔: 没错,毫无疑问。 我不想过于依靠民调。 我刚才提到过了。 但有一份 针对那些摇摆不定的 特朗普支持者的新民调, 那些人过去曾大力支持特朗普, 现在想再次支持他。 让一些人感到意外的是, 让他们踌躇的头号问题是 特朗普总统和他的政府 在气候问题上的疯狂政策。 我们看到绝大多数 共和党人都表示, 他们准备开始探索 一些解决气候危机的真正办法。 毫无疑问,我认为 我们正在朝着这个目标迈进。
CA: I mean, you've been the figurehead for raising this issue, and you happen to be a Democrat. Is there anything that you can personally do to -- I don't know -- to open the tent, to welcome people, to try and say, "This is beyond politics, dear friends"?
克里斯·安德森: 你一直是这方面的倡导者, 而你恰好也是民主党人。 你会不会试着 敞开怀抱,拥抱大众, 并试着说, “亲爱的朋友们, 这个问题已经超越了政治”?
AG: Yeah. Well, I've tried all of those things, and maybe it's made a little positive difference. I've worked with the Republicans extensively. And, you know, well after I left the White House, I had Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson and other prominent Republicans appear on national TV ads with me saying we've got to solve the climate crisis. But the petroleum industry has really doubled down enforcing discipline within the Republican Party. I mean, look at the attacks they've launched against the Pope when he came out with his encyclical and was demonized, not by all for sure, but there were hawks in the anti-climate movement who immediately started training their guns on Pope Francis, and there are many other examples. They enforce discipline and try to make it a partisan issue, even as Democrats reach out to try to make it bipartisan. I totally agree with you that it should not be a partisan issue. It didn't use to be, but it's been artificially weaponized as an issue.
阿尔·戈尔: 是的,这些我都试过了, 也许产生了一些积极的影响。 我和共和党人有过广泛的合作。 你知道,在我离开白宫之后, 我邀请纽特·金里奇、 帕特·罗伯逊 和其他杰出的共和党人 和我一起出现在了 国家级的电视广告中, 告诉大家我们必须 解决气候危机。 但石油行业确实 在共和党内部 加大了执行纪律的力度。 看看他们对教皇的攻击, 他们把教皇发表教皇通谕 妖魔化了, 虽然不是所有人都这么做了, 但反气候运动中的鹰派人士 立即开始把矛头 对准了教皇方济各, 当然还有很多其他的例子。 他们强化了党内纪律, 并试图使之成为一个党派问题, 即使民主党人 试图促成两党合作。 我完全同意你的观点, 那不应该是一个党派问题。 过去不是这样的, 但现在已经被人为地 政治武器化了。
CA: I mean, the CEOs of oil companies also have kids who are talking to them. It feels like some of them are moving and are trying to invest and trying to find ways of being part of the future. Do you see signs of that?
克里斯·安德森: 有些石油公司的 CEO 们, 他们的孩子会和他们 谈论这个问题。 我感觉他们中有些人被打动了, 并且试图投资, 找到改变未来的方式。 你看到这些迹象了吗?
AG: Yeah. I think that business leaders, including in the oil and gas companies, are hearing from their families. They're hearing from their friends. They're hearing from their employees. And, by the way, we've seen in the tech industry some mass walkouts by employees who are demanding that some of the tech companies do more and get serious. I'm so proud of Apple. Forgive me for parenthetically praising Apple. You know, I'm on the board, but I'm such a big fan of Tim Cook and my colleagues at Apple. It's an example of a tech company that's really doing fantastic things. And there's some others as well. There are others in many industries. But the pressures on the oil and gas companies are quite extraordinary. You know, BP just wrote down 12 and a half billion dollars' worth of oil and gas assets and said that they're never going to see the light of day. Two-thirds of the fossil fuels that have already been discovered cannot be burned and will not be burned. And so that's a big economic risk to the global economy, like the subprime mortgage crisis. We've got 22 trillion dollars of subprime carbon assets, and just yesterday, there was a major report that the fracking industry in the US is seeing now a wave of bankruptcies because the price of the fracked gas and oil has fallen below levels that make them economic.
阿尔·戈尔: 是的。 我认为商业领袖, 包括石油和天然气公司的领导人, 都听到了他们的家人 谈论这些事。 他们听到他们的朋友这么说。 听到了他们的员工这么说。 顺便说一下, 我们在科技行业看到了 一些员工的大规模罢工, 他们要求 一些科技公司采取更多行动, 认真对待这件事。 我为苹果感到骄傲。 原谅我表现出了一些偏见, 毕竟我是苹果的董事会成员, 不过我非常赞赏蒂姆·库克和 苹果的同事们的所作所为。 这是一个科技公司 应对气候危机的一个绝佳范例。 当然还有一些其他的例子。 在很多行业都有这样的例子。 但石油和天然气公司 面临的压力相当大。 英国石油公司刚刚 减记了价值 125 亿美元的 石油和天然气资产, 并说他们将永远看不到曙光。 世界上已经被发现的石油中, 有三分之二 无法被使用,也不会被使用。 这对全球经济来说 是一个巨大的经济风险, 就像次贷危机一样。 我们有 22 万亿美元的 次级碳资产, 就在昨天, 还有一篇报道说, 美国的水力压裂行业 现在正在经历一波破产潮, 因为水力压裂的 天然气和石油的价格 已经降到了盈利线以下。
CA: Is the shorthand of what's happened there that electric cars and electric technologies and solar and so forth have helped drive down the price of oil to the point where huge amounts of the reserves just can't be developed profitably?
克里斯·安德森: 是否可以简单概括一下 当时发生的情况, 即电动技术和太阳能技术等 推动了油价的下跌, 以至于大量的石油储量 无法被开发并带来盈利?
AG: Yes, that's it. That's mainly it. The projections for energy sources in the next several years uniformly predict that electricity from wind and solar is going to continue to plummet in price, and therefore using gas or coal to make steam to turn the turbines is just not going to be economical. Similarly, the electrification of the transportation sector is having the same effect. Some are also looking at the trend in national, regional and local governance. I mentioned this before, but they're predicting a very different energy future. But let me come back, Chris, because we talked about business leaders.
阿尔·戈尔: 是的,就是这样。 你说的没错。 对未来几年 能源来源的预测一致表明, 风能和太阳能发电的价格 将继续下跌, 因此使用天然气或煤炭 制造蒸汽来驱动涡轮机 将是不经济的。 同样,交通部门的电气化 也产生了同样的效果。 一些人还在关注 国家、地区和地方治理的趋势。 我之前提到过, 但是他们在预测一个 完全不同的能源未来。 但克里斯, 既然我们谈到了商业领袖们,
I think you were getting in a question a moment ago about capitalism itself, and I do want to say a word on that, because there are a lot of people who say maybe capitalism is the basic problem. I think the current form of capitalism we have is desperately in need of reform. The short-term outlook is often mentioned, but the way we measure what is of value to us is also at the heart of the crisis of modern capitalism. Now, capitalism is at the base of every successful economy, and it balances supply and demand, unlocks a higher fraction of the human potential, and it's not going anywhere, but it needs to be reformed, because the way we measure what's valuable now ignores so-called negative externalities like pollution.
而且你刚才谈到了 一个关于资本主义本身的问题, 我想就这个问题说几句, 因为有很多人说, 资本主义可能才是 问题的根源所在。 我认为我们现有的资本主义形式 迫切需要改革。 人们经常提到短期前景, 但我们衡量价值的方式 也是现代资本主义危机的核心。 资本主义是 每一个成功经济的基础, 它平衡了供给和需求, 激发了人类的最高潜力; 它并不会消失, 但需要改革, 因为我们在衡量价值的时候, 总会忽略所谓的“负面外部因素”, 如污染。
It also ignores positive externalities like investments in education and health care, mental health care, family services. It ignores the depletion of resources like groundwater and topsoil and the web of living species. And it ignores the distribution of incomes and net worths, so when GDP goes up, people cheer, two percent, three percent -- wow! -- four percent, and they think, "Great!" But it's accompanied by vast increases in pollution, chronic underinvestment in public goods, the depletion of irreplaceable natural resources, and the worst inequality crisis we've seen in more than a hundred years that is threatening the future of both capitalism and democracy. So we have to change it. We have to reform it.
我们还忽视了 积极的外部因素, 如教育、保健、 心理保健和家庭服务方面的投资。 我们还忽视了 诸如地下水、表土和生物网络 等资源的枯竭。 我们还忽略了 收入和净收入的分配, 所以当 GDP 上升时,人们欢呼, 2%,3%,哇!——4%, 他们会想: “太好了!” 但随之而来的是 污染的大幅增加, 公共产品的长期投资不足, 不可替代的自然资源的枯竭, 以及一百多年来 最严重的不平等危机, 这威胁着资本主义和民主的未来。 所以我们必须改变它, 我们必须改革它。
CA: So reform capitalism, but don't throw it out. We're going to need it as a tool as we go forward if we're to solve this.
克里斯·安德森: 所以我们要改革资本主义, 而不是抛弃它。 如果我们要解决这个问题, 就要把它当作我们前进的工具。
AG: Yeah, I think that's right, and just one other point: the worst environmental abuses in the last hundred years have been in jurisdictions that experimented during the 20th century with the alternatives to capitalism on the left and right.
阿尔·戈尔:是的, 我认为这是对的, 还有一点: 在过去的 100 年里, 在 20 世纪,在一些有着 最严重的环境滥用的司法管辖区, 人们都在寻找资本主义的替代品。
CA: Interesting. All right. Two last community questions quickly. Chadburn Blomquist: "As you are reading the tea leaves of the impact of the current pandemic, what do you think in regard to our response to combatting climate change will be the most impactful lesson learned?"
克里斯·安德森: 听上去很有意思。 好了,最后两个观众提问。 查德本·布隆奎斯特 (Chadburn Blomquist): “当你在预测 目前的疫情影响时, 针对我们对抗气候变迁, 所做的一切 在你看来,我们学到的 最有影响的教训是什么?”
AG: Boy, that's a very thoughtful question, and I wish my answer could rise to the same level on short notice. I would say first, don't ignore the scientists. When there is virtual unanimity among the scientific and medical experts, pay attention. Don't let some politician dissuade you. I think President Trump is slowly learning that's it's kind of difficult to gaslight a virus. He tried to gaslight the virus in Tulsa. It didn't come off very well, and tragically, he decided to recklessly roll the dice a month ago and ignore the recommendations for people to wear masks and to socially distance and to do the other things, and I think that lesson is beginning to take hold in a much stronger way. But beyond that, Chris, I think that this period of time has been characterized by one of the most profound opportunities for people to rethink the patterns of their lives and to consider whether or not we can't do a lot of things better and differently. And I think that this rising generation I mentioned before has been even more profoundly affected by this interlude, which I hope ends soon, but I hope the lessons endure. I expect they will.
阿尔·戈尔:哦, 这是一个很有深度的问题, 我希望我能提供一个简短, 但同样有深度的回答。 首先,我想说, 不要忽视科学家。 当科学和医学专家 达成一致意见时, 请予以关注。 不要让一些政治家阻止你。 我认为特朗普总统 正在慢慢认识到 要消灭病毒是很困难的。 他试图在塔尔萨消灭病毒, 但他没有成功, 不幸的是,他在一个月前 不顾一切地决定要豪赌, 忽略科学家对人们戴口罩和 社会距离和 做其他的事情的建议, 而且我认为这一课 开始以一种 更为强大的方式在人心中扎根。 但除此之外,克里斯, 我认为这段时间被归为 一个最深刻的机遇, 让人们重新思考他们的生活模式, 并考虑我们是否可以 将一些事做得更好, 而且是以不同的方式。 我认为我之前提到的 正在成长的一代受到了 这段插曲更深刻的影响, 我希望这段插曲能尽快结束, 但我希望这些教训能传递下去。 我想会的。
CA: Yeah, it's amazing how many things you can do without emitting carbon, that we've been forced to do. Let's have one more question here. Frank Hennessy: "Are you encouraged by the ability of people to quickly adapt to the new normal due to COVID-19 as evidence that people can and will change their habits to respond to climate change?"
克里斯·安德森:是的,我们可以 做很多不产生碳排放的事情, 这太令人惊讶了。 再来看一个问题。 弗兰克·轩尼诗 (Frank Hennessy): “由于 COVID-19, 人们能够迅速适应新常态, 这证明人们能够而且将会改变习惯 以应对气候变化, 您是否为此感到鼓舞?”
AG: Yes, but I think we have to keep in mind that there is a crisis within this crisis. The impact on the African American community, which I mentioned before, on the Latinx community, Indigenous peoples. The highest infection rate is in the Navajo Nation right now. So some of these questions appear differently to those who are really getting the brunt of this crisis, and it is unacceptable that we allow this to continue. It feels one way to you and me and perhaps to many in our audience today, but for low-income communities of color, it's an entirely different crisis, and we owe it to them and to all of us to get busy and to start using the best science and solve this pandemic. You know the phrase "pandemic economics." Somebody said, the first principle of pandemic economics is take care of the pandemic, and we're not doing that yet. We're seeing the president try to goose the economy for his reelection, never mind the prediction of tens of thousands of additional American deaths, and that is just unforgivable in my opinion.
阿尔·戈尔:是的, 但是我认为我们必须记住, 在这场危机中还有一个危机。 比如我之前提到过的, 对非裔美国人社区的影响, 对拉丁裔社区 和土著人民的影响。 目前纳瓦霍族的感染率最高。 因此,有些问题 对那些真正在这场危机中 受到的冲击最大人 来说是不同的。 我们不能任由 这种情况继续下去。 你和我,以及今天的很多观众, 对这场疫情是一种感觉, 但对低收入的有色人种社区来说, 这是一个完全不同的危机, 这是我们欠他们的, 我们所有人都应该 着手开始用科学 来终结这场大流行。 有一个词叫“流行病经济学”。 有人说, 大流行经济学的首要原则 是应对大流行, 但我们现在还没有这样做。 我们看到总统 试图为他的连任助威经济, 更别说预测的 成千上万的美国人的死亡了, 在我看来这是不可原谅的。
CA: Thank you, Frank. So Al, you, along with others in the community played a key role in encouraging TED to launch this initiative called "Countdown." Thank you for that, and I guess this conversation is continuing among many of us. If you're interested in climate, watching this, check out the Countdown website, countdown.ted.com, and be part of 10/10/2020, when we are trying to put out an alert to the world that climate can't wait, that it really matters, and there's going to be some amazing content free to the world on that day. Thank you, Al, for your inspiration and support in doing that. I wonder whether you could end today's session just by painting us a picture, like how might things roll out over the next decade or so? Just tell us whether there is still a story of hope here.
克里斯·安德森: 谢谢你,弗兰克。 那么阿尔,你和 这个社区里的很多人一起 在鼓励 TED 发起这个 “倒计时”倡议中扮演了关键的角色。 非常感谢你, 我想这个话题还将 在我们很多人当中继续。 如果你对气候问题感兴趣, 欢迎登陆“倒计时”的网站, countdown.ted.com, 并参加我们在 2020 年 10 月 10 日 举办的一个活动, 届时我们将试图向世界提出警告, 气候问题已经刻不容缓, 这真的很重要。 而且在那一天, 我们会面向全球发布一些 精彩的免费内容。 谢谢你的鼓励和支持,艾尔。 我想知道你能否能 在今天的对话结束之前 给我们描绘一幅蓝图, 比如未来十年左右的时间里, 事情将会如何发展? 请告诉我们是不是 应该对未来抱有希望。
AG: I'd be glad to. I've got to get one plug in. I'll make it brief. July 18 through July 26, The Climate Reality Project is having a global training. We've already had 8,000 people register. You can go to climatereality.com. Now, a bright future. It begins with all of the kinds of efforts that you've thrown yourself into in organizing Countdown. Chris, you and your team have been amazing to work with, and I'm so excited about the Countdown project. TED has an unparalleled ability to spread ideas that are worth spreading, to raise consciousness, to enlighten people around the world, and it's needed for climate and the solutions to the climate crisis like it's never been needed before, and I just want to thank you for what you personally are doing to organize this fantastic Countdown program.
阿尔·戈尔: 我很乐意。 我还想再补充一句。 7 月 18 日至 26 日, 气候现实项目(Climate Reality Project) 正在进行全球培训。 我们已经有 8000 人注册了。 任何人都可以去 climatereality.com 注册。 应该说,我们拥有 一个光明的未来。 它开始于你在组织 “倒计时”项目的过程中 投入的所有努力。 克里斯,你和你的团队 是非常出色的合作伙伴, 我对“倒计时”项目感到很兴奋。 TED 在传播值得传播的思想, 提高人们的意识, 启发世界各地的人们方面 拥有无与伦比的优势, 这正是气候和气候危机的 解决方案所需要的, 而且这种需要从未如此迫切。 我衷心的感谢你作为个人, 为组织这个伟大的 “倒计时”项目所付出的努力。
CA: Thank you. And the world? Are we going to do this? Do you think that humanity is going to pull this off and that our grandchildren are going to have beautiful lives where they can celebrate nature and not spend every day in fear of the next tornado or tsunami?
克里斯·安德森: 谢谢你! 那整个世界呢? 你觉得大家准备好了吗? 你认为人类能做到这一点吗? 我们的子孙能过上 美好的生活吗? 那时,他们可以歌颂大自然, 不需要每天都在可能发生 下一场龙卷风或海啸的 恐惧中度过?
AG: I am optimistic that we will do it, but the answer is in our hands. We have seen dark times in periods of the past, and we have risen to meet the challenge. We have limitations of our long evolutionary heritage and elements of our culture, but we also have the ability to transcend our limitations, and when the chips are down, and when survival is at stake and when our children and future generations are at stake, we're capable of more than we sometimes allow ourselves to think we can do. This is such a time. I believe we will rise to the occasion, and we will create a bright, clean, prosperous, just and fair future. I believe it with all my heart.
阿尔·戈尔:我对我们能 做到这一点持乐观态度, 但答案就在我们手中。 我们目睹了过去的黑暗时期, 我们已经奋起迎接挑战。 我们有长期进化遗产 和文化元素的局限性, 但我们也有能力 超越我们自身的局限性, 在危急时刻, 当生存变得岌岌可危之时, 当我们的孩子 和未来几代人面临危险时, 我们能做的 有时远超我们的想象。 现在就是这样的时候。 我相信, 我们一定能够克服困难, 去创造一个光明、 清洁、繁荣、公正、公平的未来。 我全心全意地相信这样的未来。
CA: Al Gore, thank you for your life of work, for all you've done to elevate this issue and for spending this time with us now. Thank you.
克里斯·安德森:阿尔·戈尔, 感谢你毕生的贡献, 感谢你为引起大众的关注 所做的一切, 也感谢你参与今天的访谈。 谢谢你。
AG: Back at you. Thank you.
阿尔·戈尔:也谢谢你。