你對氣候變化的了解，可能只是誤解

你對氣候變化的了解，可能只是誤解

We humans have a natural tendency to focus on negative stories. We tend to assume things are worse than they really are, and going downhill fast. We forget how bad things were in the past and how far we've come.

我們人類天生就傾向于關注負面故事。我們傾向于認為事情比實際情況更糟，而且走下坡路很快。我們忘記了過去的壞事，忘記了我們已經(jīng)走了多遠。

In reality, the world is often better — and getting better — than we think, something I wrote about in my book, The Perils of Perception: Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything.

事實上，這個世界往往比我們想象的要好——而且越來越好——這是我在《感知的危險：為什么我們對幾乎所有事情都錯了》一書中寫的。

Murder rates, deaths from terrorism and extreme poverty are all down. Life expectancy, health and education levels are up. And yet, there is one vital, urgent exception to this rule: we still don't realise how badly wrong our global climate and environment have gone.

謀殺率、恐怖主義死亡人數(shù)和赤貧率都在下降。預期壽命、健康和教育水平都在提高。然而，這條規(guī)則有一個至關重要的緊急例外：我們仍然沒有意識到，我們的全球氣候和環(huán)境已經(jīng)變得多么糟糕。

A new survey of Britons which tested understanding of some key facts about the environment reveals the extent of environmental misperceptions. Rather than asking people what they thought might happen, this study instead focused on assessing knowledge of the world as it is right now.

一項對英國人的新調查測試了對環(huán)境的一些關鍵事實的理解，揭示了人們對環(huán)境的誤解程度。這項研究并沒有問人們他們認為會發(fā)生什么，而是著重于評估人們對當前世界的認知。

One question, for example, was how many of the past 22 years have been the hottest on record?

例如，有一個問題是，過去22年中有多少年是有記錄以來最熱的?

The answer is 20, but the average guess was just 12. And one in five people guessed five or fewer.

答案是20，但平均猜測只有12。五分之一的人猜測五個或更少。

Britons also overestimated some facts, such as how much air travel contributes to greenhouse guesses. The average guess was that 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from air travel, when in fact it only accounts for around 2 percent.

英國人也高估了一些事實，比如航空旅行對溫室效應的影響有多大。人們的平均猜測是，全球20%的溫室氣體排放來自航空旅行，而實際上它只占2%左右。

Respondents also assumed that air travel's emissions are about equal to that of all other forms of transport put together, when in reality, the latter contributes about ten times as much as flights. This is due to the relative rarity of flights compared to other forms of transport.

受訪者還認為，航空旅行的排放量約等于所有其他交通方式的排放量，而實際上，后者的排放量是航班的10倍左右。這是因為與其他運輸方式相比，航班相對較少。

Yet despite aviation's relatively limited contribution to emissions overall, one of the most effective environmental actions we can take as individuals is to fly less.

然而，盡管航空對總體排放的貢獻相對有限，但作為個人，我們能夠采取的最有效的環(huán)境行動之一是減少飛行。

A study by Swedish academics puts skipping one transatlantic flight as the third most effective action we can take, only behind the much more extreme options of having one fewer child and living entirely car free.

瑞典學者的一項研究表明，少乘坐一次跨大西洋航班，是我們能采取的第三種最有效的行動，僅次于更極端的選擇:少生一個孩子或完全不開車。