2_Unit 8_B_Excerpts from Silent Spring

精选文库Unit 8 _Text B Excerpts from Silent SpringThe history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earths vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one speciesmanacquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.地球上生命的历史一直是生物及其周围环境相互作用的历史。可以说在很大程度上，地球上植物和动物的自然形态和习性都是由环境塑造成的。就地球时间的整个阶段而言，生命改造环境的反作用实际上一直是相对微小的。仅仅在出现了生命新种人类之后，生命才具有了改造其周围大自然的异常能力。During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all mans assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable;在过去的四分之一世纪里，这种力量不仅在数量上增长到产生骚扰的程度，而且发生了质的变化。在人对环境的所有袭击中最令人震惊的是空气、土地、河流以及大海受到了危险的、甚至致命物质的污染。这种污染在很大程度上是难以恢复的。the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the worldthe very nature of its life. Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown there, and in time takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death.它不仅进入了生命赖以生存的世界，而且也进入了生物组织内。这一邪恶的环链在很大程度上是无法逆转的。在当前这种环境的普遍污染中，在改变大自然及其生命本性的过程中，化学药品起着有害的作用，它们至少可以与放射性危害相提并论。在核爆炸中所释放出的锶90，会随着雨水和飘尘争先恐后地降落到地面，停驻在土壤里，然后进入其生长的草、谷物或小麦里，并不断进入到人类的骨头里，它将一直保留在那儿，直到完全衰亡。Similarly, chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the magical of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.同样地，被撒向农田、森林和菜园里的化学药品也长期地存在于土壤里，然后进入生物的组织中，并在一个引起中毒和死亡的环链中不断传递迁移。有时它们随着地下水流神秘地转移，等到它们再度显现出来时，它们会在空气和太阳光的作用下结合成为新的形式，这种新物质可以杀伤植物和家畜，使那些曾经长期饮用井水的人们受到不知不觉的伤害。正如阿伯特济慈所说： “人们恰恰很难辨认自己创造出的魔鬼。It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the eartheons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Certain rocks gave out dangerous radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. Given timetime not in years but in millennialife adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time.为了产生现在居住于地球上的生命已用去了千百万年，在这个时间里，不断发展、进化和演变着的生命与其周围环境达到了一个协调和平衡的状态。在有着严格构成和支配生命的环境中，包含着对生命有害和有益的元素。一些岩石放射出危险的射线，甚至在所有生命从中获取能量的太阳光中也包含着具有伤害能力的短波射线。生命要调整它原有的平衡所需要的时间不是以年计而是以千年计。时间是根本的因素，但是现今的世界变化之速已来不及调整。The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the rush and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is no longer merely the background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic rays, the ultraviolet of the sun that have existed before there was any life on earth; radiation is now the unnatural creation of mans interfere with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of mans inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature.新情况产生的速度和变化之快已反映出人们激烈而轻率的步伐胜过了大自然的从容步态。放射性远在地球上还没有任何生命以前就已经存在于岩石放射性本底、宇宙射线爆炸和太阳紫外线中了；现在的放射性是人们干预原子时的人工创造。生命在本身调整中所遭遇的化学物质再也远远不仅是从岩石里冲刷出来的和由江河带到大海去的钙、硅、铜以及其他的无机物了，它们是人们发达的头脑在实验室里所创造的人工合成物，而这些东西在自然界是没有对应物的。To adjust to these chemicals would require time on the scale that is natures; it would require not merely the years of a mans life but the life of generations. And even this, were it by some miracle possible, would be futile, for the new chemicals come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone. The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience. 在大自然的尺度来看，去适应这些化学物质是需要漫长时间的：它不仅需要一个人的终生，而且需要许多代。即使借助于某些奇迹使这种调整成为可能也是无济于事的，因为新的化学物质像涓涓溪流不断地从我们的实验室里涌出，单是在美国，每一年几乎有500种化学合成物付诸应用。这些数字令人震惊，并且其未来含义也难以预测。想象一下人和动物的身体每年都要千方百计地去适应500种这样的化学物质，而这些化学物质完全都是生物未曾经验过的。Among them are many that are used in mans war against nature. Since the mid-1940s over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as pests; and they are sold under several thousand different brand names. 这些化学物质中，有许多曾应用于人对自然的战争中，从 19世纪40年代中期以来，200多种基本的化学物品被创造出来用于杀死昆虫、野草、啮齿动物和其他一些用现代俗语称之为 “害虫”的生物。这些化学物品是以几千种不同的商品名称出售的。These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homesnonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the good and the bad, to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soilall this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called insecticides, but biocides.这些喷雾器、药粉和喷洒药水现在几乎已普遍地被农场、果园、森林和家庭所采用，这些没有选择性的化学药品具有杀死每一种“好的”和“坏的”昆虫的力量，它们使得鸟儿的歌唱和鱼儿在河水里的欢跃静息下来，使树叶披上一层致命的薄膜，并长期滞留在土壤里造成这一切的本来的目的可能仅仅是为了少数杂草和昆虫。谁能相信在地球表面上撒放有毒的烟雾弹怎么可能不给所有生命带来危害呢？它们不应该叫做“杀虫剂”，而应称为“杀生剂”。The whole process of spraying seems caught up in an endless spiral. Since DDT was released for civilian use, a process of escalation has been going on in which ever more toxic materials must be found. This has happened because insects, in a triumphant vindication of Darwins principle of the survival of the fittest, have evolved super races immune to the particular insecticide used, hence a deadlier one has always to be developedand then a deadlier one than that. It has happened also because, for reasons to be described later, destructive insects often undergo a flareback, or resurgence, after spraying, in numbers greater than before. Thus the chemical war is never won, and all life is caught in it