本片由 人文经济学会 资助译制
中英对照文本
译：Sunny | 校：FungChuh
For all future stewards of the earth -- and that's all of us -- here's a quick quiz. What is the most renewable and sustainable material with which to build our homes? How can we turn some of the CO2 we're putting into the atmosphere into an asset? And how can we make the world more beautiful and green?
所有未来的地球管家——也就是我们所有人——这有个小测试。建造我们家园最可再生可持续的材料是什么？我们怎样才能把排放到大气中的二氧化碳变成一种资产呢？我们如何才能使世界更美丽更有生机?
The answer to all these questions is... trees.
所有这些问题的答案是……树。
Trees make up about 90 percent of all the living biomass on Earth. And forests serve as home to the majority of species on the planet. We use thousands of products -- many every day -- that come from trees. Some are obvious like wood and paper and many not so obvious like microcrystalline cellulose, a key ingredient in many medicines.
树木约占地球上所有活体生物量的 90%。森林是地球上大多数物种的家园。我们使用的数千种产品——很多每天都用的——来自树木。有些是明显的，如木头和纸，有些则不那么明显，比如微晶纤维素，许多药物的一种关键成分。
Anyway, who doesn't love trees?
无论如何，谁不喜欢树呢?
Yet trees, especially in the last few decades, have become very controversial. People are divided into two broad camps. One group sees trees as a critical source of renewable material and of renewable energy. This group generally favors planting trees and making use of the many products derived from them. The other group emphasizes the value of forests as ecosystems to provide a protected habitat for threatened species. This group prefers to see forests off-limits to commercial use.
然而，树，尤其是最近几十年来，变得极具争议。人们被分为两大阵营。一派认为树是可再生材料和可再生能源的重要来源。这一派通常赞成植树，并利用许多树的衍生品。另一派则强调森林作为生态系统为濒危物种提供保护栖地的价值。这一派倾向禁止森林的商业用途。
The arguments between these two groups can get pretty heated. But here's the good news: if we do it right, we can use our trees and enjoy them, too. Before I explain how, I need to define two terms: The first is "forestry," which means the creation, management, and use of forests. The second term is "deforestation," which means the permanent loss of forests.
这两派之间的争论可能会相当激烈。但好消息是：如果我们做得对，我们可以利用树又欣赏它们。在我说明如何做之前，我需要先定义两个术语：第一个是「 林业」，意思是森林的创造、管理和使用。第二个术语是「 伐林」，意思是森林的永久消失。
There are two widespread misconceptions about forestry. The first misconception is that forestry, as practiced by the forest industry, is responsible for deforestation. We may think that when we buy wood from a lumberyard we are causing a bit of forest to be lost somewhere. But what we are really doing is sending a signal to the marketplace to plant more trees to produce more wood to supply the demand in the lumberyard. It is no different from any other renewable crop. It's just that trees take longer to mature than annual farm crops. The giant paper company Boise Cascade is just as much in the business of planting trees as it is in harvesting them.
关于林业存在两种普遍的误解。第一个误解是，林业，如森林工业所做的那样，要为伐林负责。我们可能会认为，当我们从一个木材场购买木材时，我们正导致某地的部分森林消失。但我们真正在做的是向市场发出信号，种植更多的树木以生产更多的木材来满足木材场的需求。这和其他可再生作物没有什么不同。只是树比一年生农作物成熟的时间长。大型造纸公司博伊西卡斯卡特既从事植树业务，也从事采伐业务。
The key point is it's not the harvesting of trees that causes deforestation. Deforestation is the result of harvesting and then not replanting a forest, or not letting it grow back naturally, which it would do if just left alone.
关键在于，不是采伐树木导致了伐林。伐林是采伐后不重新种植的后果，或者不让它自然生长的结果，而只要放着不管，森林就会自然生长。
Deforestation sounds like a bad word -- and it can be -- but usually it's not. All it means is that after the trees are harvested, the land is used for a different purpose. The largest cause of deforestation is agriculture, the creation of new farmland. But farming is important. After all, the world has seven billion people to feed. Another reason for deforestation is to make way for towns and cities. Manhattan was once a great forest. Now it's a great city.
伐林听起来像是一个不好的词——它可以是——但它通常不是。它的意思是在树木被采伐后，土地被用于其他用途。伐林的最大原因是农业，即新农田的创造。但是农业很重要。毕竟，世界上有 70 亿人需要养活。伐林的另一个原因是给城镇让路。曼哈顿曾经是一片大森林。现在它是一个大城市。
The second misconception about forestry is the tendency to judge landscapes by how they look to our eyes. We easily make the mistake of using our sense of what is beautiful and what is unsightly to judge the ecology of the land. This results in repulsion at the sight of a recently logged landscape because it looks ravaged, destroyed, and unsightly. We don't react this way to a landscape of pasture with sheep peacefully grazing or a wheat-field waving in the wind. Yet both are examples of deforestation. Where there once was a biodiverse natural forest we now have a ranch or a farm. In other words, we judge the book by the cover and equate beauty with ecological health and unsightliness with destruction of nature.
