Welcome to the Anthropocene

　　歡迎來到人類紀

　　Humans have changed the way the world works. Nowthey have to change the way they think about it, too

　　人類改變了世界運行方式，現在，人類不得不改變他們思考世界的方式

　　THE Earth is a big thing; if you divided it up evenly among its 7 billion inhabitants, they wouldget almost 1 trillion tonnes each. To think that the workings of so vast an entity could belastingly changed by a species that has been scampering across its surface for less than 1% of1% of its history seems, on the face of it, absurd. But it is not. Humans have become a forceof nature reshaping the planet on a geological scalebut at a far-faster-than-geological speed.

　　地球是個龐然大物。如果你把它均分給其間的70億居民，每個人能分到近1萬億噸。表面看來，一個渺小的物種，生命不及地球的萬分之一，在其表面跑跑跳跳竟能永久性地改變如此巨大實體的運行機制，想一想都是荒謬之事。不過確有其事。人類已經成為重塑地球地質年表的自然力量，其速度比地質構造自然演化的過程快得多。

　　A single engineering project, the Syncrude mine in the Athabasca tar sands, involves moving 30billion tonnes of earthtwice the amount of sediment that flows down all the rivers in the worldin a year. That sediment flow itself, meanwhile, is shrinking; almost 50,000 large dams haveover the past half- century cut the flow by nearly a fifth. That is one reason why the Earthsdeltas, home to hundreds of millions of people, are eroding away faster than they can bereplenished.

　　阿薩巴斯卡油砂的辛克魯德礦是一個單一工程項目。該項目涉及移動300億噸泥土這一數字是地球上所有河流一年中流動的泥沙總量的兩倍。與此同時，泥沙流本身也在逐漸消減。在過去半個世紀中，近50000個大型大壩截斷近1/5的泥沙流。這也是為什么數以百萬計人類的家園三角洲地區(qū)泥沙補給速度不及侵蝕速度而呈現蝕退之勢。

　　Geologists care about sediments, hammering away atthem to uncover what they have to say about thepastespecially the huge spans of time as the Earthpasses from one geological period to another. In thesame spirit they look at the distribution of fossils,at the traces of glaciers and sea-level rises, and atother tokens of the forces that have shaped theplanet. Now a number of these scientists arearguing that future geologists observing thismoment in the Earths progress will conclude thatsomething very odd was going on.

　　地質學家關心泥沙，潛心研究以揭示過去尤其是當地球從一個地質時期到另外一個地質時期這種巨大跨度時，地球究竟發(fā)生了什么。基于相似的理念，他們把目光投向化石的分布、冰川的痕跡、海平面的上升以及其他一些使地球成型的外力標志。現在，相當數量的地質學家推測，未來地質學家在觀察今天的地質演化時，也會發(fā)現一些奇怪的變化。

　　The carbon cycle is part of this change. So too is thenitrogen cycle, which converts pure nitrogen from the air into useful chemicals, and whichmankind has helped speed up by over 150%. They and a host of other previously naturalprocesses have been interrupted, refashioned and, most of all, accelerated .Scientists are increasingly using a new name for this new period. Rather than placing us still inthe Holocene, a peculiarly stable era that began only around 10,000 years ago, the geologistssay we are already living in the Anthropocene: the age of man.

　　碳循環(huán)是這種變化的一部分。氮循環(huán)也是如此，它將空氣中純粹的氮轉化為有用的化學制品人類在使氮循環(huán)加速超過150%。這兩種循環(huán)和其他一些此前的自然進程被打斷、被改變，而且最重要的是，被加速。科學家們越來越多地為這種新時期使用一種新的名稱。地質學家們稱，我們已經生活在人類紀人的時代，而不是仍將人類放在約1000年前開始的特別穩(wěn)定的年代全新世。

　　Welcome to the Anthropocene

　　歡迎來到人類紀

　　Humans have changed the way the world works. Nowthey have to change the way they think about it, too

　　人類改變了世界運行方式，現在，人類不得不改變他們思考世界的方式

　　THE Earth is a big thing; if you divided it up evenly among its 7 billion inhabitants, they wouldget almost 1 trillion tonnes each. To think that the workings of so vast an entity could belastingly changed by a species that has been scampering across its surface for less than 1% of1% of its history seems, on the face of it, absurd. But it is not. Humans have become a forceof nature reshaping the planet on a geological scalebut at a far-faster-than-geological speed.

　　地球是個龐然大物。如果你把它均分給其間的70億居民，每個人能分到近1萬億噸。表面看來，一個渺小的物種，生命不及地球的萬分之一，在其表面跑跑跳跳竟能永久性地改變如此巨大實體的運行機制，想一想都是荒謬之事。不過確有其事。人類已經成為重塑地球地質年表的自然力量，其速度比地質構造自然演化的過程快得多。

　　A single engineering project, the Syncrude mine in the Athabasca tar sands, involves moving 30billion tonnes of earthtwice the amount of sediment that flows down all the rivers in the worldin a year. That sediment flow itself, meanwhile, is shrinking; almost 50,000 large dams haveover the past half- century cut the flow by nearly a fifth. That is one reason why the Earthsdeltas, home to hundreds of millions of people, are eroding away faster than they can bereplenished.

　　阿薩巴斯卡油砂的辛克魯德礦是一個單一工程項目。該項目涉及移動300億噸泥土這一數字是地球上所有河流一年中流動的泥沙總量的兩倍。與此同時，泥沙流本身也在逐漸消減。在過去半個世紀中，近50000個大型大壩截斷近1/5的泥沙流。這也是為什么數以百萬計人類的家園三角洲地區(qū)泥沙補給速度不及侵蝕速度而呈現蝕退之勢。

　　Geologists care about sediments, hammering away atthem to uncover what they have to say about thepastespecially the huge spans of time as the Earthpasses from one geological period to another. In thesame spirit they look at the distribution of fossils,at the traces of glaciers and sea-level rises, and atother tokens of the forces that have shaped theplanet. Now a number of these scientists arearguing that future geologists observing thismoment in the Earths progress will conclude thatsomething very odd was going on.

　　地質學家關心泥沙，潛心研究以揭示過去尤其是當地球從一個地質時期到另外一個地質時期這種巨大跨度時，地球究竟發(fā)生了什么。基于相似的理念，他們把目光投向化石的分布、冰川的痕跡、海平面的上升以及其他一些使地球成型的外力標志。現在，相當數量的地質學家推測，未來地質學家在觀察今天的地質演化時，也會發(fā)現一些奇怪的變化。

　　The carbon cycle is part of this change. So too is thenitrogen cycle, which converts pure nitrogen from the air into useful chemicals, and whichmankind has helped speed up by over 150%. They and a host of other previously naturalprocesses have been interrupted, refashioned and, most of all, accelerated .Scientists are increasingly using a new name for this new period. Rather than placing us still inthe Holocene, a peculiarly stable era that began only around 10,000 years ago, the geologistssay we are already living in the Anthropocene: the age of man.

　　碳循環(huán)是這種變化的一部分。氮循環(huán)也是如此，它將空氣中純粹的氮轉化為有用的化學制品人類在使氮循環(huán)加速超過150%。這兩種循環(huán)和其他一些此前的自然進程被打斷、被改變，而且最重要的是，被加速。科學家們越來越多地為這種新時期使用一種新的名稱。地質學家們稱，我們已經生活在人類紀人的時代，而不是仍將人類放在約1000年前開始的特別穩(wěn)定的年代全新世。