I just did something I've never done before. I spent a week at sea on a research vessel. Now I'm not a scientist, but I was accompanying a remarkable scientific team from the University of South Florida who have been tracking the travels of BP's oil in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the boat we were on, by the way. The scientists I was with were not studying the effect of the oil and dispersants on the big stuff -- the birds, the turtles, the dolphins, the glamorous stuff. They're looking at the really little stuff that gets eaten by the slightly less little stuff that eventually gets eaten by the big stuff. And what they're finding is that even trace amounts of oil and dispersants can be highly toxic to phytoplankton, which is very bad news, because so much life depends on it. So contrary to what we heard a few months back about how 75 percent of that oil sort of magically disappeared and we didn't have to worry about it, this disaster is still unfolding. It's still working its way up the food chain. Now this shouldn't come as a surprise to us. Rachel Carson -- the godmother of modern environmentalism -- warned us about this very thing back in 1962. She pointed out that the "control men" -- as she called them -- who carpet-bombed towns and fields with toxic insecticides like DDT, were only trying to kill the little stuff, the insects, not the birds. But they forgot this: the fact that birds dine on grubs, that robins eat lots of worms now saturated with DDT. And so, robin eggs failed to hatch, songbirds died en masse, towns fell silent. Thus the title "Silent Spring." I've been trying to pinpoint what keeps drawing me back to the Gulf of Mexico, because I'm Canadian, and I can draw no ancestral ties. And I think what it is is I don't think we have fully come to terms with the meaning of this disaster, with what it meant to witness a hole ripped in our world, with what it meant to watch the contents of the Earth gush forth on live TV, 24 hours a day, for months. After telling ourselves for so long that our tools and technology can control nature, suddenly we were face-to-face with our weakness, with our lack of control, as the oil burst out of every attempt to contain it -- "top hats," "top kills" and, most memorably, the "junk shot" -- the bright idea of firing old tires and golf balls down that hole in the world. But even more striking than the ferocious power emanating from that well was the recklessness with which that power was unleashed -- the carelessness, the lack of planning that characterized the operation from drilling to clean-up. If there is one thing BP's watery improv act made clear, it is that, as a culture, we have become far too willing to gamble with things that are precious and irreplaceable, and to do so without a back-up plan, without an exit strategy. And BP was hardly our first experience of this in recent years. Our leaders barrel into wars, telling themselves happy stories about cakewalks and welcome parades. Then, it is years of deadly damage control, Frankensteins of sieges and surges and counter-insurgencies, and once again, no exit strategy. Our financial wizards routinely fall victim to similar overconfidence, convincing themselves that the latest bubble is a new kind of market -- the kind that never goes down. And when it inevitably does, the best and the brightest reach for the financial equivalent of the junk shot -- in this case, throwing massive amounts of much-needed public money down a very different kind of hole. As with BP, the hole does get plugged, at least temporarily, but not before exacting a tremendous price. We have to figure out why we keep letting this happen, because we are in the midst of what may be our highest-stakes gamble of all -- deciding what to do, or not to do, about climate change. Now as you know, a great deal of time is spent, in this country and around the world, inside the climate debate, on the question of, "What if the IPC scientists are all wrong?" Now a far more relevant question -- as MIT physicist Evelyn Fox Keller puts it -- is, "What if those scientists are right?" Given the stakes, the climate crisis clearly calls for us to act based on the precautionary principle -- the theory that holds that when human health and the environment are significantly at risk and when the potential damage is irreversible, we cannot afford to wait for perfect scientific certainty. Better to err on the side of caution. More overt, the burden of proving that a practice is safe should not be placed on the public that would be harmed, but rather on the industry that stands to profit. But climate policy in the wealthy world -- to the extent that such a thing exists -- is not based on precaution, but rather on cost-benefit analysis -- finding the course of action that economists believe will have the least impact on our GDP. So rather than asking, as precaution would demand, what can we do as quickly as possible to avoid potential catastrophe, we ask bizarre questions like this: "What is the latest possible moment we can wait before we begin seriously lowering emissions? Can we put this off till 2020, 2030, 2050?" Or we ask, "How much hotter can we let the planet get and still survive? Can we go with two degrees, three degrees, or -- where we're currently going -- four degrees Celsius?" And by the way, the assumption that we can safely control the Earth's awesomely complex climate system as if it had a thermostat, making the planet not too hot, not too cold, but just right -- sort of Goldilocks style -- this is pure fantasy, and it's not coming from the climate scientists. It's coming from the economists imposing their mechanistic thinking on the science. The fact is that we simply don't know when the warming that we create will be utterly overwhelmed by feedback loops. So once again, why do we take these crazy risks with the precious? A range of explanations may be popping into your mind by now, like "greed." This is a popular explanation, and there's lots of truth to it, because taking big risks, as we all know, pays a lot of money. Another explanation that you often hear for recklessness is hubris. And greed and hubris are intimately intertwined when it comes to recklessness. For instance, if you happen to be a 35-year-old banker taking home 100 times more than a brain surgeon, then you need a narrative, you need a story that makes that disparity okay. And you actually don't have a lot of options. You're either an incredibly good scammer, and you're getting away with it -- you gamed the system -- or you're some kind of boy genius, the likes of which the world has never seen. Now both of these options -- the boy genius and the scammer -- are going to make you vastly overconfident and therefore more prone to taking even bigger risks in the future. By the way, Tony Hayward, the former CEO of BP, had a plaque on his desk inscribed with this inspirational slogan: "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" Now this is actually a popular plaque, and this is a crowd of overachievers, so I'm betting that some of you have this plaque. Don't feel ashamed. Putting fear of failure out of your mind can be a very good thing if you're training for a triathlon or preparing to give a TEDTalk, but personally, I think people with the power to detonate our economy and ravage our ecology would do better having a picture of Icarus hanging from the wall, because -- maybe not that one in particular -- but I want them thinking about the possibility of failure all of the time. So we have greed, we've got overconfidence/hubris, but since we're here at TEDWomen, let's consider one other factor that could be contributing in some small way to societal recklessness. Now I'm not going to belabor this point, but studies do show that, as investors, women are much less prone to taking reckless risks than men, precisely because, as we've already heard, women tend not to suffer from overconfidence in the same way that men do. So it turns out that being paid less and praised less has its upsides -- for society at least. The flipside of this is that constantly being told that you are gifted, chosen and born to rule has distinct societal downsides. And this problem -- call it the "perils of privilege" -- brings us closer, I think, to the root of our collective recklessness. Because none of us -- at least in the global North -- neither men nor women, are fully exempt from this message. Here's what I'm talking about. Whether we actively believe them or consciously reject them, our culture remains in the grips of certain archetypal stories about our supremacy over others and over nature -- the narrative of the newly discovered frontier and the conquering pioneer, the narrative of manifest destiny, the narrative of apocalypse and salvation. And just when you think these stories are fading into history, and that we've gotten over them, they pop up in the strangest places. For instance, I stumbled across this advertisement outside the women's washroom in the Kansas City airport. It's for Motorola's new Rugged cell phone, and yes, it really does say, "Slap Mother Nature in the face." And I'm not just showing it to pick on Motorola -- that's just a bonus. I'm showing it because -- they're not a sponsor, are they? -- because, in its own way, this is a crass version of our founding story. We slapped Mother Nature around and won, and we always win, because dominating nature is our destiny. But this is not the only fairytale we tell ourselves about nature. There's another one, equally important, about how that very same Mother Nature is so nurturing and so resilient that we can never make a dent in her abundance. Let's hear from Tony Hayward again. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersants that we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." In other words, the ocean is big; she can take it. It is this underlying assumption of limitlessness that makes it possible to take the reckless risks that we do. Because this is our real master-narrative: however much we mess up, there will always be more -- more water, more land, more untapped resources. A new bubble will replace the old one. A new technology will come along to fix the messes we made with the last one. In a way, that is the story of the settling of the Americas, the supposedly inexhaustible frontier to which Europeans escaped. And it's also the story of modern capitalism, because it was the wealth from this land that gave birth to our economic system, one that cannot survive without perpetual growth and an unending supply of new frontiers. Now the problem is that the story was always a lie. The Earth always did have limits. They were just beyond our sights. And now we are hitting those limits on multiple fronts. I believe that we know this, yet we find ourselves trapped in a kind of narrative loop. Not only do we continue to tell and retell the same tired stories, but we are now doing so with a frenzy and a fury that, frankly, verges on camp. How else to explain the cultural space occupied by Sarah Palin? Now on the one hand, exhorting us to "drill, baby, drill," because God put those resources into the ground in order for us to exploit them, and on the other, glorying in the wilderness of Alaska's untouched beauty on her hit reality TV show. The twin message is as comforting as it is mad. Ignore those creeping fears that we have finally hit the wall. There are still no limits. There will always be another frontier. So stop worrying and keep shopping. Now, would that this were just about Sarah Palin and her reality TV show. In environmental circles, we often hear that, rather than shifting to renewables, we are continuing with business as usual. This assessment, unfortunately, is far too optimistic. The truth is that we have already exhausted so much of the easily accessible fossil fuels that we have already entered a far riskier business era, the era of extreme energy. So that means drilling for oil in the deepest water, including the icy Arctic seas, where a clean-up may simply be impossible. It means large-scale hydraulic fracking for gas and massive strip-mining operations for coal, the likes of which we haven't yet seen. And most controversially, it means the tar sands. I'm always surprised by how little people outside of Canada know about the Alberta Tar Sands, which this year are projected to become the number one source of imported oil to the United States. It's worth taking a moment to understand this practice, because I believe it speaks to recklessness and the path we're on like little else. So this is where the tar sands live, under one of the last magnificent Boreal forests. The oil is not liquid. You can't just drill a hole and pump it out. Tar sand's oil is solid, mixed in with the soil. So to get at it, you first have to get rid of the trees. Then, you rip off the topsoil and get at that oily sand. The process requires a huge amount of water, which is then pumped into massive toxic tailing ponds. That's very bad news for local indigenous people living downstream who are reporting alarmingly high cancer rates. Now looking at these images, it's difficult to grasp the scale of this operation, which can already be seen from space and could grow to an area the size of England. I find it helps actually to look at the dump trucks that move the earth, the largest ever built. That's a person down there by the wheel. My point is that this is not oil drilling. It's not even mining. It is terrestrial skinning. Vast, vivid landscapes are being gutted, left monochromatic gray. Now I should confess that as [far as] I'm concerned this would be an abomination if it emitted not one particle of carbon. But the truth is that, on average, turning that gunk into crude oil produces about three times more greenhouse gas pollution than it does to produce conventional oil in Canada. How else to describe this, but as a form of mass insanity? Just when we know we need to be learning to live on the surface of our planet, off the power of sun, wind and waves, we are frantically digging to get at the dirtiest, highest-emitting stuff imaginable. This is where our story of endless growth has taken us, to this black hole at the center of my country -- a place of such planetary pain that, like the BP gusher, one can only stand to look at it for so long. As Jared Diamond and others have shown us, this is how civilizations commit suicide, by slamming their foot on the accelerator at the exact moment when they should be putting on the brakes. The problem is that our master-narrative has an answer for that too. At the very last minute, we are going to get saved just like in every Hollywood movie, just like in the Rapture. But, of course, our secular religion is technology. Now, you may have noticed more and more headlines like these. The idea behind this form of "geoengineering" as it's called, is that, as the planet heats up, we may be able to shoot sulfates and aluminum particles into the stratosphere to reflect some of the sun's rays back to space, thereby cooling the planet. The wackiest plan -- and I'm not making this up -- would put what is essentially a garden hose 18-and-a-half miles high into the sky, suspended by balloons, to spew sulfur dioxide. So, solving the problem of pollution with more pollution. Think of it as the ultimate junk shot. The serious scientists involved in this research all stress that these techniques are entirely untested. They don't know if they'll work, and they have no idea what kind of terrifying side effects they could unleash. Nevertheless, the mere mention of geoengineering is being greeted in some circles, particularly media circles, with a relief tinged with euphoria. An escape hatch has been reached. A new frontier has been found. Most importantly, we don't have to change our lifestyles after all. You see, for some people, their savior is a guy in a flowing robe. For other people, it's a guy with a garden hose. We badly need some new stories. We need stories that have different kinds of heroes willing to take different kinds of risks -- risks that confront recklessness head on, that put the precautionary principle into practice, even if that means through direct action -- like hundreds of young people willing to get arrested, blocking dirty power plants or fighting mountaintop-removal coal mining. We need stories that replace that linear narrative of endless growth with circular narratives that remind us that what goes around comes around. That this is our only home. There is no escape hatch. Call it karma, call it physics, action and reaction, call it precaution -- the principle that reminds us that life is too precious to be risked for any profit. Thank you. (Applause)
我刚做了些之前从未做过的事。 我随一艘研究船在海上呆了一个礼拜。 我不是名科学家, 但我与一个来自南佛罗里达大学的 杰出的科学团队一起 在墨西哥湾工作,这个团队在 跟踪英国石油公司泄漏石油的流向。 顺便提一下,这是我们乘坐的船。 与我一起的科学家们 不是在研究在大家伙上的石油和化油剂的影响-- 比如对鸟类、海龟、 海豚和迷人风景的影响。 他们在找些很小的东西 这些小东西被更小的东西吃掉 并最终被大家伙所吞食。 他们所研究的是 跟踪石油和在植物病理学上 有高度毒性的化油剂的数量, 这是个非常坏的消息, 因为有许多的生命以此为生。 因此,与我们数月之前听到的相反 大约百分之七十五的石油 神奇的消失了, 我们不需要再担心它了, 但这场灾难仍然在蔓延。 它仍在不断向食物链上方产生影响。 现在我们对这应该不会感到奇怪了。 雷切尔·卡森-- 现代环境保护论的教母-- 早在1962年 就警告过我们。 她指出,控制人员-- 她这么称呼他们-- 用有毒性的杀虫剂如滴滴涕(DDT), 对城镇和田野进行地毯式轰炸, 仅仅是为了杀死些小东西,昆虫, 不是鸟类。 但他们忘了这些: 事实上,鸟类外出觅食, 知更鸟吃掉许多的虫子 而这些虫子体内充满了滴滴涕。 因此,知更鸟的蛋无法孵化, 鸣鸟也一起死去, 城镇陷入寂静。 这就是标题的来源“寂静的春天。” 我试着找出 是什么不断地把我拉回到墨西哥湾, 因为我是加拿大人, 我没有什么先祖情结。 并且,我认为把我拉回墨西哥湾 的是我不认为我们完全达成了共识 在这次灾难的意义上, 在它证明了我们的世界中有一个 快速裂开的裂缝上, 在它意味着数月来的每一天24小时的 电视直播中 我们观看地球上 喷涌而出的石油。 长期以来我们告诉自己 我们的工具和技术能够控制自然, 我们突然面对 我们的弱点, 我们的缺乏控制, 随着石油泄漏, 每次进行回收的尝试 -- 带帽法,顶部封杀 和,最难忘的,垃圾弹法 -- 用废旧的轮胎和旧高尔夫球 收集泄漏孔中漏出石油 的聪明点子。 但比起从那口油井中喷发出的力量 显得更为惊人的凶猛能量 是人们的鲁莽 所释放出的 如粗心大意,缺少计划, 从钻孔到清理的 操作都是如此。 如果有一件事物能让 英国石油公司的改进行动更明确有力, 那就是,作为一种文化, 我们变得绝不容忍用这些 珍贵的不可替代的 事物作为赌注 -- 在没有后备计划,收尾策略的 情况下就去做。 并且英国石油公司的这次泄油事件并不是 今年来我们第一次经历这类事件。 我们的领导者卷入战争, 用关于阅兵仪式和欢迎游行的 美好故事来麻醉自己, 而后就持续数年的致命的灾难控制, 围困和突围, 还有镇压叛乱, 并再一次的,没有收尾策略。 我们的金融天才们一再 成为过度自信的牺牲品, 说服自己这最近出现的泡沫 是一种新型的市场 -- 是那种绝不会垮掉的市场。 而当这一切不可避免的发生时, 最优秀的和最聪明的人 努力寻求金融中的“垃圾弹”-- 在这种情况下,把数量巨大的 急需的公款投入到 各种不同类型的漏洞之中。 就像英国石油公司那样,漏洞堵住了, 至少暂时堵住了, 但付出了 及其巨大的代价。 我们必须弄清楚 为什么我们一直让这类事情发生, 因为我们处在一个 要赌上全部身家的赌局之中: 关于气候变化, 决定做什么,不做什么。 如各位所知, 在这个国家和世界各国 的气候议题上 我们花费了许多时间。 关于“如果政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)的科学家全都是 错误的话怎么办?”的问题。 现在有个更恰当的问题-- 由麻州理工大学的物理学家伊芙林·福克斯·凯勒提出的-- “如果这些科学家是正确的呢?” 由于影响深远,气候危机 无疑需要我们基于 预防原则上展开行动-- 理论表明 当人类健康和环境 处于极度危险 并且当永久性伤害不可逆转时, 我们不能等待 确切的科学确认。 谨慎些总是好的。 更明显的,证明一个方法 是否是安全的责任, 这不应由公众承担,这样是有害的, 它应该由获得利益的行业来承担。 但发达国家的气候政策-- 如果有这样的政策存在的话-- 并不是基于预防的。 而是基于成本收益分析-- 找出那些经济学家们认为 对我们的GDP影响 最小的行动方式。 而不是依照可能需要的预防问 我们需要尽快做些什么 以避免潜在的灾难, 我们问些奇怪的问题,如: “在我们开始真正的降低排放之前, 我们能坚持到什么时候? 我们能推迟到2020年, 2030年,2050年?” 或者我们问, “我们能让这个地球再升温多少, 而我们还能幸存? 再提高两度,三度,或者-- 在现在的基础上-- 再提高四摄氏度?” 顺便一提, 假设我们能安全的控制地球 那了不起的复杂的气候系统, 就像它有了一个自动调温器, 让这个星期不太热,也不太冷, 温度正合适 -- 适合居住的风格 -- 这完全是想象, 不是来自气候科学家的想象; 它来自经济学家把 他们的思考方式强加于 科学之上。 事实上我们并不知道 在何时地球的循环系统 将完全无法承受 我们制造的全球变暖。 那么再一次地, 为什么我们要用我们宝贵的事物 来冒如此巨大的风险呢? 现在你脑中也许会蹦出 一堆的解释, 比如,贪婪。 这是个常见的解释,并且也有许多证据表明这点。 因为正如我们所知,承担巨大风险 意味着巨大的收益。 另一个大家常听到的对不顾后果的行为的解释 是傲慢。 而贪婪和傲慢 紧密的交织在一起, 尤其是谈到不顾一切时。 例如,如果你是名35岁的银行家 比脑外科医生的收入多 100倍以上, 接着你需要一个叙事技巧, 需要一个故事让 这一差距合理化。 实际上你没有太多的选择。 你不但是个技艺高超的骗子, 你能解决问题-- 你瞒天过海 -- 你是个天才, 是那种世上绝无仅有的天才。 这些选项-- 天才和骗子 -- 将让你过于自信 并由此在未来 更倾向于冒更大的风险。 顺便说一下,托尼·海沃德,英国石油公司的前任CEO, 在他的办公桌上 有个雕刻着鼓舞人心的口号标语: “如果你知道你不会失败, 那你会尝试去做什么?” 目前这是个很受欢迎的标语, 并且有不少追随者, 我打赌你们中就有人信奉这一标语。 别害羞。 把对失败的恐惧抛到脑后 是件很好的事, 如果你进行铁人三项的训练 或是准备一个TED演讲时, 但我个人认为,有能力引爆 我们的经济、破坏我们的生态的人们 最好还是在墙上挂 一幅伊卡洛斯的画, 因为 -- 也许这不是特别的一幅画 -- 但我希望永远都考虑到 失败的可能性。 目前我们有了贪婪, 过度自信/傲慢, 但由于我们来到了TEDWomen, 让我们考虑下另一个因素, 一个能在一些小方面对抗 社会上不顾后果的方式。 现在我不打算痛斥这一点, 但研究显示,作为投资者, 女性冒不顾后果的风险的 可能性要小于男性, 正是因为如此,也如我们曾听过的, 在同样情况下女性比男性 更不易遭遇过度自信的问题。 因此我们发现 获得较少的收入和赞美 也有它的优点 -- 至少对社会来说如此。 与之相反的另一面是 你不断被告知 你有天赋,是天定的 生下来就注定要统治 这明显对社会有负面影响。 而这一问题 -- 称之特权的危险 -- 我认为,让我们离 我们群体不顾后果的根本原因更近了。 因为我们中没人 -- 至少在北半球没有 -- 不论是男性还是女性, 能完全避免这些信息。 这就是我所谈论的。 无论我们是积极的相信它们 还是有意识的抵制它们, 我们的文化中保持了 一些典型的故事, 其中讲述了我们是如何的优于 其他人,优于自然。 新发现的前沿和 征服者先锋的故事, 天命的故事, 和启示录和救赎的故事。 并且等你认为这些故事消失在历史长河中, 我们都已经把它们遗忘了的时候, 它们会在最奇特的地方蹦出来。 例如,我在堪萨斯城机场的 女洗手间外面 无意中看到了这个广告。 这是摩托罗拉一款新手机的广告, 是的,上面确实是这样写的, “给自然之母一个耳光。” 我展示这个广告不是为了指责摩托罗拉 -- 这只是个意外。 我展示它是因为 -- 他们不是始作俑者,不是么? -- 因为,以其自己的方式呈现的, 这广告是我们发展史的 一个粗鲁的版本。 我们粗暴的对待自然之母,并胜利了。 我们总是胜利, 因为支配自然是我们的使命。 但我们关于自然的童话不仅仅只是支配自然。 还有另一个同样重要的, 关于自然之母是 如此的富饶、如此的富有韧性, 以至于我们绝不可能削弱她的富饶。 让我们再听听托尼·海沃德所说的。 “墨西哥湾是个非常辽阔的海洋。 我们投入其中的石油和化油剂的数量 相对于水容量总数来说非常微小。” 换句话说,海洋是辽阔的; 她能承受这一切。 这是对无限的潜在假设, 这使我们进行不计后果地 冒险成为可能。 因为这是我们实时的主流舆论: 无论我们陷入怎样的困境, 总会有更多的 -- 更多的水源,更多的土地, 更多的未使用的资源。 新的泡沫会替代旧的泡沫。 新的科技将会出现, 收拾我们用上一项科技造成的烂摊子。 在某种程度上,这就是 美洲定居者的故事, 美洲拥有无穷尽的疆土 因此欧洲人逃向这里。 这也是现代资本主义的故事。 因为是来自这片土地的财富 成就了我们的经济系统, 如果没有不断的成长 无穷尽的新开拓者, 这一系统则无法幸存。 现在问题是 这类故事总是谎言。 地球永远都存在极限, 只是我们看不见它。 目前我们在许多方面 都接近了这些极限。 我相信大家都知道这点, 然而我们发现自己陷入了某种叙事轮回之中。 我们不仅继续讲述和重述 同样的老掉牙的故事, 而且我们现在做的 更加狂热和疯狂, 说实在的,趋于分裂。 不然怎么解释莎拉·佩林Sarah Palin 所充斥的文化空间呢? 现在一方面, 敦促我们“钻油 宝贝 钻油,” 因为上帝把这些资源埋在地下 那就是让我们去开采它们, 另一方面,在她受欢迎的 真人秀节目中她又赞颂阿拉斯加 那原始的野性之美。 这矛盾的信息让人欣慰也让人疯狂。 忽视这些蔓延的恐惧 我们终会碰壁。 这开发仍然没有极限。 总会有另一片新疆土。 因此停止担忧继续挥霍。 现实要是如这 莎拉·佩林和她的真人秀节目就好了。 在环保领域内, 我们常听到我们继续保持原状, 而不是转变为使用可再生能源。 不幸的是,这一评估 太过乐观了。 事实是,我们已经耗尽了 如此多的易得的矿物燃料 以至于我们已经进入了 极具风险的时代, 极端能源的时代。 因此这意味着在最深的水中钻油, 包括冰冷的北冰洋, 在那儿清理油污基本上是不可能的。 这意味着大型的水力破裂法来开发天然气 和大规模的露天开矿采煤, 还有其他我们没见过的方法来大力开发。 而最具争议的是焦油砂。 我总是对加拿大之外 只有非常少的人知道 阿尔伯达焦油砂感到惊奇, 而在今年从焦油砂提炼出的石油 将成为美国进口石油 来源的首位。 值得花些时间来理解这一开采过程, 因为我相信从中能看出我们的不计后果 和我们所通行的道路, 而没有其他的。 这就是焦油砂所在的地方, 在最后的富饶的 北方森林之下。 这石油不是液体; 不能仅仅是钻个空就能把它抽出来。 焦油砂中的石油是固态的, 与土壤混合在一起。 因此要得到其中的石油, 首先要去除那些树木。 然后再移除上层土壤 并得到富含石油的沙粒。 这一过程需要大量的水, 然后废水被排入大型的有毒矿渣坑。 这对居住在下游的当地土著居民来说 是个坏消息, 他们有很高的癌症发病率。 现在来看看这些图片, 很难了解这种作业的规模, 这已经可以从太空中看到 并扩展为英格兰大小的区域。 我发现看看那些运送泥土的 有史以来最大的自动倾卸卡车, 能帮助了解其规模。 轮子下面是一个人。 我的观点是 这不是石油开采, 甚至不是采矿。 这是在破坏地表。 大量的富有生气的风景 被摧毁, 留下单调的灰色。 现在,我应该承认,在我看来 这是令人厌恶的, 即使它不会有任何碳排放。 但事实是,平均来说 把这黏糊糊的东西变成原油 会产生比加拿大常规的产油方式 三倍以上的温室气体 排放。 不然怎么解释这些, 只是一种集体疯狂的方式吗? 当我们知道我们需要学习 如何居住在我们地球的表面, 依赖于太阳、风和潮汐的能量时, 我们正疯狂的挖掘, 为了得到可想象到的最肮脏 最具污染性的东西。 这就是我们无尽成长的故事 带我们所到的地方, 我的国家中心的这个黑洞 -- 我们地球的伤痛 如英石油公司的石油泄漏, 我们只能站在一旁长久的观看。 如贾德‧戴蒙(Jared Diamond)和其他人展示给我们的, 这就是文明如何走向自我毁灭, 在应该踩刹车 的时候 自己却猛踩油门。 问题是我们的主流舆论 已经对此有了答案。 在最后一刻,我们会得到拯救, 就像每个好莱坞电影中那样, 就像电影全神贯注(the Rapture)中那样。 当然,我们世俗的信仰是科技。 现在你也许已经注意到 越来越多的这类头条新闻。 这种被称为地球工程学的背后的观点 是,当地球变暖问题上升时, 我们应该能发射硫酸盐和铝粒子 至同温层 并把一些太阳光 反射回太空, 以此降低地球的温度。 最疯狂的计划是 -- 这不是我瞎编的 -- 将一根橡胶软管放入 十八点五英里长的高空, 由气球支撑, 用于排放二氧化硫。 这样是用更多的污染来解决污染问题。 把这看作终极垃圾弹。 这项研究中的严肃的科学家们 都强调这些技术还 完全没有经过测试。 他们不知道这是否能起作用, 并且他们也不知道 这会产生什么样可怕的副作用。 尽管如此,在某些圈子里一提到 地球工程学就会获得欢呼 -- 尤其是媒体圈 -- 如释重负似的,还带着陶醉感。 我们已经找到一个逃脱方案, 也发现了一个新的领域。 更重要的是, 毕竟我们不需要改变我们的生活方式了。 对一些人来说, 他们的救世主穿着飘逸的长袍。 对另一些人而言,他们的救世主则手握着橡皮软管。 我们极度需要些新的故事。 我们需要各种各样的英雄故事 这些英雄愿意承担不同类型的风险 -- 能够不计后果地应对风险, 并能把预防原则带入实践之中, 即使这要通过直接行动 -- 比如数百个年轻人由于 围堵高污染电厂或 反对山顶开采煤矿而被逮捕。 我们需要这些故事, 它们能用循环叙事来代替 无尽成长的线性叙事, 这提醒我们 种什么因,得什么果, 地球是我们唯一的家园; 没有什么逃脱方案。 称之为因果报应也好,称之为自然哲学也好, 作用与反作用,称之为预防: 这一原则提醒我们 生命太珍贵了,不能拿它冒险 来换取任何利益。 谢谢大家。 (掌声)