联合国警告应对气候变化迫在眉睫大纲

COPENHAGEN — The gathering risks of climate change are so profound they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.

哥本哈根——据联合国新发布的一份重要报告，气候变化汇集的风险如此巨大，如果温室气体继续以失控的速度排放，有可能会让几代人在消除贫困和饥饿上取得的进步停滞甚至逆转。

Despite rising efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the overall global situation is growing more acute as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.

政府间气候变化专门委员会周日在这里表示，尽管许多国家为解决这个问题做出了更多的努力，但全球整体形势日益严重，因为发展中国家正加入西方国家的行列来燃烧大量的化石燃料。

Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.

这个由科学家和其他专家组成的委员会调查发现，不减少温室气体排放会给社会带来各种威胁，包括粮食短缺、难民危机、大城市和整个岛国被洪水淹没、动植物物种大灭绝，以及气候极大幅度的变化、以至于在一年中最热的时候人们外出工作或玩耍可能会有危险。

“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report declared.

报告宣布，“温室气体的继续排放将导致进一步变暖，将让气候系统所有组成部分发生持久性的变化，增加给人类和生态系统制造严重、普遍和不可逆转的影响的可能性。”

In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.

这个专家委员会用迄今最严厉的措辞明确指出，人类社会距采取任何严肃政策来限制全球变暖方面还差得很远。

Doing so would require finding a way to leave the vast majority of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, or alternatively, developing methods to capture and bury the emissions resulting from their use, the group said.

委员会说，这样做需要找到一种让世界上化石燃料储量的绝大部分留在地下的方法，或者找到捕捉及掩埋使用化石燃料所产生的排放的方法。

If governments are to meet their own stated goal of limiting the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, they must restrict emissions from additional fossil-fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, the panel said.

委员会表示，各国政府要想实现他们自己表述的限制地球温度上升的目标，即温度上升不超过工业化前水平的2摄氏度，就必须把燃烧更多化石燃料的排放总量限制在1万亿吨二氧化碳左右。

At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years. Yet energy companies have already booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies are still building coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.

按照目前的增长速度，这个排放总量很可能在大约30年内用完。然而，能源公司已经找到的煤炭和石油储量相当于这个上限的几倍，而且他们每年还在花约6000亿美元（约合3.7万亿元人民币）寻找更多的储量。电力公司和石油企业仍在建设燃煤电厂和炼油厂，政府为化石燃料的消费还另外提供6000亿美元的直接补贴。

By contrast, the report found, less than $400 billion a year is being spent around the world to reduce emissions or otherwise cope with climate change. That sum is smaller than the revenue of a single American oil company, ExxonMobil.

报告发现，与此相比，全世界每年花在减少排放或用其他方式应对气候变化上的钱不到4000亿美元。这个总数不及一家美国石油公司、埃克森美孚公司一年的营业收入。

The new report comes just a month before international delegates convene in Lima, Peru, in an effort to devise a new global treaty or other agreement to limit emissions, and it makes clear the urgency of their task.

新报告在世界各国的代表将在秘鲁首都利马集会前的仅仅一个月出台，是为了促成一个限制排放的新全球性条约或其他协议，也明确指明了这项任务的紧迫性。

Appearing at a news conference in Copenhagen Sunday morning to unveil the report, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, issued an urgent appeal for strong action in Lima.

在哥本哈根周日上午为公布报告举行的新闻发布会上，联合国秘书长潘基文(Ban Ki-moon)对在利马采取强有力的行动发出紧急呼吁。

“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message,” Mr. Ban declared. “Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”

潘基文说，“科学已经晓谕。其信息毫不含糊。领导者必须采取行动。时间并不对我们有利。”

Yet there has been no sign that national leaders are willing to discuss allocating the trillion-ton emissions budget among countries, an approach that would raise political and moral questions of fairness. To the contrary, they are moving toward a relatively weak agreement that would essentially let each country decide for itself how much effort to put into limiting global warming, and even that document would not take effect until 2020.

然而，迄今还没有迹象表明各国领导人愿意讨论如何在国家间分配这个1万亿吨的排放总量，这种讨论会引起有关公平的政治和道德问题。与此相反，他们正在采取行动达成一项相对弱的协议，基本上让各国自行决定为限制全球变暖做出多少努力，而且就连这个协议也只是在2020年才会生效。

“If they choose not to talk about the carbon budget, they’re choosing not to address the problem of climate change,” said Myles R. Allen, a scientist at Oxford University in Britain who helped write the new report. “They might as well not bother to turn up for these meetings.”

“如果他们选择不讨论碳排放总量，他们等于选择不解决气候变化问题，”帮助起草新报告的英国牛津大学科学家迈尔斯·R·艾伦(Myles R. Allen)说。“他们干脆不用去开这些会议。”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific body appointed by the world’s governments to advise them on the causes and effects of global warming, and potential solutions. The group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Al Gore, for its efforts to call attention to the climate crisis.

政府间气候变化专门委员会是由世界各国政府任命的人组成的科学机构，其作用是给各国政府就全球气候变暖的原因和影响、以及可能的解决方案出主意。2007年的诺贝尔和平奖授予了该机构，奖励其呼吁人们关注气候危机的努力，一起获奖的还有阿尔·戈尔(Al Gore)。

The new report is a 175-page synopsis of a much longer series of reports that the panel has issued over the past year, culminating a five-year effort by the body to summarize a vast archive of published climate research.

新报告共有175页，是对委员会在过去一年中发布的一系列更长报告的概要，委员会用了五年的时间对已发表的大量气候研究文献作了总结，新报告是这一努力的结果。

It is the fifth such report from the group since 1990, each finding greater certainty that the climate is warming and that human activities are the primary cause.

这是该机构自1990年以来的第五份报告，每份报告对气候正在变暖、而人类活动是其主要原因的结论都比上一份报告给出更大的确定性。

“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report declared.

新报告宣布，“人类的影响已在各个方面被检测出来，在大气和海洋的变暖中，在全球水循环的变化中，在冰雪量的减少中，以及在全球海平面的平均上升中。人类的影响有极大的可能是自20世纪中期以来观测到的变暖趋势的主要原因。”

A core finding of the new report is that climate change is no longer a distant, future threat, but is being felt all over the world already. The group cited mass die-offs of forests, including those in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that is leading to increased coastal flooding; and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands of people.

新报告的一个核心结论是，气候变化已不再是一个遥远的、未来的威胁，而是已经可以在世界各地感受到。委员会给出了大量的例子：森林的大量死亡，包括美国西部的森林；几乎世界各个地方的陆冰都在融化；海平面的加速上升给沿海地区造成的更多洪灾；以及导致作物毁坏、数万人丧生的热浪天气。

The report contained the group’s sharpest warning yet about the food supply, saying that climate change had already become a small drag on overall global production, and could become a far larger one if emissions continue unchecked. The reported noted that in recent years the world’s food system had shown signs of instability, with sudden price increases leading to riots and, in a few cases, the collapse of governments.

报告中还有委员会对粮食供应发出的迄今最严厉的警告，报告说，气候变化已在一个小的程度上拖累全球的整体作物产量，如果继续对排放量听之任之，则可能成为一个大得多的问题。报告指出，近年来全球粮食系统表现出不稳定的迹象，价格的突然增长导致了骚乱，甚至在个别情况下，导致了政府的垮台。

Another central finding of the report is that climate change poses serious risks to basic human progress, in areas such as alleviating poverty. Under the worst-case scenarios, factors like high food prices and intensified weather disasters would most likely leave poor people worse off. In fact, the report said, that has already happened in some places.

报告的另一个重要结论是，气候变化给人类本身的进步带来严重威胁，比如在消除贫困等方面。在最坏的情况下，诸如粮价过高和气侯灾害增强等因素，有很大的可能使穷人陷入更糟糕的境地。报告说，事实上，这已经在一些地方发生。

In Washington, the Obama administration welcomed the new report, with the president’s science adviser, John P. Holdren, calling it “yet another wake-up call to the global community that we must act together swiftly and aggressively in order to stem climate change and avoid its worst impacts.”

奥巴马政府在华盛顿表示欢迎新报告的发布，总统的科学顾问约翰·P·霍尔德伦(John P. Holdren)称报告“又一次给国际社会敲响警钟，我们必须一起采取迅速、积极的行动，以遏制气候变化，避免其最糟糕的后果”。

The administration is pushing for new limits on emissions from American power plants, but faces stiff resistance in Congress and some states.

奥巴马政府正在推动制定对美国发电厂排放的新限制，但面对来自国会和一些州的巨大阻力。

Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University and a principal author of the new report, said that a continuation of the political paralysis on emissions would leave society depending largely on luck.

普林斯顿大学的气候科学家和新报告的主要作者迈克尔·奥本海默(Michael Oppenheimer)说，在排放问题上的持续政治瘫痪将让社会在很大程度上靠运气。

If the level of greenhouse gases were to continue rising at a rapid pace over coming decades, severe effects could be headed off only if the climate turned out to be much less sensitive to those gases than most scientists think is likely, he said.

他说，如果温室气体水平在今后几十年中继续以迅猛的速度上升，只有一种可能性能让人们避免其严重的后果，那就是气候对这些气体的敏感度大大低于大多数科学家认为的那样。

“We’ve seen many governments delay and delay and delay on implementing comprehensive emissions cuts,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. “So the need for a lot of luck looms larger and larger. Personally, I think it’s a slim reed to lean on for the fate of the planet.”

“我们已看到许多国家的政府在实现全面减排措施上一拖、又拖、再拖，”奥本海默说。“所以，需要很大运气的前景日益逼近。在我看来，那是把地球的命运绑在一根很细的救命稻草上。”