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At the very bottom of the earth, high in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, with the sun glaring at midnight through a hole in the sky, I stood in the unbelievable coldness and talked with a scientist in the late fall of 1988 about the tunnel he was digging through time.
1988年的晚秋，在位于地球最底部的南極，午夜眩目的陽光穿過天空的臭氧層空洞照耀著。天氣冷得令人難以置信。我站在橫貫?zāi)蠘O的山脈高處，同一位科學(xué)家談?wù)撝诖?過時間挖鑿的隧道。
Slipping his parka back to reveal a badly burned face that was cracked and peeling, he pointed to the annual layers of ice in a core sample dug from the glacier on which we were standing.
他把風(fēng)雪大衣往后滑落了一點，露出一張被太陽曬焦、龜裂脫皮的臉。他指著從我們正站在其上的那個冰川鑿下的一個核心標(biāo)本上的冰的年層。
He moved his finger back in time to the ice of two decades ago. "Here's where the U. S Congress passed the Clean Air Act," he said.
他把手指順著年層的時間往回移動，停在20 年前形成的冰層那個地方。“這是美國國會通過《凈化空氣法案》的地方，”他說。
At the bottom of the world, two continents away from Washington, D. C., even a small reduction in one country's emissions had changed the amount of pollution found in the remotest and 1east accessible place on earth.
位于世界底部的南極與首都華盛頓相隔兩大洲，但是一個國家哪怕是稍微減少一點它排出的污染物，也會改變地球上這個最遙遠(yuǎn)和最難以到達(dá)的地方的污染量。
But the most significant change thus far in the earth's atmosphere is the one that began with the industrial revo1ution early in the last century and has picked up speed ever since.
然而迄今為止，地球大氣層的最重大的變化，是從上個世紀(jì)初的工業(yè)革命開始的那個變化，而且從那以后，變化的速度日益加快。
Industry meant coal, and later oil, and we began to burn lots of it-bringing rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), with its ability to trap more heat in the atmosphere and slowly warm the earth.
工業(yè)意味著煤，后來意味著石油。我們開始燃燒大量的油—導(dǎo)致二氧化碳的含量上升，結(jié)果二氧化碳就能夠把更多的熱量鎖留在大氣層內(nèi)從而使地球逐漸變暖。
