國家地理:沒有垃圾的世界可能存在嗎(3)

The "circularity gap," as de Wit and his colleagues dubbed it when they presented their report at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018, is relatively new in human history. It dates to our industrial use of fossil fuels in the 18th century. Until then, most of what humans did was done with muscle power, whether human or animal. Growing things, making things, shipping things took hard labor, which made them valuable. Our limited physical energy also restricted how big a dent we could put in the planet. It kept most of us very poor, however.

德威特及同事在2018年達(dá)沃斯世界經(jīng)濟(jì)論壇上作報(bào)告時(shí)，將這一現(xiàn)狀稱為“閉環(huán)差距”，它在人類歷史中屬于較新的現(xiàn)象，始于18世紀(jì)開始的化石燃料工業(yè)應(yīng)用。在那之前，大部分生產(chǎn)都依靠人力或畜力。種植、生產(chǎn)、運(yùn)輸都需要付出艱苦的勞動(dòng)，令它們價(jià)值更高。有限的體力約束了我們對地球造成的沖擊。但這也讓大多數(shù)人非常貧困。

Cheap fossil energy, concentrated by geologic time and pressure in seams of coal or pools of oil, changed all that. It made it easier to extract raw materials anywhere, ship them to factories, and send the merchandise everywhere. Fossil fuels exploded our possibilities -- and the process keeps intensifying. In the past half century, while the world's population has more than doubled, the amount of material flowing through the economy has more than tripled.

經(jīng)過地質(zhì)時(shí)間和壓力的凝縮、富集于煤層和油田中的廉價(jià)化石能源改變了這一切：從世界各地提取原材料、運(yùn)到工廠、輸出產(chǎn)品都變得更加容易。化石燃料使人類事業(yè)的可能性暴增，搜刮資源的過程也愈演愈烈。在過去半個(gè)世紀(jì)中，全世界人口增長了一倍多，而在經(jīng)濟(jì)系統(tǒng)中流通的物資量增長了兩倍有余。

"Now we're reaching the limits," de Wit said.

“現(xiàn)在我們即將到達(dá)極限，”德威特說。