15年每周经济学人报刊中英文对照空气污染英国需要采取更多措施来净化污浊的空气 Air pollution空气污染The big smoke雾都Britain needs to do more to clean up its dirty air 英国需要采取更多措施来净化污浊的空气VISITING Oxford Street, a road teeming with tatty shops and overcrowded with people, is plainly a trial. Less plainly, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a noxious gas, have been found to be around three times higher there than the legal limit. In 2013 the annual mean concentration of NO2 on the street was one of the highest levels found anywhere in Europe.来到牛津街，你会看到街道两边布满了各式杂乱的商店，而道路上人满为患。
行走在这条街上，很明显是个磨练。
不为人觉察的是，这里有毒气体二氧化氮(NO2)测出含量超出法定水平的约三倍以上。
２０１３年，这条街的NO2年均浓度是欧洲最高之一。
British air is far cleaner than it was a few decades ago. Fewer people usecoal-burning stoves; old industrial plants have been decommissioned. But since 2009 levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, coarse or fine particles that are linked to lung cancer and asthma, have fallen more slowly. The exact number of deaths caused by dirty air is unknown. But in 2010 a government advisory group estimated that removing man-made fine particulate matter from the atmosphere would increase life expectancy for those born in 2008 by an average of six months.英国的空气比几十年前干净多了。
使用燃煤炉灶的人越来越少；老工业厂已经停产。
但自2009年起，氧化氮、微粒物质、以及与肺癌和哮喘相关的粗、细颗粒含量的下降速度减慢了。
因污浊空气所引发的死亡人数是未知的。
但2010年，一个政府顾问组估算如果将大气中人为造成的微粒物质除去的话，2008年的出生人口人均寿命将增加六个月。
Much of the slowdown is the result of fumes from diesel cars, which were championed by successive governments because they use less fuel and thus produce less carbon dioxide than petrol cars. In 2001 only 14% of all cars ran on diesel; by 2013 the proportion had increased to 35%. (Greener “hybrid” and electric cars have increased ninefold since 2006, but account for just 0.5% of the entire fleet.) Second-hand cars are particularly noxious, but even newer ones have not been as clean as hoped. Many cars that belched out few pollutants in tests produced more when on the roads.下降速度放缓的大部分原因在于柴油汽车排放的尾气—这为历任政府所支持，因为柴油汽车耗用更少的能源，比汽油汽车排放更少的二氧化碳。
2001年，仅14%的汽车使用柴油。
2013年，这个比例上涨到了35%。
（更绿色的“混合动力”和电瓶车自2006年以来增加了九倍，但仅占汽车总量的0.5%。
）二手汽车尤其有害，但新车也没所期望的那样清洁。
很多车在污染物排放测试中排放量低，车在上路时却排放了更多。
Climate change and geoengineering气候变化与地质工程学Fears of a bright planet 地球发光，令人担心Experiments designed to learn more about ways of geoengineering the climate should be allowed to proceed为更好地利用工程学手段研究气候问题所设计的实验应该获准进行下去。
SHINY things absorb less heat when left in the sun. This means that if the Earth could be made a little shinier it would be less susceptible to global warming. Ways to brighten it, such as adding nanoscale specks of salt to low clouds, making them whiter, or putting a thin haze of particles into the stratosphere, are the province of “geoengineering”. The small band of scientists which have been studying this subject over the past decade or so have mostly been using computer models. Some of them are now proposing outdoor experiments—using seawater-fed sprayers to churn out particles of the exact size needed to brighten clouds, or spewing sulphur particles from underneath a large balloon 20km up in the sky.发光的物体放在太阳下面会吸收较少的热量。
这就意味着如果让地球发一点光的话，受到全球变暖的影响就会小一些。
让地球发光的方式，比方说在低空云层上添加纳米级的盐微粒，让云变得更白，或者是将一层薄的雾状物洒向平流层，这些都属于地质工程学的范畴。
过去十年左右研究这一领域的一小批科学家主要使用计算机模型，其中一些人现在提出要做室外实验――就是用装有海水的喷雾器射出大量使云彩发光所需的相同大小的粒子，或者从升到距地面20公里处的大型气球下喷洒硫粒子。
The aims are modest. The scientists hope to understand some of the processes on which these technologies depend, as a way of both gauging their feasibility (can you reliably make tiny puffs of sea salt brighten clouds?) and assessing their risks (how much damage to the ozone layer might a stratospheric haze do, and how might such damage be minimized?). The experiments would be far too small to have any climatic effects. The amount of sulphur put into the stratosphere by the experimental balloon would be 2% of what a passenger jet crossing the Atlantic emits in an hour.这样做的目标并不宏伟。
科学家们希望能够了解这些技术所依托的一些过程，也是作为衡量其可行性（能否可靠使用微小的海盐粒子让云彩发光？）和评估其风险（附着在平流层的雾状物会给臭氧层造成多大危害，如何把危害降到最低？）的方式。
这些实验对气候变化的影响微乎其微。
实验所用的气球投入平流层的硫总量相当于横越大西洋的喷气式客一小时喷射气体总量的2%。
Nonetheless, these experiments—and this whole line of research—are hugely controversial. Many scientists are skeptical about geoengineering and most greens are outraged. Opponents object to them for a range of reasons. Some are against the very idea of geoengineering and any experiments in the area, even those which pose no immediate risk to the environment. They abhor the hubris involved in trying to affect the mechanics of the climate and despair at the potential diversion of attention from controlling carbon emissions as the route to countering climate change. They find the idea of some–possibly many—countries having the power to change the climate for the whole planet a geopolitical nightmare. Even modest experiments in geoengineering, according to this logic, are the beginnings of a slippery slope, one that will engender a false sense of security and domesticate an idea that should have always remained outrageous.尽管如此，这些实验以及整个研究领域存在巨大争议。