259 Over consumption and Environmental Problem
259 过度消费与环境问题
Early in the age of affluence that followed World Wer Ⅱ，an American retailing analyst named Victor Lebow proclaimed,"Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life,that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals,that we seek our spiritual satisfaction,our ego satisfaction,is consumption. ... We need things consumed,burned up,worn out,replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”
二战后出现的繁荣时期早期，美国零售商品分析家维克多·雷博就宣称：“我们巨大的生产能力要求我们把消费作为我们的生活方式，也就是要把购买和使用商品变成生活的惯常事务，在消费中追求精神满足和自我满足。我们要以更快的速度消耗，燃烧，用坏，取代和丢弃产品。”
Americans have responded to Lebow's call,and much of the world has followed.
美国人响应了雷博的呼吁，世界上其他地方也纷纷追随着。
Consumption has become a central pillar of life in industrial lands and is even embedded in social values.Opinion surveys in the world's two largest economics—Japan and the United States—show consumerist definitions of success becoming ever more prevalent.
消费变成了工业化社会中的生活重心．并且根植于社会价值观之中。对全球两个最大的经济体——美国和日本的消费观念调查表明：成功的消费至上定义越来越流行。
Overconsumption by the world's fortunate is an environmental problem unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps population growth.Their surging exploitation of resources threatens to exhaust or unalterably spoil forests,soils,water,air and climate.
有钱人的过度消费已经成为仅次于人口增长的又一个严重的环境问题。他们对资源的掠夺性使用将用尽或破坏森林，土壤，水，空气和气候。
Ironically,high consumption may be a mixed blessing in human terms,too.The time-honored values of integrity of character,good work,friendship,family and community have often been sacrificed in the rush to riches.
然而，具有讽刺意味的是，高消费给人类带来喜忧参半的恩惠，长期以来受人拥戴的价值观念．如诚实，奋斗，友谊，家庭和社团等往往在财富追求中牺牲了。
Thus many in the industrial lands have a sense that their world of plenty is somehow hollow—that,misled by a consumerist ulture,they have been fruitlessly attempting to satisfy what are essentially social,psychological and spiritual needs with material things.
于是，工业国家的许多人感觉到他们富足的世界不知何故变空了——由于受到消费中心主义文化的误导，他们试图满足社会，心理和精神上各方面对物质的需求。
Of course,the opposite of overconsumption—poverty—is no solution to either environmental or human problems.It is infinitely worse for people and bad for thenatural world too.Dispos sessed peasants slash-and burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America,and hungry nomads turn their herds out onto fragile African grassland,reducing it to desert.
当然，过度消费的另一个极端一贫穷也不是环境或人类问题解决之道。贫穷对人类更加糟糕，对自然界也不好。一无所有的农民在拉丁美洲的雨林中刀耕火种，饥饿的游牧民族在贫瘠的非洲草地上放牧．使草地退化成了沙漠。
If environmental destruction results when people have either too little or too much,we are left to wonder how much is enough.What level of consumption can the earth support?When dose having more cease to add noticeably to human satisfaction?
如果过于贫穷或过于富裕都会导致环境破坏，那么，我们会想要知道多少才是恰到好处的。怎样的消费水平才是地球所能承受的？什么时候更多的停顿是为了能更好地满足人类的需求？