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.
我們正從我們的後代手中偷走自然 在這裡,我想強調的 並不是我們在破壞 後代想讓我們保護的自然 雖然這也是個不爭的事實 我想說的是 我們給了大自然一個 既純粹又死板的定義 在我們為自己創造的定義下 我們的後代長大後不會再擁有 任何一絲真正的大自然 但是有解決之道 聽我娓娓道來
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.
現在人類使用著半個地球 去生活,去種植農作物和木料 去餵飼生畜 如果你把所有人類的體重加起來 會是野生哺乳動物總重量的十倍還多 我們在森林中開闢出道路 連我們海灘上的沙粒裏 都被混入了塑膠粒 泥土的成分也被我們 用人工肥料所改變 當然,我們也改變了空氣的成份 在你吸入一口氣時 會吸入比 1750 年的空氣 多 42% 的二氧化碳 總的來說,所有各式各樣的改變 都已經聚集在 「人類世」的指標之下了 「人類世」正是某些地質學家 為倡議我們去接受現在的時代 所提出的新名詞 因為,人類的影響無處不在 現在「人類世」 還只是一個假定的時代 但我認為,它有助思考 我們對地球的影響程度
So where does this put nature? What counts as nature in a world where everything is influenced by humans?
但是,這和大自然有何關係呢? 當一切物質都被人類所操縱時 究竟什麽才算真正的自然呢?
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,環境學作家 比爾‧麥吉本曾經說道 因為自然應該是與人類無關的一件事 但現在氣候變化意味著 整個地球正一點點被人類所掌控 因而大自然已經消逝 事實上,他把他的著作命名為 《自然的末日》
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.
我不同意他的觀點,非常不同意 我不同意這種對大自然的定義 因為說到底,我們也是動物 對吧?我們在地球上進化 與其他動物共享著同一個地球 同樣還有其它植物,其它微生物 所以我認為自然 並不是不能被人類所使用 我認為生命繁盛的地方便是自然 任何有多種生物聚集在一起的地方 有綠意和水源 有生命茁壯成長的地方 在這種定義下 事情看起來就不太一樣了
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.
我知道,大自然有一些東西 正試圖以一種特殊的方式 向我們傳達訊息 像黃石公園 蒙古大草原 大堡礁 非洲塞倫蓋蒂平原 那些未遭我們破壞前 我們視作類似伊甸園的地方 在某種程度上,這些地方 不太受到人類生活影響 這些地方道路稀少,甚至沒有道路 諸如此類 但是說到底這些美好的地方 也深受人類影響
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.
我們來舉個例子 就以現場的北美洲為例 從一萬五千年前 人類第一次發現這片土地之時 人類就開始了 與大自然相互影響的過程 致使大量巨型動物滅絕 如乳齒象、巨型地獺 劍齒虎等 這些炫酷的動物 已然沒有機會與我們共存 當這些動物滅絕之時 生態系統便不再平衡 大規模的漣漪效應 使得草原變成了森林 使得森林中的樹木都轉了型 所以即使如伊甸園般的地方 即使在這些看似完美的地方 似乎提醒著我們有人類之前的樣子 我們看到的其實還是人類化的景觀 不只是這些史前的人類 有歷史後的人類、土著居民 直到第一批殖民者出現都是 同樣的事情也發生在其他陸域 人類已被強有力且長時間地 捲入自然
Now, just recently, someone told me,
最近,有人跟我說
"Oh, but there are still wild places."
但還是有些原始的地方呀
And I said, "Where? Where? I want to go."
我說:「哪裡?哪裡?我想去!」
And he said, "The Amazon."
他說:「亞馬遜叢林」
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.
我當時想,喔! 亞馬遜叢林啊!我剛去過 那地方美極了 國家地理雜誌派我到 位於秘魯亞馬遜叢林的馬努國家公園 但那是一大片未砍伐 沒有路的森林 以國家公園的名目保護著 它是世界上生物多樣化極高的公園 但當我划著輕舟 到達那裏時卻看見了人 人們已經在那裏居住了千百年 人們在那裏生活 但他們並不只是在叢林中隨處閒逛 他們與那裏的地景 有著一種意義重大的關係 他們打獵,耕種 他們歸化作物 他們使用自然資源去建造房屋 用茅草做屋頂 甚至把我們認為的野生動物養作寵物 那裏的人 以一種意義深遠且可見的方式 影響著自然環境
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.
這次旅程我和一名人類學家一起 當我們順河而下時 他對我說:「亞馬遜雨林 沒有人口空隙。」 他的這句話著實令我吃了一驚 因為他的意思是 整個亞馬遜也像這樣 到處都是人 並且很多熱帶雨林也一樣 甚至不僅是熱帶雨林 人們過去已經影響了生態系統 並且還在繼續 甚至在難以發覺的地方
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.
所以,如果我們在定義什麼是自然時 排除人類的涉足 人類的存在 如果依據我們的定義 根本無法找尋到任何真正的自然 那麼這些定義便可能是錯誤的 也許我們應該以有多少生物種類存在 生命是否繁榮而定義
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.
如果現在,我們照這個思路前進 我們會發現什麼呢 奇蹟般地 立刻,我們便被大自然所包圍 剎那,我們便看到了帝王蝶幼蟲 咀嚼著葉子 於是,我們發現大自然就在此 大自然就在查塔諾加市這片空地中 看看這空地 我是說,那裏可能會有 至少十多種植物生長著 維持著各種昆蟲的生命 那是一片完全沒有整理的空地 一片完全的荒地 這就是自然的野性,就在我們眼前 我們卻從未察覺
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.
這兒還有個有趣的悖論 那麼這種大自然 這種出現在我們的城市、郊區、農場 荒蕪、無人管理的大自然 無人在意的地方 可以說是一個 比國家公園更野生的環境 因為在 21 世紀下 國家公園被人類細心的管理著 離我最近的俄勒岡州南部的 火山口湖國家公園 是個美好的例子 風景就像從過去延續下來似的 但人們細心地管理著那裏 但他們現在正面臨著一大問題 高山白皮松都枯了 高山白皮松美麗而富有魅力 我說它是一種富有魅力的大型植物群 生長在高海拔地帶 現在枯死的原因是染上疾病 銹病傳染進來 小蠹蟲 為了解決這個問題 公園管理局開始在公園種植 抗銹病的白皮松幼苗 他們甚至種在野地 我在上次登山時看到 他們在一些關鍵地區噴灑殺蟲劑 這種事情比你想像的要平常得多 國家公園是被嚴格監管的 野生動物的族類和數量也受嚴格限制 野火要撲滅 又要起火控管森林 外來物種被移走 並且重新引入本土物種 事實上,我看了看 班芙國家公園也做了這些事情 滅火、起火 把狼帶上無線追蹤項圈 再引入野牛 要花很多功夫才能使這些地方 看似野生自然
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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.
更諷刺的是我們最喜歡的這些地方 有時候是我們愛得太過頭的地方 很多人愛去那裏 只因我們在不斷變化的地球 試圖讓這些地方保持穩定 使這些環境變得越來越脆弱
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.
這代表著那裏將變成 帶你的孩子去度假最糟糕的地方 因為你什麼都不能做 你不可以爬樹 你不可以釣魚 你不可以在渺無人煙處點燃營火 你不可以帶松果回家 規則和限制數不勝數 而從孩子們的角度來看 這是最最糟糕的「自然」 因為孩子們才不想 長途跋涉五小時翻過一道山嶺 然後一覽景色 那大概是大人想做的事 但小孩子只想在隨意一處席地而坐 搞東搞西,胡亂拼堆 撿個東西,搭棟房子 建個堡壘,諸如此類
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."
另外,那些像伊甸園的地方 通常也離我們住的地方很遠 去那些地方花費很高,也並不容易 所以唯有精英才可以去那些地方 這是問題的癥結所在 美國自然保育協會 對年輕人做了一項調查 採訪的人問到: 「你們有多常到戶外?」 只有五分之二的人 至少一週一次去戶外 其餘的都只待在室內 當調查人員問及原因 為什麼他們不出去的時候 61% 的人回答 我家附近沒有自然景觀
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 --
這真不可思議! 這絕對是大錯特錯的! 在美國,71% 的人 住所徒步十分鐘內都能到市區公園 我相信這樣的比例 在其他國家也差不多 而且這還不計你房子的後花園 都市人造河川、空地 每個人都住在自然旁邊 每個小孩都住在自然旁邊 我們只是不知為何 對那些自然之景視而不見 我們花太多時間 看大衛·艾登堡祿的紀錄片 覺得片中的大自然十分誘人
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
and we've forgotten how to see the nature that is literally right outside our door, the nature of the street tree.
但是我們卻忘了看看門外的大自然 行道樹的自然之景
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.
舉一個例子:費城 這條架高的鐵道很酷 但已經被棄置了 這聽來像曼哈頓城 高線公園故事的開端 二者十分相似 儘管前者還沒發展成公園 但是他們正計劃著 迄今為止,那裏仍是個 位於費城中心地帶 秘密的野外之景 如果你知道鐵絲網的破洞在哪裏 你可以爬上頂部 然後找到這片荒草地 懸浮在費城之上 每一棵植物都由種子長成 在這裏自行繁殖 這是一個完全自然繁衍的地方 而它恰在這城市的中心 他們送人上去做一些生物調査 那裡有超過五十種植物 而且並不只是植物 它是一個生態系统 一個正在運作的生態系統 它創造土壤,行碳封存 有生物在授粉 這才是一個真正的生態系統
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.
科學家把這樣的地方 稱為新型生態系統 因為非本土生物佔系统的大部份 並且極為奇特 它們和我們原來所見的事物都不一樣 長久而來,我們把這些新型生態系統 當作垃圾一般擱置一旁 我們在談論自然復育的耕地 人工林場停止管理後重新生長的林地 可以說整片東岸的次生林就是這樣 在農業西移後,森林重新生長 當然,夏威夷也差不多如此 新型生態系統很常見 完全被外來物種佔領 這片森林有昆士蘭楓樹 東南亞的劍蕨 你也可以創造自己的新型生態系統 非常簡單 別再修剪你的草坪就行了
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
芬蘭生物學家伊爾卡‧漢斯基 做了一個實驗 他停止修剪自家的草坪 幾年後,他帶了幾個研究生 在他的後園做生物多樣性速查 他們找到了 375 種植物 包括兩個瀕危絕種品種
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.
所以當你爬上未來的費城高線公園 被這片荒地包圍 被這片多樣性、繁茂 勃勃生機包圍時 你可以從旁向下看 你會看到一個學校的遊樂場 就是照片上那個樣子 那些孩子有...... 你知道,在我的觀念下 這片星球上有很多地方 可以算是大自然 但這是少數幾個 不能被算進去的地方 那裡除了人什麼也没有 沒有植物,沒有其他動物 而我最想做的 就是扔一把梯子下去 讓所有孩子上來和我享受這片草地 我感到這是我們要面對的抉擇 如果我們不接受新型自然 視它們作垃圾或沒用的東西 我們可能會鋪上水泥把它們蓋掉 在這個不斷改變的世界 我們要小心去定義自然
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.
為了避免從我們的後代手中奪走自然 我們要做兩件事 第一,我們不可定義自然 為未經接觸的事物 因為這從來都不合理 自然被人類親密地接觸了數千年 而且這個定義排除了大部份人能去 且和人類建立了關係的自然 卻包含了小孩不能接觸的自然 因此我們要做的第二件事 就是讓我們的孩子接觸大自然 因為沒有接觸即沒有愛
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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.
在這個地球上,此刻我們 面臨著蠻嚴苛的環境挑戰 氣候變化是其中之一 還有其他的:比如失去棲息地 我最愛用這個在深夜嚇人 但是為了解決這些問題 我們需要人,聰明、投入的人 真正在意自然的人 而唯一能養育下一代 關心大自然的方法 就是讓他們接觸自然
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.
我有一個生態堡壘理論 保育生物堡壘論 我認識的生學態家,保育生物學家 保育專家 小時候都會砌堡壘 如果我們有一代人不懂砌堡壘 我們將會有一代不懂關心大自然的人
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.
而我不想告訴這名孩子 他參加一個 帶著費城貧窮的孩子 到市區公園的專案 我不想告訴他,他手中的花 是非本土的入侵種雜草 該當垃圾扔掉 我想我會向這名男孩學習 無論這株植物從何處而來 它是美麗的,它值得被接觸和欣賞
Thank you.
謝謝
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