Extinction is a difficult concept to grasp. It is an eternal concept. It's not at all like the killing of individual life forms that can be renewed through normal processes of reproduction. Nor is it simply diminishing numbers. Nor is it damage that can somehow be remedied or for which some substitute can be found. Nor is it something that simply affects our own generation. Nor is it something that could be remedied by some supernatural power. It is rather an absolute and final act for which there is no remedy on earth or in heaven. A species once extinct is gone forever. However many generations succeed us in coming centuries, none of them will ever see this species that we extinguish.
滅絕是難以理解的一個概念。這是一種永恒的概念。與殺掉個體生命形式,再通過正常繁殖的過程得到新的生命體不同。這不是簡單的減少數量。這種毀滅也不可以補救,不可以用其他發現來替代。另外,這種毀滅也不僅僅只影響我們這一代。同時這種毀滅也不能通過超自然力量進行補救。這是一種絕對的、最終的行為,人間或天堂都沒有補救方法。一個物種一旦滅絕,就表示該物種將永遠消失。無論未來幾個世紀我們傳承了多少代人,他們也不會再有人看到被我們滅絕掉的物種。
Not only are we bringing about the extinction of life on a vast scale, we are also making the land and the air and the sea so toxic that the very conditions of life are being destroyed. As regards basic natural resources, not only are the nonrenewable resources being used up in a frenzy(瘋狂) of processing, consuming, and disposing, but we are also ruining much of our renewable resources, such as the very soil itself on which terrestrial(地球上的) life depends.
我們不僅僅會讓生物大規模的滅絕,我們還讓土地、空氣和海洋這些生物賴以生存的環境充滿毒性,以致遭到破壞。至于基本自然資源,不僅僅是非再生資源被我們瘋狂地加工、消耗、處置后耗盡,連地球上的生物賴于生存的土壤這種可再生資源都已被我們破壞。
The change that is taking place on the earth and in our minds is one of the greatest changes ever to take place in human affairs, perhaps the greatest, since what we are talking about is not simply another historical change or cultural modification, but a change of geological and biological as well as psychological order of magnitude.
地球上和我們的腦海中正在發生的改變是有史以來人類事務中發生的最偉大的改變,因為我們在談論的不僅僅是另一場歷史變革或文化改良,而是地質、生物以及心理數量級的變革。
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來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/menu/201603/434203.shtml