We are stealing nature from our children. Now, when I say this, I don't mean that we are destroying nature that they will have wanted us to preserve, although that is unfortunately also the case. What I mean here is that we've started to define nature in a way that's so purist and so strict that under the definition we're creating for ourselves, there won't be any nature left for our children when they're adults. But there's a fix for this. So let me explain.
我们正从后代手中偷取大自然。 我并不是在说我们在毁坏大自然 孩子们想让我们保护的大自然, 尽管我们的确在毁坏大自然。 这里我所指的是,我们给自然 下了一个纯粹又严格的定义。 在这个我们自己的定义之下, 当我们的孩子长大成人, 他们的自然将会所剩无几。 但这个问题有办法解决。 让我来解释一下。
Right now, humans use half of the world to live, to grow their crops and their timber, to pasture their animals. If you added up all the human beings, we would weigh 10 times as much as all the wild mammals put together. We cut roads through the forest. We have added little plastic particles to the sand on ocean beaches. We've changed the chemistry of the soil with our artificial fertilizers. And of course, we've changed the chemistry of the air. So when you take your next breath, you'll be breathing in 42 percent more carbon dioxide than if you were breathing in 1750. So all of these changes, and many others, have come to be kind of lumped together under this rubric of the "Anthropocene." And this is a term that some geologists are suggesting we should give to our current epoch, given how pervasive human influence has been over it. Now, it's still just a proposed epoch, but I think it's a helpful way to think about the magnitude of human influence on the planet.
现在,人类正在把半个地球 用于生活,种植农作物、木材 和饲养牲畜。 如果把所有人类质量加总 相当于所有野生哺乳动物的10倍。 我们从砍伐森林中建设道路。 我们把塑料颗粒混在了海滩的沙粒中。 我们用人造的化肥改变了泥土的化学性质, 当然我们也改变了空气的成分。 所以,当你呼吸下一口空气时, 你吸入的二氧化碳 比1750年多42%。 所以,这些改变,和其他的一起, 都集合在”人类世”的大标题下。 这是一个由地质学家们建议的术语, 因为人类的影响无处不在, 我们正所处的时代被叫做“人类世”。 现在,它仍只是一个被建议使用的名词, 但我认为这可以帮助人类 思考自己对这个星球的所作所为。
So where does this put nature? What counts as nature in a world where everything is influenced by humans?
所以这对自然有什么影响? 在这个遍布人类影响的世界, 什么才算自然?
So 25 years ago, environmental writer Bill McKibben said that because nature was a thing apart from man and because climate change meant that every centimeter of the Earth was altered by man, then nature was over. In fact, he called his book "The End of Nature."
25年前,环境作家比尔·麦克基本认为, 因为自然是人类之外的东西, 以及因为气候变化 意味着地球的每分每寸都被人类改写了, 自然已经不存在了。 其实他的书就叫《自然的终结》。
I disagree with this. I just disagree with this. I disagree with this definition of nature, because, fundamentally, we are animals. Right? Like, we evolved on this planet in the context of all the other animals with which we share a planet, and all the other plants, and all the other microbes. And so I think that nature is not that which is untouched by humanity, man or woman. I think that nature is anywhere where life thrives, anywhere where there are multiple species together, anywhere that's green and blue and thriving and filled with life and growing. And under that definition, things look a little bit different.
我不同意这观点。我就是不同意。 我不同意这个对自然的定义, 因为根本上我们人类是动物 对吧?我们在这个星球上进化 在这里,我们同所有动物、 所有植物、所有微生物共享这个星球。 并且,我坚信,自然不应该是一个 未被人类所碰触的地方。 我坚信,自然是一个有生命茂盛兴旺, 有万物共同生长, 有绿色蓝色,旺盛充盈着生命的 一个不断生长的地方。 在这个定义之下, 事情变得有些不同。
Now, I understand that there are certain parts of this nature that speak to us in a special way. Places like Yellowstone, or the Mongolian steppe, or the Great Barrier Reef or the Serengeti. Places that we think of as kind of Edenic representations of a nature before we screwed everything up. And in a way, they are less impacted by our day to day activities. Many of these places have no roads or few roads, so on, like such. But ultimately, even these Edens are deeply influenced by humans.
现在,我深知自然中某些部分 会用一种特殊的语言和我们对话。 有很多地方,就象黄石公园、 蒙古大草原、 大堡礁, 还有塞伦盖蒂, 这些好似伊甸园一样的地方, 那个还没有被我们摧毁一切的自然。 而且它们较少受到 我们一天一天的活动的影响。 很多地方几乎没有道路, 之类的,等等。 但最后,这些伊甸园还是被人类深深影响。
Now, let's just take North America, for example, since that's where we're meeting. So between about 15,000 years ago when people first came here, they started a process of interacting with the nature that led to the extinction of a big slew of large-bodied animals, from the mastodon to the giant ground sloth, saber-toothed cats, all of these cool animals that unfortunately are no longer with us. And when those animals went extinct, you know, the ecosystems didn't stand still. Massive ripple effects changed grasslands into forests, changed the composition of forest from one tree to another. So even in these Edens, even in these perfect-looking places that seem to remind us of a past before humans, we're essentially looking at a humanized landscape. Not just these prehistoric humans, but historical humans, indigenous people all the way up until the moment when the first colonizers showed up. And the case is the same for the other continents as well. Humans have just been involved in nature in a very influential way for a very long time.
现在,让我们用北美举个例子, 既然我们就处在北美。 在15000年前,当人们第一次来到这片土地时, 他们开始和自然进行互动。 这导致了大量大型动物的灭绝, 从乳齿象到地懒, 剑齿虎, 这些动物都不幸地灭绝了。 当这些动物走向灭绝, 生态系统就不能一如既往地运行。 涟漪效应使草原变成了森林, 使丛林的树从一种变成了另一种。 甚至那些伊甸园, 那些绮丽之地也深受影响。 这似乎让我们想起了一段人类出现之前的历史。 我们其实是在看一个人类化的风景, 不止这些史前人类,还有历史上的人和原著人民 一直追溯到第一个殖民者到来的那一刻。 并且这些情况对其他大陆也是一样的。 长久以来,人类已在自然之中 进行了富有影响力的进化。
Now, just recently, someone told me,
就在刚刚,有个人对我说:
"Oh, but there are still wild places."
“啊,其实还有原生态的地方啊。”
And I said, "Where? Where? I want to go."
我说:”哪里啊?在哪?我想去。“
And he said, "The Amazon."
他说:”亚马逊。“
And I was like, "Oh, the Amazon. I was just there. It's awesome. National Geographic sent me to Manú National Park, which is in the Peruvian Amazon, but it's a big chunk of rainforest, uncleared, no roads, protected as a national park, one of the most, in fact, biodiverse parks in the world. And when I got in there with my canoe, what did I find, but people. People have been living there for hundreds and thousands of years. People live there, and they don't just float over the jungle. They have a meaningful relationship with the landscape. They hunt. They grow crops. They domesticate crops. They use the natural resources to build their houses, to thatch their houses. They even make pets out of animals that we consider to be wild animals. These people are there and they're interacting with the environment in a way that's really meaningful and that you can see in the environment.
我说:”哦,亚马逊,我就在那。“ 这很不错,国家地理派遣我去的马努国家公园 就在祕鲁亚马逊 那是一大片雨林,很模糊,没有公路 作为一个国家公园被保护 实际上,这里受保护的物种堪称世界之最 当我撑着我的小舟来到这里, 我找到的,只有人。 人们来到这片雨林有上百或上千年了。 住在这的人,他们不只乘舟穿越丛林, 他们同这地方有寓意悠远的关系。 他们打猎,他们种植农作物 他们培育农作物。 他们用自然资源做自己的房屋, 用茅草盖屋顶, 他们甚至把我们眼中认为的野生动物当作宠物。 人们在那 和环境共生互动。 你可以从环境中清楚看到 这其中深刻的意义。
Now, I was with an anthropologist on this trip, and he told me, as we were floating down the river, he said, "There are no demographic voids in the Amazon." This statement has really stuck with me, because what it means is that the whole Amazon is like this. There's people everywhere. And many other tropical forests are the same, and not just tropical forests. People have influenced ecosystems in the past, and they continue to influence them in the present, even in places where they're harder to notice.
当时我和一位人类学家相伴而行, 当我们正在漂度河流时, 他说:“在亚马逊没有人口空隙。” 这个说法着实让我很困惑, 因为这意味着,整个亚马逊就是 人类无处不在。 并且其它热带雨林也是这样的, 并且不止是热带雨林, 人们在过去影响过生态系统, 现在仍在影响, 即使在他们很难注意到的地方,影响依旧还在。
So, if all of the definitions of nature that we might want to use that involve it being untouched by humanity or not having people in it, if all of those actually give us a result where we don't have any nature, then maybe they're the wrong definitions. Maybe we should define it by the presence of multiple species, by the presence of a thriving life.
所有我们要使用的对自然的定义 包括那条:未被人类触及之地 还有那个:没有人类的地方 所有这些明确地给了我们一个结论:自然已不复存在 但这些可能是错误的定义 或许我们应该用多物种的存在、 用兴旺生命的存在,定义自然
Now, if we do it that way, what do we get? Well, it's this kind of miracle. All of a sudden, there's nature all around us. All of a sudden, we see this Monarch caterpillar munching on this plant, and we realize that there it is, and it's in this empty lot in Chattanooga. And look at this empty lot. I mean, there's, like, probably, a dozen, minimum, plant species growing there, supporting all kinds of insect life, and this is a completely unmanaged space, a completely wild space. This is a kind of wild nature right under our nose, that we don't even notice.
现在,如果我们这样想 我们可以得到什么 这有点像个奇迹 忽然间,我们被自然环绕 忽然间,我们可以看见黑脉金斑蝶幼虫 大口大口吃着叶片 并且我们意识到它在哪 在查塔努加的一片空地 看这这的很空 我是说,或许 最少,这有十几种植物 支撑着各种各样昆虫的生活 这是一个完全自由的,完全野生的地方 这自然原始之地就在我们鼻子底下 而我们从没注意过
And there's an interesting little paradox, too. So this nature, this kind of wild, untended part of our urban, peri-urban, suburban agricultural existence that flies under the radar, it's arguably more wild than a national park, because national parks are very carefully managed in the 21st century. Crater Lake in southern Oregon, which is my closest national park, is a beautiful example of a landscape that seems to be coming out of the past. But they're managing it carefully. One of the issues they have now is white bark pine die-off. White bark pine is a beautiful, charismatic -- I'll say it's a charismatic megaflora that grows up at high altitude -- and it's got all these problems right now with disease. There's a blister rust that was introduced, bark beetle. So to deal with this, the park service has been planting rust-resistant white bark pine seedlings in the park, even in areas that they are otherwise managing as wilderness. And they're also putting out beetle repellent in key areas as I saw last time I went hiking there. And this kind of thing is really much more common than you would think. National parks are heavily managed. The wildlife is kept to a certain population size and structure. Fires are suppressed. Fires are started. Non-native species are removed. Native species are reintroduced. And in fact, I took a look, and Banff National Park is doing all of the things I just listed: suppressing fire, having fire, radio-collaring wolves, reintroducing bison. It takes a lot of work to make these places look untouched.
还有个有趣的小反例 这便是自然 那些有点野生,没被注意的地方 在我们的城市、城市周边、郊区农业 都有苍蝇在雷达下面 这可以证明这个地方比国家公园更原生态 因为国家公园被十分小心地管理着 在21世纪 火山口湖坐落于俄勒冈州南部,是距离我最近的国家公园 这是一个非常美的地方,不过似乎要成为过去了 但它现在保管得十分小心 现在一个很严重的问题就是白松树即将灭绝 白皮松树是一种非常美 而富有魅力的巨型植物群 它们生长在高海拔地区 但它现在有很多问题包括疾病 包括白皮松色锈病的出现 还有树皮甲虫 所以,为了解决这个,公园维护人员已将其移栽 抗病菌的白皮松树苗在公园内 在这里它们被其他方式管理,像野外一样 并且把虫药喷放在关键地区 我上次徒步走过看到了 这比你想象得要普遍得很多 人们确实谨慎地管理着国家公园 野生动物被划分成有固定的数量和组织 冷杉在控制中禁止生长 又在控制中繁茂生长 非本土物种被迁移 本土物种又被引入 我在注视 班夫国家公园做了刚刚我列举的所有事 抑制冷杉生长,协助冷杉生长 给狼带无线项圈,引入北美野牛 他们花费太久时间让这个公园看似未经触碰
(Laughter)
(笑声)
(Applause)
(掌声)
And in a further irony, these places that we love the most are the places that we love a little too hard, sometimes. A lot of us like to go there, and because we're managing them to be stable in the face of a changing planet, they often are becoming more fragile over time.
更嘲讽的事,我们还深爱这些地方 这些地方往往深得我们喜爱 我们之中很多人还向往着去那里 我们的管理,使其稳定 其实是在改变地球 它们会变得更加破碎不堪
Which means that they're the absolute worst places to take your children on vacation, because you can't do anything there. You can't climb the trees. You can't fish the fish. You can't make a campfire out in the middle of nowhere. You can't take home the pinecones. There are so many rules and restrictions that from a child's point of view, this is, like, the worst nature ever. Because children don't want to hike through a beautiful landscape for five hours and then look at a beautiful view. That's maybe what we want to do as adults, but what kids want to do is hunker down in one spot and just tinker with it, just work with it, just pick it up, build a house, build a fort, do something like that.
意味着,它们会变成完全相反的坏地方 带着你的孩子去度假 因为在那里,你无事可做 你不能爬树 不能钓鱼 你不可能在任何地方搭建营火 甚至不可能拿走一个小松果 从一个孩子的视角来看 这有太多的规矩和束缚 这里,错误的存在,这不再是自然 因为孩子们不想仅仅 再美景中步行五个钟头 然后再看景色 或许你们大人愿意 但是孩子,他们只想蹲在一个地方 就是笨手笨脚,就是空忙 就是捡起个树枝,一个石头,搭个小房子,盖个城堡
Additionally, these sort of Edenic places are often distant from where people live. And they're expensive to get to. They're hard to visit. So this means that they're only available to the elites, and that's a real problem. The Nature Conservancy did a survey of young people, and they asked them, how often do you spend time outdoors? And only two out of five spent time outdoors at least once a week. The other three out of five were just staying inside. And when they asked them why, what are the barriers to going outside, the response of 61 percent was, "There are no natural areas near my home."
加之,这也是个伊甸园 通常离人类所居比较遥远 很难到达,更难观光 这意味着它们只有可能成为精英 这才是真正的问题 自然保护协会对年轻人做了一个调查 内容是:你在户外的频率为? 五个人中,只有两个 最少一周一次 其他三个只是在屋里 然后问他们为什么,去外面有障碍? 61%的回答是 我家外没有自然干净的地方
And this is crazy. This is just patently false. I mean, 71 percent of people in the US live within a 10-minute walk of a city park. And I'm sure the figures are similar in other countries. And that doesn't even count your back garden, the urban creek, the empty lot. Everybody lives near nature. Every kid lives near nature. We've just somehow forgotten how to see it. We've spent too much time watching David Attenborough documentaries where the nature is really sexy --
这太疯狂了,很明显在撒谎 我是说,美国71%的人 走10分钟就可以到一个城市公园 我确信这个数字在其他国家也很接近 这个数字甚至不包含家里的后花园 城市中有很多空地 每个人离大自然都很近 每个孩子都在大自然中 我们只是因为某些原因忘记去看了 我们花太多时间去看大卫·爱登堡的纪录片了 那里的自然才是真正吸引人的
(Laughter)
(笑声)
and we've forgotten how to see the nature that is literally right outside our door, the nature of the street tree.
我们会遗忘是如何看那触手可得的自然 那就在门外的,就在街边树上的
So here's an example: Philadelphia. There's this cool elevated railway that you can see from the ground, that's been abandoned. Now, this may sound like the beginning of the High Line story in Manhattan, and it's very similar, except they haven't developed this into a park yet, although they're working on it. So for now, it's still this little sort of secret wilderness in the heart of Philadelphia, and if you know where the hole is in the chain-link fence, you can scramble up to the top and you can find this completely wild meadow just floating above the city of Philadelphia. Every single one of these plants grew from a seed that planted itself there. This is completely autonomous, self-willed nature. And it's right in the middle of the city. And they've sent people up there to do sort of biosurveys, and there are over 50 plant species up there. And it's not just plants. This is an ecosystem, a functioning ecosystem. It's creating soil. It's sequestering carbon. There's pollination going on. I mean, this is really an ecosystem.
这有个实例:费城 这有个非常酷的高架铁路 你可以从周围土地看出,都已经被抛弃了 现在,这听起来有点像在曼哈顿 高铁故事 的开端 除了它还没被发展成公园,其余都非常相似 不过正在修建 时至今日,这还是一个小小的隐蔽的荒郊 在费城要地 如果你知道铁丝网栅栏的漏洞在哪 你就能爬上顶端 然后你可以发现一个完全原生的草原 浮动在费城城区之上 每个植物的单体都有一个种子生长而成 在这自生自长的种子 这是一个完全自治的,顽强的地方 而且就在城市的中心 很多人被派去做生物调查 有超过50种植物种类生长在此 但这里不是只有植物 这是一个生态系统,一个功能完整的生态系统 它在制造土壤,它在封存碳 昆虫在这里授粉 真的,这是一个真正的生态系统
So scientists have started calling ecosystems like these "novel ecosystems," because they're often dominated by non-native species, and because they're just super weird. They're just unlike anything we've ever seen before. For so long, we dismissed all these novel ecosystems as trash. We're talking about regrown agricultural fields, timber plantations that are not being managed on a day-to-day basis, second-growth forests generally, the entire East Coast, where after agriculture moved west, the forest sprung up. And of course, pretty much all of Hawaii, where novel ecosystems are the norm, where exotic species totally dominate. This forest here has Queensland maple, it has sword ferns from Southeast Asia. You can make your own novel ecosystem, too. It's really simple. You just stop mowing your lawn.
科学家管这叫“新奇生态系统” 因为这些地方经常被非本土的物种所支配 而且因为这里确实非常离奇 确实,它们很任何地方不同,我们从未见过 长久以来,我们就像对垃圾一样去除这些地方 取而代之的是重新种植农田 或者不用日日照看的木材厂 二次生长森林布满了东海滩 又于农业种植之后,向西生长 当然夏威夷的大多数 几乎都是新奇生态系统 外来物种已完全控制这里 森林中有昆士兰州枫树 还有来自南亚的剑厥 当然,你可以坐一个你自己的新奇生态系统 这非常简单 你只需停止割草
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Ilkka Hanski was an ecologist in Finland, and he did this experiment himself. He just stopped mowing his lawn, and after a few years, he had some grad students come, and they did sort of a bio-blitz of his backyard, and they found 375 plant species, including two endangered species.
Ilkka Hanski 是芬兰的生态学家,他自己做了这个实验 他就只是停止了割草 一年之后,有些校友来看 他们对他的花园做了一个生物闪战 然后他们发现 375种植物物种 包括两种濒危灭绝的物种
So when you're up there on that future High Line of Philadelphia, surrounded by this wildness, surrounded by this diversity, this abundance, this vibrance, you can look over the side and you can see a local playground for a local school, and that's what it looks like. These children have, that -- You know, under my definition, there's a lot of the planet that counts as nature, but this would be one of the few places that wouldn't count as nature. There's nothing there except humans, no other plants, no other animals. And what I really wanted to do was just, like, throw a ladder over the side and get all these kids to come up with me into this cool meadow. In a way, I feel like this is the choice that faces us. If we dismiss these new natures as not acceptable or trashy or no good, we might as well just pave them over. And in a world where everything is changing, we need to be very careful about how we define nature.
所以当你在将来的费城高架索上时 看看这周围自然环境 看看这多样的,庞大的,活跃的, 再看看这外面的 你可以看到一个当地的操场,一个当地的学校 这就是它的样子 这些孩子 在我的定义之中 地球大多数被算作自然 但也有一小部分不能入内 这除了人什么也没有,没有其它植物,没有其它动物 而我最想做的是 只是,在这中间放个梯子 让所有这些孩子,和我一起,去那个超棒的草地 某种程度上,我觉得这就是我们所面对的选择 如果仅仅是因为我们不通过,觉得不够好,没有用,我们就剔除这些自然 我们或许就只是把它铺平成路了 这个世界的点滴还在不断变化 我们要小心谨慎地定义自然
In order not to steal it from our children, we have to do two things. First, we cannot define nature as that which is untouched. This never made any sense anyway. Nature has not been untouched for thousands of years. And it excludes most of the nature that most people can visit and have a relationship with, including only nature that children cannot touch. Which brings me to the second thing that we have to do, which is that we have to let children touch nature, because that which is untouched is unloved.
为了不从孩子手中夺取 我们不得不做两件事 其一,我们不能定义自然为未被触碰之物 这从各方面都无法说通 自然改变原样已经数千年 它排除了人类可以闲玩的 有着密切的联系的大多数地方 包含着那些孩子不可以玩耍的自然 让我想起了我们还有第二件事可以做 那就是我们一定要让孩子接触自然 因为没有过触碰,就不会去爱戴
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(掌声)
We face some pretty grim environmental challenges on this planet. Climate change is among them. There's others too: habitat loss is my favorite thing to freak out about in the middle of the night. But in order to solve them, we need people -- smart, dedicated people -- who care about nature. And the only way we're going to raise up a generation of people who care about nature is by letting them touch nature.
现在,我们正面对的,是诸多严峻的环境挑战 气候变化也在其中 当然还有其他很多:生物栖息地锐减是我最感兴趣的事 以至于在午夜亢奋难眠 但为了解决它 我们需要聪明的人,专业的人 真正关心自然的人 唯一的办法就是我们要鼓动一代人 带领他们去接触自然 使他们变成真正关心自然的人
I have a Fort Theory of Ecology, Fort Theory of Conservation. Every ecologist I know, every conservation biologist I know, every conservation professional I know, built forts when they were kids. If we have a generation that doesn't know how to build a fort, we'll have a generation that doesn't know how to care about nature.
我有一个生态学的理论宝库 环境保护的理论宝库 每个我认识的生态学家,每个我认识的生物保护学者 每个我认识的保护专家 都在他们儿时建立起了自己的宝库 如果我们有一代不知道如何建立宝库的人 那他们就不会知道如何保护自然了
And I don't want to be the one to tell this kid, who is on a special program that takes Philadelphia kids from poor neighborhoods and takes them to city parks, I don't want to be the one to tell him that the flower he's holding is a non-native invasive weed that he should throw away as trash. I think I would much rather learn from this boy that no matter where this plant comes from, it is beautiful, and it deserves to be touched and appreciated.
我不想告诉这个孩子 他在一个特殊的行程: 将费城孩子从贫乏的地区 带到市中心花园 我不想告诉他 现在他攥着的花 是一个外侵物种,有强大的繁殖能力的杂草 你应该把它当垃圾扔掉 我认为我们应该从他身上学习 学习不管这株植物从何而来 因为它很漂亮,所以被人触碰被人视若珍宝,都是它应得的
Thank you.
谢谢
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