Climate change：An Earth Day in the life of a plague
The challenge of covid-19 must neither distract people from action on climate change nor confuse them about it
April 22nd was doubly disrupted. If it had not been messed up by the covid-19 pandemic, as all days now are, parts of it would have been brought to a halt by activism about the climate. This was the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, a festival of demonstrations, marches and teach-ins that took place mostly in America and is widely seen as marking the birth of modern environmentalism. Organizers had hoped that this year’s would see hundreds of millions take to the streets around the world. A huge school strike of the sort pioneered by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish activist, was planned, as well as who-knows-what by way of direct action. A new generation of environmental activists intended to demand a better future more loudly than ever.
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mess up 把…弄糟；胡乱地做 as all days now are 就像现在一样
teach-in（以公众关注的事情等为题的）宣讲会，座谈会
the sort pioneered首创 who-knows-what天知道的；没人知道的
The pandemic means that this widespread and coordinated youthful passion, one of the most striking developments in recent climate politics, is instead being expressed indoors and online. This in itself will inevitably lead some to contemplate how climate change and covid-19 fit together. One of the slogans of the first Earth Day was what the pioneering environmentalist Barry Commoner called “The first law of Ecology”—that “Everything Is Connected With Everything Else”.
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coordinated 协同的 in itself 本身；本质上
inevitably adv. 不可避免地，必然地 contemplate vt. & vi. 深思, 细想, 仔细考虑
fit together组装在一起
Both scourges bear this out. Some 200,000 deathbeds in 170 countries have been connected by an unbroken web of viral spread. So have bat caves in China and test tubes in California, as well as silent airports, deserted shops and crowded food banks all across the planet. The connections which underlie climate change are even more pervasive. They tie together almost all the 21st century’s means of transport, manufacture and growth, its buried geological past and its melting Arctic ice. The workings of the great round world, as revealed by pictures of the blue-white filigreed Earth from space that were so inspirational in 1970, really do link all its components.
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scourge vt. 鞭打；蹂躏；严斥；痛斥；n. 灾祸；苦难的根源
bear this out证明了这一点 pervasive adj. 无处不在的；遍布的；充斥各处的
filigreed 精致的
Covid-19 and climate change are both global problems, and proper responses to both require levels of co-operation that the countries of the world find hard. Responses to the effects of covid-19 on the coal industry, among others, or to the need for eco-nomic stimulus once the virus has abated, will offer opportunities to further or impede decarbonization. And both have their origin in a strange mixture of human action and the unbiddable, indifferent forces of nature, provoking contradictory feelings of culpability and a complete lack of control.
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impede vt. 阻止；妨碍；阻碍 decarbonization n. 脱碳（作用）
unbiddable不可抗拒的 contradictory adj. 矛盾的；抵触的
culpability n. 苛责；有罪
Connectedness, though, is no excuse for sloppy thinking. The two scourges are not usefully treated as the same problem—of excessive economic growth clogging the sky as it encroaches on the wildernesses where new pathogens lurk. There is no single rethinking or rejection of the way humans live today that will solve both. Nor is the pandemic a response to environmental degradation. To hear sweet birds singing in the streets of Vancouver as fish swim the unsalted canals of Venice and goats throng the streets of north Wales lifts locked-down spirits. But the pandemic is not, as some say, “nature’s reset”. Such thinking easily slips into the misanthropy that can lead environmentalists to see people themselves as the problem.
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sloppy草率的,粗心的,做事马虎的 clog (使)阻碍
encroach vi. 侵犯;侵占;侵害 pathogens n. 病原体(物)
lurk潜伏 throng群集；挤满
misanthropy n. 厌恶人类, 憎恨世人
To help readers appreciate each challenge for what it is, this week our newspaper, full of covid-19 news, makes room for the first of a series of six climate briefs. We begin by looking at the politics of climate change. Later themes will include climate science, carbon cycles and the energy transition. When they started in the 1970s, “Schools briefs” were intended as primers for students; this year they will be more along the lines of “Home-school briefs”. We hope they will help all generations seized with the importance of climate change—and not just Ms. Thunberg’s—to further their understanding of what lies ahead.
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appreciate意识到, 体会 what it is原因；事实真相；理由
primer启蒙读本 what lies ahead面对未来；未来是什么