今天的TIME杂志网站的头版头条：中国的污染现状！

原文网址：http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/2 ... r=1&oref=slogin
由于篇幅很长，只给出了第一页的原文和中文翻译（自己翻译的，有不恰当的请高手指教），有兴趣的可到时代杂志网站浏览。

摘要：
BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.
China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.
“It is a very awkward situation for the country because our greatest achievement is also our biggest burden,” says Wang Jinnan, one of China’s leading environmental researchers. “There is pressure for change, but many people refuse to accept that we need a new approach so soon.”
China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.
More pressing still, China has entered the most robust stage of its industrial revolution, even as much of the outside world has become preoccupied with global warming.
Experts once thought China might overtake the United States as the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International Energy Agency has said China could become the emissions leader by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed that level.
For the Communist Party, the political calculus is daunting. Reining in economic growth to alleviate pollution may seem logical, but the country’s authoritarian system is addicted to fast growth. Delivering prosperity placates the public, provides spoils for well-connected officials and forestalls demands for political change. A major slowdown could incite social unrest, alienate business interests and threaten the party’s rule.
But pollution poses its own threat. Officials blame fetid air and water for thousands of episodes of social unrest. Health care costs have climbed sharply. Severe water shortages could turn more farmland into desert. And the unconstrained expansion of energy-intensive industries creates greater dependence on imported oil and dirty coal, meaning that environmental problems get harder and more expensive to address the longer they are unresolved.
China’s leaders recognize that they must change course. They are vowing to overhaul the growth-first philosophy of the Deng Xiaoping era and embrace a new model that allows for steady growth while protecting the environment. In his equivalent of a State of the Union address this year, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made 48 references to “environment,” “pollution” or “environmental protection.”
The government has numerical targets for reducing emissions and conserving energy. Export subsidies for polluting industries have been phased out. Different campaigns have been started to close illegal coal mines and shutter some heavily polluting factories. Major initiatives are under way to develop clean energy sources like solar and wind power. And environmental regulation in Beijing, Shanghai and other leading cities has been tightened ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

中文：中国发展的规模和速度就如其经济控制力一样举世无双，因此中国的污染问题也达到了空前的规模。现今的环境退化已非常严重，伴随着本国和国际上严厉的反响，污染不仅是中国公众肩膀上的一个主要负担，而且也是中国***统治所面临的一个急剧的政治挑战！中国现（是否）能控制住其自身的经济神话，（在这点上）还不是很明朗。
公众的健康也是摇晃不定（的因素）。卫生部长说，污染问题现成为了照成国人死亡原因中的一个肿瘤。单单只是周围的空气污染就造成了每年成千上万的人死亡，有接近5亿的居民不能饮用到符合安全（标准）的水源。
中国城市经常被一种”有剧毒的裹尸布“所包围。在这个国家的5.6亿城市居民中仅有1%的居民能呼吸到符合欧盟安全标准的空气。北京现正在”狂热的“的寻找一个”魔幻般的方案“，为其2008奥运会清洁北京的天空。
环境问题的悲哀在一些国家被视为是大灾难，在中国也一样：那些住在工业城市的居民很少看见太阳；儿童因铅中毒或其他的局部污染而死亡或生病；海岸线因海藻红潮变成了沼泽从而海洋的大部分已不在能够维持海洋生物（的生存）。
中国正在被自己的成就闷的喘不过气来（沾沾自喜）。经济正在以一个历史性的脚步，两位数的发展速度前进。但是经济发展的源头，现在比其近代史的任一时间都要（依靠的）更多，从另人惊鄂的重工业和城市化进程的扩张，几乎都要（依靠）煤这种最能轻易获取且最脏的能源。
中国权威环境研究组成员-王金楠（音译）指出：”对于这个国家来说情况非常窘迫，因为我们最大的成就也是我们最大的负担。转变就要有压力，但是许多人却拒绝接受这一点，我们急需一个全新的办法（来解决）。“
中国的问题现已变成了世界的问题。因中国的火电发电厂所排出的二氧化硫和氢化硫的喷泉般的扩散已照成了首尔和东京下起了酸雨。[这点笔者不同意，韩国和日本也有大量火电厂，它们也不都是核电厂，怎么都能怪中国，日啊]，据地球物理研究杂志说，在中国的许多微尘污染也超过了洛杉机。
更多的压力还在继续，中国已进入了其工业转变最强盛的时代，（然而）世界上的大多数国家却已开拾关注全球变暖问题了。[日啊，我们中国也关注啊，老美你看不见吗？]
专家们曾经认为中国可能在2010年或稍后的几年中，承担就如今天的美国这个世界温室气体排放的头号”生产商“所承担的责任。不过现在，国际能源组织说，中国将在今年末成为世界温室气体排放的领头羊。荷兰环境评估机构说，中国早已经超过了这个水平了。
对于***来说，政治的结石是令人畏缩的。控制经济增长的同时减少污染看似合乎逻辑，但是国家的官方已对经济的飞速发展上瘾。对人民大众只传达了繁荣景象的安抚[真是切合实际，真象新闻联播，报喜不报忧]，破坏了官员之间的良好的沟通，阻止了关于政治改革的要求（的提出）。
污染摆出了其拥有的威胁姿态。官员们指责脏水和恶臭的空气，因为这是（造成）千上万的社会动荡不安状态。卫生保健的成本急剧上升，严重的淡水短缺使越来越多的耕田变成沙漠。能源集中工业的无限制扩张越来越依靠石油进口和肮脏的煤炭，这就意味着环境问题变的越来越槽糕并且进行解决那些未解决的问题的成本越高，时间越长。
中国的领导人认识到了他们应该转变思想了。他们发誓检查“邓小平时代”那种”发展第一“的哲学思想，包括建立一个全新的，在保护环境的前提下稳定经济增长的模式。温加宝总理在今年的国情咨文中涉及了48个有关”环境“”污染”“环境保护”（的词语）。
中国政府制订了众多的为减少排放和保存能源的目标。对于污染工业的出口津贴要逐步取消，全国各种不同的组织开始关闭非法煤矿和粉碎一些重污染工厂。在这种情况下，主要的主动性用来发展诸如太阳能和风能等清洁能源，并且在2008年奥运会前期，北京，上海和其他中心城市环境治理掀的尤为紧迫。。。。。。。。

好了，就翻这么多吧，前部文章比较激进，后面感情色彩就好了，可能这也是老美的写作风格，呵呵！

汗啊,是NYtime啊,纽约时报啊,看标题还以为是time杂志呢.........
那张图有点恐怖啊.....那种情况deadly extreme.......
篇幅还真的超长,有6页....现在很少看这个了,看起来比较费时......
楼主翻译这么多用了多久?

呵呵，是NYtime啊,纽约时报啊,看标题还以为是time杂志呢.........

是啊，是纽约时代，不是那个TIMES，呵呵。我只翻了一页的，连打字（老是打错）花了2个小时，累死我了！

Yet most of the government’s targets for energy efficiency, as well as improving air and water quality, have gone unmet. And there are ample signs that the leadership is either unwilling or unable to make fundamental changes.

Land, water, electricity, oil and bank loans remain relatively inexpensive, even for heavy polluters. Beijing has declined to use the kind of tax policies and market-oriented incentives for conservation that have worked well in Japan and many European countries.

Provincial officials, who enjoy substantial autonomy, often ignore environmental edicts, helping to reopen mines or factories closed by central authorities. Over all, enforcement is often tinged with corruption. This spring, officials in Yunnan Province in southern China beautified Laoshou Mountain, which had been used as a quarry, by spraying green paint over acres of rock.

President Hu Jintao’s most ambitious attempt to change the culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known as “Green G.D.P.,” was an effort to create an environmental yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or G.D.P., to reflect the cost of pollution.

But the early results were so sobering — in some provinces the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to zero — that the project was banished to China’s ivory tower this spring and stripped of official influence.

Chinese leaders argue that the outside world is a partner in degrading the country’s environment. Chinese manufacturers that dump waste into rivers or pump smoke into the sky make the cheap products that fill stores in the United States and Europe. Often, these manufacturers subcontract for foreign companies — or are owned by them. In fact, foreign investment continues to rise as multinational corporations build more factories in China. Beijing also insists that it will accept no mandatory limits on its carbon dioxide emissions, which would almost certainly reduce its industrial growth. It argues that rich countries caused global warming and should find a way to solve it without impinging on China’s development.

Indeed, Britain, the United States and Japan polluted their way to prosperity and worried about environmental damage only after their economies matured and their urban middle classes demanded blue skies and safe drinking water.

But China is more like a teenage smoker with emphysema. The costs of pollution have mounted well before it is ready to curtail economic development. But the price of business as usual — including the predicted effects of global warming on China itself — strikes many of its own experts and some senior officials as intolerably high.

“Typically, industrial countries deal with green problems when they are rich,” said Ren Yong, a climate expert at the Center for Environment and Economy in Beijing. “We have to deal with them while we are still poor. There is no model for us to follow.”

In the face of past challenges, the Communist Party has usually responded with sweeping edicts from Beijing. Some environmentalists say they hope the top leadership has now made pollution control such a high priority that lower level officials will have no choice but to go along, just as Deng Xiaoping once forced China’s sluggish bureaucracy to fixate on growth.

But the environment may end up posing a different political challenge. A command-and-control political culture accustomed to issuing thundering directives is now under pressure, even from people in the ruling party, to submit to oversight from the public, for which pollution has become a daily — and increasingly deadly — reality.

Perpetual Haze

During the three decades since Deng set China on a course toward market-style growth, rapid industrialization and urbanization have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and made the country the world’s largest producer of consumer goods. But there is little question that growth came at the expense of the country’s air, land and water, much of it already degraded by decades of Stalinist economic planning that emphasized the development of heavy industries in urban areas.

中文：
中国大多数关于能源，改善空气和淡水质量的目标，是难已满足现状的。有很充足的例子来表明中国领导人既是出自不情愿的也是不能够作出根本上的转变。
土地，淡水，电力，石油和银行贷款仍旧相对的不重要，甚至是重污染源。北京拒绝使用税收政策和市场导向等方法来保护环境，然而这些办法已经在日本和众多的欧洲国家运行良好。
那些只认同真正的自治政治的省级官员们，经常忽略了环境法令，并且帮助重开那些被中央政府已关闭的矿山或工厂。毕竟，执行力常常在腐败面前淡化了其原有的力量。今年春天，中国南部云南省的官员为了美化老首山，费劲心思的找办法，竟然往成片的山石上泼绿色油漆。
今年，胡锦涛主席雄心勃勃，他试图转变这种崩溃的快速发展的文化。这个工程被称为“绿色G.D.P，为了评价中国每一个官员的成绩，它就是环境标准准绳。它重新计算了全国的总产出，或G.D.P,从而出反映污染的成本代价。
但是近期的结果是如此的清晰（在一些省的污染调控增长率几乎减少到零），以至于这个工程在今春被中国的“象牙塔“所废除，并剥夺了官方的影响。
中国领导人认为外部世界仅是一个降低国家环境问题的伙伴。那些倾倒废水和向空气中排放烟尘的中国工厂制造了大量的充满美国和欧洲的便宜商品。这些工厂经常是外国公司的次级合同商，或者是完全拥有这些工厂。事实上，外国投资持续增加就如跨国公司在中国国内开设了更多的工厂。北京方面也坚持认为它接受了在其排放二氧化碳问题上的无命令性的限制，几乎一定会减少其工业增长。它认为是发达国家引发了全球变暖，应该找出一条既能解决问题又不影响中国发展的办法。
的确，英国，美国和日本破坏了他们的环境而得到繁荣，现在他们仅仅担心经济成熟和他们的城市中产阶级要求兰色天空和安全的饮用水后的环境破坏问题。
但是中国更象是一个患有肺气肿的却吸烟的年轻人，在它准备缩减经济发展前，污染的成本代价是增长的。但是照常商业的价格（包括在中国自身上的全球变暖可预知的影响）以难以承受力量打击了许多的本国专家和一些资深的官员。
“一般地，只有等工业国家变的富有以后才能处理绿色问题“，北京环境与经济中心的一个气候专家，仁红说，当我们很贫困时处理绿色问题，我们不遵从这种模式。
在过去面临挑战时，共产党经常会用从北京发布红头文件的方式来做出回应。一些环境专家说他们希望高层领导人能够把污染控制看做是一种高度的降低标准的特权，官员将会无法选择只能赞同，就象邓小平曾经强迫中国的行动迟缓的官僚机构集中注意力在经济增长上。
但是环境问题会以一个不同的政治挑战的姿态而结束。一个命令控制的政治文化适用于迅速颁发指令的文化，现在这种文化也饱受批评，从执政党的人群，到遵守从公众的检查，因为污染已经变成了一个日常的，越来越致命的现实。

永恒的迷惑
在邓小平开始使中国朝向市场（经济）模式发展的30年中，快速发展的工业和城市化进程已经改变了数千万中国人的贫困生活，也造就了中国成为世界上最大的消费资料生产商。但是毫无疑问的是以牺牲国家的空气，土地和水为代价的，这些资源已经因为执行了数十年的斯大林式的计划经济而退化，（因为）斯大林式的计划经济只强调了在城市的区域内发展重工业。

会不会影响08奥运形象啊

原帖由 冬日里的夏天 于 2007-8-27 10:48 AM 发表
会不会影响08奥运形象啊

老大，形象算什么？
又想搞个面子工程？？？？？
难道形象好了，国家的实力就上去了吗？再说也总有被戳穿的一天！美国就是搞了形象国力才如此昌盛？
最讨厌这种头脑简单的。。。

好像火气大了点啊。。
楼主的E文牛啊！！厉害

半岛打败了cnn
阿拉伯人有了话语权
什么时候中国也能让华人有话语权啊

For air quality, a major culprit is coal, on which China relies for about two-thirds of its energy needs. It has abundant supplies of coal and already burns more of it than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. But even many of its newest coal-fired power plants and industrial furnaces operate inefficiently and use pollution controls considered inadequate in the West.

Expanding car ownership, heavy traffic and low-grade gasoline have made autos the leading source of air pollution in major Chinese cities. Only 1 percent of China’s urban population of 560 million now breathes air considered safe by the European Union, according to a World Bank study of Chinese pollution published this year. One major pollutant contributing to China’s bad air is particulate matter, which includes concentrations of fine dust, soot and aerosol particles less than 10 microns in diameter (known as PM 10).

The level of such particulates is measured in micrograms per cubic meter of air. The European Union stipulates that any reading above 40 micrograms is unsafe. The United States allows 50. In 2006, Beijing’s average PM 10 level was 141, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. Only Cairo, among world capitals, had worse air quality as measured by particulates, according to the World Bank.

Emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal and fuel oil, which can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well as acid rain, are increasing even faster than China’s economic growth. In 2005, China became the leading source of sulfur dioxide pollution globally, the State Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA, reported last year.

Other major air pollutants, including ozone, an important component of smog, and smaller particulate matter, called PM 2.5, emitted when gasoline is burned, are not widely monitored in China. Medical experts in China and in the West have argued that PM 2.5 causes more chronic diseases of the lung and heart than the more widely watched PM 10.

Perhaps an even more acute challenge is water. China has only one-fifth as much water per capita as the United States. But while southern China is relatively wet, the north, home to about half of China’s population, is an immense, parched region that now threatens to become the world’s biggest desert.

Farmers in the north once used shovels to dig their wells. Now, many aquifers have been so depleted that some wells in Beijing and Hebei must extend more than half a mile before they reach fresh water. Industry and agriculture use nearly all of the flow of the Yellow River, before it reaches the Bohai Sea.

In response, Chinese leaders have undertaken one of the most ambitious engineering projects in world history, a $60 billion network of canals, rivers and lakes to transport water from the flood-prone Yangtze River to the silt-choked Yellow River. But that effort, if successful, will still leave the north chronically thirsty.

This scarcity has not yet created a culture of conservation. Water remains inexpensive by global standards, and Chinese industry uses 4 to 10 times more water per unit of production than the average in industrialized nations, according to the World Bank.

In many parts of China, factories and farms dump waste into surface water with few repercussions. China’s environmental monitors say that one-third of all river water, and vast sections of China’s great lakes, the Tai, Chao and Dianchi, have water rated Grade V, the most degraded level, rendering it unfit for industrial or agricultural use.

Grim Statistics

The toll this pollution has taken on human health remains a delicate topic in China. The leadership has banned publication of data on the subject for fear of inciting social unrest, said scholars involved in the research. But the results of some research provide alarming evidence that the environment has become one of the biggest causes of death.

An internal, unpublicized report by the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning in 2003 estimated that 300,000 people die each year from ambient air pollution, mostly of heart disease and lung cancer. An additional 110,000 deaths could be attributed to indoor air pollution caused by poorly ventilated coal and wood stoves or toxic fumes from shoddy construction materials, said a person involved in that study.

中文：
至于空气质量，主要的“凶手“是煤，然而中国能源供应的三分之二需要煤来提供能量。煤炭的大量供给早已超过了美国，欧洲和日本三者的总和。但是国内众多的最新型的火电厂和工业用电炉在西方国家看来是低效率的利用和不能满足污染控制的要求。
在中国的中心城市里，私家车，重卡和低质量的汽油都导致了汽车（尾气）污染了空气。根据今年世界银行发布的中国污染情况研究一文中指出，当今中国的5.6亿的城市居民仅有1%的居民能呼吸到符合欧盟安全标准的空气。一个最主要的污染物质应该为中国那糟糕的空气负上责任，那就是颗粒物质，它包括细微灰尘，烟灰和那些直径小于10微米的浮质分子三个部分的集合（也就是众所周知的PM 10）。
诸如这样的分子颗粒的标准是通过在每立方米空气的微观图中测量得到的。欧盟规定任何超过40单位的微观图都是不安全的。美国允许提高到50。[这里的专业知识，笔者实在是没有文化背景，是按字面直翻的，希望高手指点，谢谢]。2006年，根据中国国家统计局指出，北京平均的PM10指标是141。另外，根据世界银行的资料，边及世界各国的首都，只有开罗的空气质量更槽糕。
从煤炭和燃油中排出的二氧化硫引起了呼吸道和心血管疾病和酸雨，它们的增加速度甚至超过了中国的经济增长速度。2005年，国家环保局（SEPA）在去年指出，中国成为了导致全球性的二氧化硫污染的领头羊。
其他的主要空气污染物质，包括臭氧，它是烟雾的一个重要组成部分并且小于颗粒物质，称为PM2.5，它在汽油燃烧后释放出来，中国并没有大范围的监控。中西方的医疗专家都认为PM2.5所引起的心脏和肺部的慢性疾病远远高于那些被广泛监控的PM10（所引起的）。
也许淡水资源才是更是迫在眉睫的问题。中国的淡水人均占有量仅是美国的五分之一。然而中国南部相对潮湿，北方，这个半数中国人口的家园，是个广阔的，炎热的地区，现在北方也受到了变成世界上最大的沙漠的严重威胁。
在北方的农民曾经用铲子挖水井。现在，许多的蓄水层已经枯竭，在北京和河北的一些水井要想取到活水，要多扩深半米才行。在黄河流入渤海以前，工农业用水几乎占去了整个黄河的流量。
做为反应，中国领导人开始着手进行一个在世界历史上都前所未有的最富有雄心的工程，一个耗资600亿美金的，联接运河，河流和湖泊的，从更易发洪水的长江引水到淤泥堵塞的黄河的工程。如果这个工程成功了，但是效果也仍旧不能缓解北方长期的缺水。
这类的缺乏也不能创造出一种保存的文化氛围。根据全球标准，淡水仍旧是便宜的，根据世界银行，中国工业每生产一个单位的产品所用的水是工业化国家平均用水的4到10倍。
在中国的众多地方，工厂和农田直接向水源表面倾倒废水，上层却几乎不管。中国环境监控人员说，全部河水的1/3和中国的几大湖泊的大部分，太湖，潮湖和滇池，那里的水已经到了V级的指标，这个指标是水资源退化的最低级的指标了，这样的水已经不能用于工农业使用。
严酷的统计数字
污染研究的学者们说，在中国，对那些造成人体健康危害的污染源征税仍是一个棘手的话题。中国领导人禁止向公众公布这类项目的数据，以免引起社会动荡。但是这些研究结果提供了警告性的证据，环境问题已经成为了造成死亡的最大的动因。
2003年，中国环境计划学会在一份内部的，未公开发表的报告中指出，估计每年有30万人死于周围的空气污染，其中大部分都死于心脏病和肺癌。一个研究人员指出，还有额外的11万人的死亡是因为那些没有合格通风条件的，烧煤炭和木材火炉或者是从假冒的建筑材料中释放的毒烟所造成的室内空气污染致死的。