全新版大学英语综合教程第二册学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——8B - An Ugly New Footprint in the Sand（沙滩上出现的一个丑陋的新脚印）

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我是靠谱客的博主称心流沙，最近开发中收集的这篇文章主要介绍全新版大学英语综合教程第二册学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——8B - An Ugly New Footprint in the Sand（沙滩上出现的一个丑陋的新脚印），觉得挺不错的，现在分享给大家，希望可以做个参考。

概述

Unit 8B - An Ugly New Footprint in the Sand

In the first text in this unit we heard the case against too much environmental protection. Here we have the case for more.

An Ugly New Footprint in the Sand

A.B.C. Whipple

There were strangers on our beach yesterday, for the first time in a month. A new footprint on our sand is nearly as rare as in Robinson Crusoe. We are at the very edge of the Atlantic; half a mile out in front of us is a coral reef and then nothing but 3,000 miles of ocean to West Africa. It is a wild and lonely beach, with the same surf beating on it as when Columbus came by. And yet the beach is polluted.

Oil tankers over the horizon have dirtied it more than hundreds of picnickers could. The oil comes ashore in floating patches that stain the coral black and gray. It has destroyed the rock crabs and the crayfish and has coated the delicate coils of the conch shells with black sticky substance. And it has hardened upon itself, littering the beach with globes of tar that resemble the cannonballs of a deserted battlefield. The islanders, as they go beachcombing for the treasures the sea has washed up for centuries, now wear old shoes to protect their feet from the oil that washes up too.

You have to try to get away from pollution to realize how bad it really is. We have known for the last few years how bad our cities are. Now there is no longer an escape. If there is oil on this island far out in the Atlantic, there is oil on nearly every other island.

It is still early here. The air is still clear over the island, but it won't be when they build the airport they are talking about. The water out over the reef is still blue and green, but it is dirtier than it was a few years ago. And if the land is not spoiled, it is only because there are not yet enough people here to spoil it. There will be. And so for the moment on this island we are witnesses to the beginning, as it were, of the pollution of our environment....

Until the pollution of our deserted beach, it seemed simple to blame everything on the "population explosion." If the population of this island, for example, could be held steady at a couple of hundred, there would be very little problem with the environment in this remote area. There would be no pollution of the environment if there were not too many people using it. And so if we concentrate on winning the war against overpopulation, we can save the earth for mankind.

But the oil on the beach disproves this too easy assumption. Those tankers are not out there because too many Chinese and Indians are being born every minute. They are not even out there because there are too many Americans and Europeans. They are delivering their oil, and cleaning their tanks at sea and sending the remains up onto the beaches of the Atlantic and Pacific, in order to fuel the technology of man -- and the factories and the power plants, the vehicles and the engines that have enabled man to survive on this planet are now spoiling the planet for life.

The fishermen on this island are perfectly right in preferring the outboard motor to the sail. Their livelihood is involved, and the motor, for all its unpleasant smell, has helped increase the fisherman's catch so that he can now afford to do away with the far worse outdoor toilet. But the danger of technology is in its escalation, and there have already been signs of that here. You can see the motor oil floating in the town dock. Electric generators can be heard over the sound of the surf. And while there are only about two dozen automobiles for the ten miles of road, already there is a wrecked one rusting in the harbor waters where it was dumped and abandoned. The escalation of technological pollution is coming here just as surely as it came to the mainland cities that are now covered in smog.

If the oil is killing the life along the coral heads, what must it not be doing to the plankton at sea which provide 70% of the oxygen we breathe? The lesson of our stained beach is that we may not even have realized how late it is already. Man, because of his technology, may require far more space per person on this globe than we had ever thought, but it is more than a matter of a certain number of square yards per person. There is instead a delicate balance of nature in which many square miles of ocean and vegetation and clean air are needed to sustain only a relatively few human beings. We may find, as soon as the end of this century, that the final destruction of our environment has been signaled not by starvation but by people choking to death. The technology -- the machine -- will then indeed have had its ultimate, mindless, all unintended triumph over man, by destroying the atmosphere he lives in just as surely as you can pinch off a diver's breathing tube.

Sitting on a lonely but spoiled beach, it is hard to imagine but possible to believe.

参考译文——沙滩上出现的一个丑陋的新脚印

本单元第一篇课文中，我们听取了反对过度保护环境的理由。接下来我们听一听要求加大环境保护力度的呼声。

沙滩上出现的一个丑陋的新脚印

A. B. C.惠普尔

昨天，曾经有陌生人来到我们的海滩上，这是一个月来的第一次。我们沙滩上任何一个新脚印几乎都像《鲁宾逊漂流记》里所描写的那样罕见。我们是在大西洋的边沿上；在我们前面半英里的地方是个珊瑚礁，再向前直至西非便什么也没有了，只有3000英里大海一片。这是个荒僻的人烟稀少的海滩，海浪与往昔哥伦布途经时一样日夜不停地拍打着海岸，但这片海滩却已遭受污染。

航行在地平线之外的油轮对海滩的污染要比成百个野餐者造成的污染更为严重。浮在海面上的片片油污漂到岸上，把珊瑚都染成了黑灰色。油污毁灭了黄道蟹和龙虾，在海螺精致的螺旋壳上涂上了一层黑色稠胶。油污凝固成柏油，一团团散落在海滩上，东一块，西一块，看上去就像是荒弃战场上的弹丸。岛上居民去海滩上捡拾千百年来被海水不断冲上岸的珍奇宝物时，现在也穿上旧鞋，以防同时冲上来的油污玷污了脚。

当你不得不想方设法逃离污染的时候，你才会意识到污染的严重程度。几年来我们已经意识到我们的城市污染严重。时至今日再也无路可逃。如果连远离陆地的这个大西洋小岛上都出现了油污，那么差不多所有的岛屿都不能幸免。

这里的污染才初现端倪。岛上空气依然清新，但拟议之中的机场一旦造好，空气就不再会清新了。离岛远一点的珊瑚礁上面的海水仍呈蓝绿色，但已经比前几年脏了许多。如果说这块土地尚未受到污染，那只是因为当地的居民很少，还不足以将其污染。人会多起来的。因此，目前在这个岛上，不妨说我们是环境开始受到污染的见证人。

在我们荒僻的海滩遭受污染之前，人们简单地把一切归咎于“人口爆炸”。比如说，如果岛上的人口能够稳定地控制在几百人左右，那么这个偏僻的地方就不会有什么环境问题。如果没有太多的人使用环境，就不会有环境污染。因此，如果我们集中精力打赢人口过剩这一仗，我们就能为人类拯救地球。

但海滩上的油污证明这一简单的推想是错误的。那些油轮不是由于每分钟降生了过多的中国人或印度人而航行在那遥远的大海上的，甚至也不是由于美国人、欧洲人太多而引起的。他们是在运送石油，在海上清洗油舱，而将残余污油送上了大西洋、太平洋的海滩，目的是为人类科技提供燃料——如今，那些让人类得以在地球上生存的工厂、发电厂、车辆和发动机正为了人类生存而在毁坏地球。

岛上的渔民宁用舷外马达不使风帆，这样做一点也没有错。这关系到他们的生计，马达尽管气味令人讨厌，却帮助渔民增加了捕获量，因而他们就可以有钱去掉远比马达气味糟糕的户外厕所。然而，技术的危害在于其自身的不断升级，而这里已经出现了这种迹象。你可以看到小镇码头漂浮水面的机油。发电机的声响已经压过了大海的涛声。虽然10英里长的公路上只行驶着二十多辆汽车，港口水域内已有一辆丢弃的破车在生锈。技术污染在这个小岛上已经开始升级，这与过去大陆城市的技术污染升级一模一样，而如今这些大陆城市已被笼罩在烟雾之中。

如果油污正在毁灭珊瑚礁顶部的生物，那它对于供给我们70%呼吸所用氧气的海洋浮游生物还有什么影响不会产生呢？海滩污染给我们的教训在于，我们甚至尚未意识到这一切已经为时太晚。人类因其技术的发展有可能需要比我们过去所想的多得多的人均空间才能在这个地球上生存，但这并不仅仅是一个人均多少平方码的问题。相反，这里有一个微妙的自然平衡问题，要维持不多几个人的生命，需要许多平方英里的海洋、植被和清新空气。到本世纪末我们就可能看到，我们生存环境的彻底破坏不是以饥馑为标志，而是以人们的窒息死亡为标志。那个时候，技术——即机器——便确实会像掐断潜水者的透气管一样毫不含糊地毁掉人类赖以生存的大气层，无意中不知不觉地取得击败人类的最终胜利。

坐在人迹罕至却已遭受污染的海滩上，这一切难以想象，却可置信。

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