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  3. The slow greening of world opinion has focused thus far on the problems of the physical environment, notably climate change, pol

The slow greening of world opinion has focused thus far on the problems of the physical environment, notably climate change, pol

admin2013-08-15  58
问题     The slow greening of world opinion has focused thus far on the problems of the physical environment, notably climate change, pollution, and consumption of nonrenewable resources.【F1】Priority is granted to the short-term needs of human beings, and that of course is as it should be. But might we now balance the agenda by paying more attention to the rest of life? Here is a rule of thumb in planet management to consider: if you save the living environment, comprising plants, animals, and microorganisms, you will automatically save the physical environment. But if you save only the physical environment, you will ultimately lose both. Humanity lives not just on the surface of planet Earth. We also, and above all, live in the biosphere.【F2】This film of life, abounding with millions of different kinds of organisms, is so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise when viewed from a space shuttle. Yet it is our cradle and our only home, blessed with the unique and delicate conditions necessary for human existence. To travel outside the biosphere, even a little bit and for a short period of time, requires the most advanced engineering we can devise, and even then it is always dangerous.
    Other species are not just fellow inhabitants of Earth’s fair environment.【F3】They create and maintain it far from the physical and chemical state the planet would be in if it were lifeless. Humanity absolutely requires a healthy biosphere for a simple reason: we evolved over millions of years to fit the exact conditions it provides, and no other.
    The natural world we are now destroying with such cheerful abandon purifies and efficiently distributes our fresh water it creates and constantly renews our soil; it channels the great cycles of materials and energy; it sustains whatever climatic stability we have not yet bothered; and it manufactures the very air we breathe.【F4】All these services together have been estimated to equal in dollar value the summed Gross Domestic Products of every country in the world combined, and is given to our species free of cost.
    Humanity could, in theory at least, continue to exist on the handful of domestic plants and animals it now uses, plus a tightly regulated marine catch, but it would be a poor and biologically unstable world.【F5】A planet thus humanized would then be literally a spaceship, with all the warmth and security of the little ones we currently keep in orbit.
【F2】
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答案由数百万种不同种类的有机物充斥的这一“生命膜”极其微薄，以至于从航天飞机上无法看到其侧面。
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