2019年考研英语二阅读理解Text4全文翻译

　　Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dia Mirza and Adrian Grenier have a message for you: It’s easy to beat plastic.（阿诺德·施瓦辛格、迪亚·米尔扎和阿德里安·格雷尼尔有个发给你的信息：打败塑料很容易。）They’re part of a bunch of celebrities starring in a new video for World Environment Day---encouraging you, the consumer, to swap out your single-use plastic staples to combat the plastics crisis.（他们是在新视频世界环境日中众多明星中的部分人员——鼓励消费者取消使用一次性塑料制品来应对塑料危机。）

　　The key messages that have been put together for World Environment Day do include a call for governments to enact legislation to curb single-use plastics.（这些关键信息集中在世界环境日中包括号召政府通过立法去限制一次性使用的塑料制品。）But the overarching message is directed at individuals.（但是首要信息是直接针对个人的。）

　　My concern with leaving it up to the individual, however, is our limited sense of what needs to be achieved.（当然，我认为把这件事留给个人是我们对于需要实现的目标认知的有限性。）On their own, taking our own bags to the grocery store or quitting plastic straws, for example, will accomplish little and require very little of us.（对他们而言，例如带上自己的袋子去杂货店或者不使用塑料吸管，这将收效甚微并且对我们的要求也非常低。）They could even be harmful, satisfying a need to have “done our bit” without ever progressing onto bigger, bolder, more effective actions---a kind of “moral licensing” that eases our concerns and stops us doing more and asking more of those in charge.（他们甚至可能是有害的，满足了一种“我已经能尽力了”而没有进行更大的、更大胆的、更有效的行动——一种“道德许可”减轻我们的担忧并停止了我们向那些负责人提出更多要求。）

　　While the conversation around our environment and our responsibility toward it remains centered on shopping bags and straws, we’re ignoring the balance of power that implies that as “consumers” we must shop sustainably, rather than as “citizens” hold our governments and industries to account to push for real systemic change.（当这个讨论围绕着环境和我们的责任指向仍然集中在购物袋和吸管上面，我们忽视了权力的多边平衡，就是作为“消费者”我们必须做到可持续购物，而不是作为“公民”去把持我们的政府和产业去承当真正系统性的改变。）

　　It’s important to acknowledge that the environment isn’t everyone’s priority---or even most people’s.（重要是要承认，环境不是每一个人的特权——甚至不是大多数人的特权。）We shouldn’t expect it to be.（我们不应该有此期待。）In her latest book, Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things, Elizabeth R. DeSombre argues that the best way to collectively change the behavior of large numbers of people is for the change to be structural.（伊丽莎白·R·德桑布雷在她最新发布的书《为什么好人会破坏环境》中论证集体改变人们大量的行为最好的方式是结构化改变。）

　　This might mean implementing policy such as a plastic tax that adds a cost to environmentally problematic action, or banning single-use plastics altogether.（这可能意味着实施诸如塑料税之类的政策以增加环境问题行动的费用，或者干脆完全禁止一次性塑料制品。）India has just announced it will “eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022”.（印度已经宣布截止2022年全国将废除所有的一次性塑料制品。）There are also incentive-based ways of making better environmental choices easier, such as ensuring recycling is at least as easy as trash disposal.（还有一些基于激励使环境变得更好的方式选择起来更容易，例如使得回收变得跟垃圾处理一样容易。）

　　DeSombre isn’t saying people should stop caring about the environment.（德桑布雷没有说人们应该停止关心环境。）It’s just that individual actions are too slow, she says, for that to be the only, or even primary, approach to changing widespread behavior.（她说，如果只是个人行是改变普遍行为的唯一方式或者是主要方式的话，那太慢了。）

　　None of this is about writing off the individual.（写的这些并不是否定个人行为。）It’s just about putting things into perspective.（只是把事情放入正确的角度。）We don’t have time to wait.（我们没有时间去等了。）We need progressive policies that shape collective action, alongside engaged citizens pushing for change.（我们需要塑造集体行动的先进政策，与敬业的公民一起推动变革。）

　　是故学然后知不足，教然后知困。举报/反馈