申論題

Part I: 英翻中

1. Clearing the Air

       Getting to zero carbon emissions won't save the world. We will need to remove carbon on a massive scale. To do that will require a planet-wide effort to match anything that humankind has ever achieved. Scientists and entrepreneurs are embarking on ambitious projects to remove carbon dioxide from ambient air and lock it away. In Arizona, an engineering professor shows me his "mechanical tree," a single one of which he says may someday be able to do the work of a thousand regular trees in capturing and storing CO2. In Australia, a leading oceanographer tells me that seaweed is salvation, if only we'd help it grow in giant aqua-gardens of kelp [海帶] and wakame [裙帶菜] that could harbor billions of tons of carbon dioxide.
        What these efforts have in common is that they are geared in the long run to drag downward a number that climate experts agree holds the key to the health of the planet. That number is the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which for thousands of years had held stable at or a bit below 280 parts per million, until the industrial revolution kicked off in the middle of the 19th century. Today this critical number stands at some 420 parts per million—in other words, the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen roughly 50 percent since 1850. (National Geographic, Nov. 2023)