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An Arctic storm tore a drilling rig loose from its tow ship and forced it aground near Alaska's Kodiak Island this week. Just a few months ago, the rig and another began preliminary drilling of the first offshore oil wells in the Arctic.
本周一場北極風暴致使鉆機脫離拖船，迫使它在阿拉斯加的科迪亞克島附近擱淺。就在幾個月前，這個鉆井和另一個鉆井開始在北極第一海上井田上進行初步鉆探。
Shell's efforts to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas have been plagued by problems. But that's just part of the cost of doing energy business in this new era. Consider drilling rig operator Transocean, which agreed to pay the U.S. government $1.4 billion this week for its part in the disastrous three-month long blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
石油巨頭殼牌公司在波弗特海和楚科奇海的鉆井活動出現了問題。然而這只是新時代能源行業的部分代價而已。由于2010年災難性的墨西哥灣井噴事件，鉆井運營商 Transocean 公司于本周同意支付美國政府14億美元罰金。
Meanwhile, the thirst for oil drives the mining of tar sands in Alberta and the flooding of old wells with steam or CO2 in California and Texas. And, of course, there's the accelerating accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from all that fossil fuel burning.
與此同時，對石油的渴求驅使著對亞伯達的瀝青的開采。在加利福利亞和德州，充滿了蒸汽或二氧化碳的老井泛濫。當然，這些化石燃料的燃燒造成大氣中溫室氣體快速積累。
The resulting climate change is part of what makes drilling for oil offshore in the unfreezing Arctic possible, just as it has opened once mythical shipping routes such as the Northwest and Northeast Passages. That’s a positive feedback loop with negative consequences.
由此產生的氣候變化使在北極圈海上鉆探石油成為可能，就好像它已經打開了神秘的航線，例如，西北和東北通道。然而，積極的回饋和消極的后果會循環出現。
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