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We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and natural gas.
我們從未意圖造成這樣的破壞，就像當初阿爾弗茁德·諾貝爾也從未想過將炸藥用于戰爭。他的初衷是他的發明有助于人類的進步。當我們開始燃燒大量的煤炭、是石油和天然氣時，我們也有同樣崇高的愿景。
Even in Nobel's time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that in his words, "We are evaporating our coal mines into the air." After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth's average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of C02 in the atmosphere.
甚至在諾貝爾的時代，就有不少人對人類行為可能的后果發出了警告。諾貝爾化學獎的最早獲獎者之一就曾在言辭間表示過憂慮：“我們正將煤礦蒸發到空氣中。”斯凡特·阿倫尼斯在手工計算一萬個方程式之后認為，如果我們使大氣中的二氧化碳含量增加一倍，則地球的平均氣溫將上升好幾度。
Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle and his colleague Dave Keeling began to precisely document the increasing C02 levels day by day.
七十年后，我的老師羅杰·雷維爾和他的同事迪夫·基林開始每天精確記錄大氣中日益上升的二氧化碳含量。
But unlike most other forms of pollution, C02 is invisible, tasteless and odorless, which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented, and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.
然而，與其他形式的污染不同，二氧化碳無色無味，使我們不易看到它對我們的氣候造成的危害，因而也使我們往往忽視了它的破壞性。更糟的是，正在威脅我們的災難是前所未有的，而我們經常錯誤地認為是前所未有的就意味著是不可能的。
We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: "Sooner or later, a false belief bumps up against a solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
我們同樣發現，為了應對這場危機我們所要采取的行為規模之大超出想象。當重要的真理帶來麻煩時，整個社會都可能，至少在一段時間內，對這些真理視而不見。但是喬治·奧威爾曾提醒過我們：“早晚有一天，錯誤的思想會迎面撞上鐵錚錚的現實，但那時已是戰火紛飛。”
