析经济学人，习高分作文/08

做学生就多考分，做成人就多挣钱，这样尊严才可以多一点。

——我离托福考试只剩18天。

周二早上好，今天分享一篇深度好文纯英文版，来醒一醒疲惫的大脑。

新英文杂志昨天发的第三条文图，来自纽约客的【NYTimes】Earth Will Survive. We May Not.（地球永生，人类未必）

不过为了唤起点好奇心，我稍微翻译一下吧，因为我们大多数人看英文始终没有中文的浏览速度和理解能力快。

1968年宇航员Wiliam Anders在Apollo 8号所拍下的蔚蓝色地球照片，相比黑暗的太空背景，看起来如此脆弱和孤独；五十年后，这成为了我们应该整治环境拯救地球保护人类的象征，但我们是不是错误地理解了这张照片的内涵？所谓的拯救到底意味着什么？

如果Ander 55百万年前更早地到达月球看向地球，他将会发现的是一个危险丛生的茂密森林，如此炎热以至于冰和雪根本就不存在；如果是70千万亿年前，他只能盯着一个雪球——被千尺深的雪层包过的地球；如果他在3十亿年前触摸地面，只要一摘下面罩，缺氧会立即让他窒息死亡。

  If Mr. Anders’s spaceship had crested the moon 55 million years earlier, he would have found a sweltering jungle planet so warm it was almost entirely devoid of ice and snow. On a visit around 700 million years ago, he would have stared ata “snowball” Earth almost entirely covered in miles-thick layers of ice. And if he touched down on our planet three billion years ago, his first experience, should he take off his flight helmet, would have been a quick death by asphyxiation. That Earth, already home to life, had air but no oxygen.

当我们说拯救地球的时候，我们展示地球曾经和未来荒凉景象的照片，似乎它真的需要我们的帮助似的，可是在地球的历史中，表明我们存在的阶段不超过一万年，因为那时大冰川时代才结束，我们的文明只适应这长期、稳定、温暖的时期，我们所有的农业、工业、城市和网络，全部依赖于这个天时地利。

地球历史并未表明，如果我们不采取合适的措施，这个生化环境很快会继续演化，即使缺少了我们的存在，也可以自我迭代成全新水深火热的版本。

What Earth’s history does make clear, however, is that if we don’t take the right kind of action soon the biosphere will simply move on without us, creating new versions of itself in the changing climate we’re generating now. So we must be honest. The problem is not saving the Earth or life writ large, but saving our cherished civilization. From that perspective the nature of our choices changes significantly. 

自然的本质到底是什么？从最根本的生化角度来看，城市也森林无异，两者都是生命无穷进化的实验结果。森林，草地，昆虫和细菌，曾经是生命偶尔的某个创新。从这个意义上讲，我们和我们的城市化，并不是这个星球的病斑。我们只是顺应地球的生化进程。任何与我们同等规模的生命，都会对所居住的星球造成巨大的影响。

What, for example is nature? From the biosphere’s perspective, a city is fundamentally no different from a forest. Both are the result of life’s endless evolutionary experiments. And forests, like grasslands, insects and oxygen-producing microbes, were once a evolutionary innovation. In that sense we, and our project of civilization, are not a plague on the planet. We are just what the biosphere is doing now.

认识到这点——地球少了我们一样会继续自我衍化，并不意味着我们不需要采取紧急措施，既不能成为我们可以为所欲为的借口，也不意味着我们可以恣意杀戮地球上的其他生灵。

相反，这应该是我们深知自身数量众多而应承担的责任，这应该是我们必须成为地球从未出现过的调和部分——地球生化系统中认知到自身的变化并为我们做出具有同情心和大智慧的未来选择。

This recognition — that in the long term the Earth will abide without us— does not absolve us from the need for urgent action. It is not an excuse for climate denial or ecological hooliganism. s we are free to just impose suffering on Earth’s other creatures. Instead, it’s an acknowledgment of the true scale of our planetary responsibilities. It means we must become the agent for something the Earth has not seen before — a biosphere that is also awake to itself and can act for its future with both compassion and wisdom

黄色的标注都是极好的写作句型，我就不深入分析了，你可以自行体会。

另，翻译只是粗略意义，有极大跳跃和随意性，只可作为内容引子。

下面进入正题。

▁▂▃▅▆ ▊▷/A〓

Stalin grabbed the islands in the closing days of the second world war; seven decades on, the impasse precludes the signing of a peace treaty and has impeded the flow of Japanese money and expertise to the neglected Russian Far East.

precludes: if one thing precludes another, the first thing prevents the second one from happening

prevent, check, debar, exclude, forestall, inhibit, obviate, prohibit, rule out, stop

这个词是完全阻止的意思

impeded: to make it more difficult for someone to do something or more difficult for something to happen
   

hinder, block, check, disrupt, hamper, hold up, obstruct, slow (down), thwart

这个词的意思在于减慢，阻挠

于是两个动词连在一起用，就成了逻辑递减的关系。

类似的还有

make and maintain the friendship

condone and condemn

virtues and vices

friends and foees

wax and wane

▁▂▃▅▆ ▊§/B〓

Mr Putin may relish the experience. .....Russia's trade with Aisa accounts for a piddling 1% of the region's total, and Asia's economic miracle has sacrcely touched the 6.4m Russians in the dilapidated cities of Russia's Far East. Many seethe that sprucing up Vladivostock for the APEC summit cost $20bn, more than the London Olymipics and more than Russia will spend developing the region in the years to 2025.

生词有点多。

relish: get great pleasure or satisfaction from something

piddling:  small, or not important

dilapidated:  old and in bad condition

seethe: to be extremely angry
      

sprucing up:  improve the appearance of someone or something
    

因此同义词就先不放了。

经济学人是记单词的好杂志，毕竟只在单词本里看完全没意思，在段落中单词就被用活了。

然后来看两个熟单词：

- - account for  占多大比

- - touch 这个词儿就用得比较神气活现了吧

▁▂▃▅▆ ▊¶/C〓

But mutual trust runs deep......By contrast, says Mr Lo, China has been the chief beneficiary of that order, having adopted wrenching economic reforms to capitalise on it. ..... They have certainly been strained, over Crimea, Ukraine, and Mr Putin's part in the destruction of Syria.

- - something runs deep.

这句话让我想起了这个句型：

- - The fact that ... runs deeper than the mere figures suggest.

- - And democracy's problems run deeper than mere numbers suggest.

wrenching: - - wrench: injure a part of your body by twisting it suddenly

strained: - - strain: injure  by twisting or stretching a muscle too much

这两个是近义词，可见在经济学人上近义词是非常容易积累的。

▁▂▃▅▆ ▊◆/D〓

China has long oscillated between the urge to equip its elite with foreign knowledge and skills, and an opposing instinct to turn inward and rebuff such influences.

oscillate:  continuously change your feelings, opinions, or decisions from one extreme position to the other

fluctuate, seesaw, sway, swing, vacillate, vary, vibrate, waver

请看一下例句：

He oscillated between happiness and despair.

Her attitude towards me fluctuated betweenm friendship and hostility.

His mind seesawed between hope and despair all through those weeks.

She's been very up and down since her husband went into hospital.

What makes being a founder stressfull is being on an emotional roller-coaster all the time. "In the morning you feel everything is on the right track and in the evening everything seems in the glutter."

oscillate

rebuff :  refuse to talk to someone or do what they suggest

▁▂▃▅▆ ▊★/E〓

Some have capped fees for international programes. The Ministry of Education says it is pondering a law that would require public high schools to run their international programmes as private entities(fearing this event, a few schools have already begun doing so).

cap: set a limit on the amount of money that someone can spend or charge

lie, limit, circumscribe, confine

ponder: to think carefully about something for a long time before reaching a decision

think, brood, cogitate, consider, contemplate, deliberate, meditate, mull over, muse, reflect, ruminate

今日总结：

something precludes ... and has impeded ...

account for ... =  touch ... （ figures）

something runs deep

have long oscillated between the urge to

cap fees for ... ponder a law that...

推荐阅读：如何通过阅读外刊积累英文写作句型？（2）

上篇文章：析经济学人，习高分作文/07

祝你好运。