226 Is the World’s Environment Healthy or Not
226 世界环境健康与否
"The world's environment is surprisingly healthy. Discuss." If that were an examination topic, most students would tear it apart, offering a long list of complaints: from local smog to global climate change, from the felling of forests to the extinction of species. The list would largely be accurate, the concern legitimate. Yet the students who should be given the highest marks would actually be those who agreed with the statement. The surprise is how good things are, not how bad.
“世界环境是令人惊奇地健康——就此展开论述。”如果这是一道考试题，大多数学生会把题目抛在一边，而写下一长串的怨言：从地方上的烟雾到全球气候变化，从森林砍伐到物种灭绝。这些怨言大多会是正确合理的。然而那些应该被给以高分的学生．则必须在试卷上写下与标题契合的话：令人惊奇的是环境多么的好，而不是如何的糟糕。
After all, the world's population has more than tripled during this century, and world output has risen hugely, so you would expect the earth itself to have been affected. Indeed, if people lived, consumed and produced things in the same way as they did in 1900 (or 1950, or indeed 1980), the world by now would be a pretty disgusting place: smelly, dirty, toxic and dangerous.
毕竟，本世纪以来，世界人口增长了3倍还不止，世界产量也大幅增长，不难推测地球自身也因此受到了影响。事实上，如果人类一直是按照1 900年（或20世纪50年代，或20世纪80年代）的方式生活，进行消费和生产和话。现在的地球将是一个十分令人讨厌的地方：又脏又臭，有毒而危险。
But they don't. The reasons why they don't, and why the environment has not been mined, have to do with prices, technological innovation, social change and government regulation in response to popular pressure. That is why, today's environmental problems in the poor countries ought, in principle, to be solvable.
但人类没有这样做。他们没有这样做，环境也没有被毁坏的原因是由于价值规律，技术革新．社会变革以及政府面社会压力颁布的法令。这也是为什么今天贫穷国家的环境问题，在原则上看来，也是可以得到解决的。
Raw materials have not run out, and show no sign of doing so. Logically, one day they must: the planet is a finite place. Yet it is also very big, and man is very ingenious. What has happened is that every time a material seems to be running short, the price has risen and, in response, people have looked for new sources of supply, tried to find ways to use less of the material, or looked for a new substitute. For this reason prices for energy and for minerals have fallen in real terms during the century. The same is true for food. Prices fluctuate, in response to harvests, natural disasters and political instability; and when they rise, it takes some time before new sources of supply become available. But they always do, assisted by new farming and crop technology. The long term trend has been downwards.
原材料还没有耗尽，并且也没有会被耗尽的迹象。但从逻辑上来说，总有一天它们一定会被耗尽，因为地球资源毕竟有限。然而，地球十分庞大，并且人类又足智多谋。事情是这样的，每次一旦某种资源似乎要出现短缺的时候，其价格就会上涨，于是人类就会寻找新的资源供应，试着找各种方法以减少对这种资源的使用，或是寻找新的替代品。正是这个原因。本世纪以来能源和矿产的价格实际已有所下跌。对于粮食来说
也是如此。粮食的价格会随着丰收，自然灾害和政策的不稳定而波动。当粮食价格上涨后，需要有一段时间才会出现新的资源供应。但是在当今新型的农作物耕种技术的支持下，这些新的资源总是会出现。从长期的价格趋势来看，它们的价格还是会下降的。
It is where prices and markets do not operate properly that this benign trend begins to stumble, and the genuine problems arise. Markets cannot always keep the environment healthy. If no one owns the resource concerned, no one has an interest in conserving it or fostering it: fish is the best example of this.
只有在那些价格和市场没有正确发挥作用的地方，这种良性趋势才会受影响，这时就真的会有问题出现了口市场无法始终保障环境的健康。鱼就是一个很好的例子，如果没有人能拥有它，就没有人有兴趣保护它或喂养它。