Buildings can become greener. They can use more recycled steel and can be prefabricated in off-site factories, greatly reducing lorry journeys. But no other building material has environmental credentials as exciting and overlooked as wood.
建筑可以更環保。可以使用更多的可回收鋼材，可以在工廠外預制，大量減少卡車行程。但是，其他建筑材料不像木材那樣具有明顯卻被忽視的環保資質。
The energy required to produce a laminated wooden beam is one-sixth of that required for a steel one of comparable strength. As trees take carbon out of the atmosphere when growing, wooden buildings contribute to negative emissions by storing the stuff. When a mature tree is cut down, a new one can be planted to replace it, capturing more carbon. After buildings are demolished, old beams and panels are easy to recycle into new structures. And for retrofitting older buildings to be more energy efficient, wood is a good insulator. A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.
生產一層合木梁所需的能量是同等強度鋼梁所需能量的六分之一。樹木在生長過程中從大氣中吸收碳時，木質建筑通過儲存這些物質而產生負排放。一棵成熟的樹被砍伐時，可以種植一棵新的樹來代替，從而吸收更多的碳。建筑物拆除后，舊梁和舊板很容易再循環成新的結構。為使舊建筑更節能，木材是很好的絕緣體。軟木窗框的絕緣性能幾乎是同等厚度的普通鋼的400倍，是同等厚度的鋁的1000倍以上。
A race is on to build the world’s tallest fully wooden skyscraper. But such edifices are still uncommon. Industry fragmentation, vicious competition for contracts and low profit margins mean that most building firms have little money to invest in greener construction methods beyond what regulation dictates.
世界上最高的全木質摩天大樓建造競賽正在進行。但是這樣的建筑仍不多見。行業分裂、合同的惡性競爭和低利潤率意味著大多數建筑公司沒有資金投資超出監管規定的環保建筑方法。
Governments can help nudge the industry to use more wood, particularly in the public sector—the construction industry’s biggest client. That would help wood-building specialists achieve greater scale and lower costs. Zero-carbon building regulations should be altered to take account of the emissions that are embodied in materials. This would favour wood as well as innovative ways of producing other materials.
政府可以幫助推動木材行業使用更多的木材，特別是公共部門——建筑業最大的客戶。這將幫助木材建筑專家做到規模更大、成本更低。零碳建筑法規應加以修改，以考慮到材料本身的排放。這將有利于木材以及生產其他材料的創新方法。
Construction codes could be tweaked to make building with wood easier. Here the direction of travel is wrong. Britain, for instance, is banning the use of timber on the outside of tall buildings after 72 people died in a tower fire in London in 2017. That is a nonsense. Grenfell Tower was covered in aluminium and plastic, not wood. Modern cross-laminated timber panels perform better in fire tests than steel ones do.
建筑規范可以調整，以便更容易使用木材建造。這方面的發展方向是錯誤的。以英國為例，2017年倫敦一場塔樓火災造成72人死亡后，英國開始禁止在高層建筑外部使用木材。簡直荒唐可笑。格倫費爾塔是用鋁和塑料覆蓋的，而不是木頭。現代交叉疊層木板在防火測試中比鋼板性能更好。
Carpentry alone will not bring the environmental cost of the world’s buildings into line. wrong, just before his time.
僅靠木工無法使世界建筑的環境成本一致。但是使用木材不僅僅只是被贊賞，還有更多益處。第二只小豬沒有錯，只是時代不能理解。
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