|
ARE cows killing the planet
Mar 10th 2008
From Economist.com
Planet killer?
“ARE cows killing the planet?” Britain’s Daily Mail asked readers last year. The question was prompted by a report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a branch of the United Nations, which argued that livestock emit more greenhouse gas than planes, trains or automobiles.The British press jumped on the story, partly because climate change is all the rage these days, and partly because the urge to make jokes about bovine flatulence was simply irrepressible (although most of the methane in question comes from burping, it turns out).
英国每日快报在上一年曾问他们的读者:\"奶牛是这个星球的杀手?\" 这个问题来自联合国粮农组织的一份报告,这份报告称牲畜所排放的温室气体比飞机,火车或者汽车还要多.英国的新闻界密切关注这个事情,部分原因是因为温度变化已经得到普遍关注,当然,还有一部分原因是大家都忍不住拿牛的肠胃气胀开玩笑(虽然所谈及的甲烷气体大部分来自人类所打的饱嗝)
All this gleeful coverage does not seem to have driven many Britons to vegetarianism. But it does provide a good example of the unintended consequences of climate correctness.
所有的这些有趣的内容似乎也并不能将英国人转变成素食主义者,但是这确实为温度正确性带来未预料到的结果提供了一个很好的例子.
A few months later, Send a Cow, a British charity that donates cattle to poor African families, was forced to put out a press release denying that the scheme was helping to heat up the planet. Many of its donors, it turns out, had heard about livestock’s baleful contribution to global warming, and were asking awkward questions. Sensing a grave risk to its fund-raising efforts, Send a Cow decided to commission a report of its own, to determine whether its cows were doing more harm than good.
The initial findings are promising: Send a Cow’s cattle seem to be helping to reduce global warming, rather than adding to it. That is partly because their owners are trained to feed them a less gas-inducing diet. More importantly, the leaves that form part of this diet come from trees planted specially for the purpose—100 of them for each cow.
最初的发现是积极的:\"送一只牛\"所送出的牛似乎能够帮助缓解全球变暖,而不是恶化.有部分原因是因为他们的主人被训练用能降低气体排泄的饮食来喂养牛.更重要的,构成饮食的一部分是为特殊目种植的树叶-每只牛需要大概100颗. |
|