In the middle of a record-breaking heatwave back in August, Twitter was tearing Taylor Swift to shreds.
在8月份破纪录的热浪中,泰勒·斯威夫特在推特上被千刀万剐。
She wasn’t in the news because of a song she wrote or some dress she wore.
她上新闻并不是因为她写的歌或是她穿的衣服。
No, she was getting dragged because of her private jet emissions.
而是因为她的私人飞机排放的废气。
The sustainability research group Yard, had just released a report on the celebrities with the largest flight-related carbon footprint, and Taylor Swift topped the charts at number one.
此前,可持续发展研究集团Yard刚刚发布了一份飞行相关碳足迹最大的名人名单,而泰勒·斯威夫特位居榜首。
Whether loaning the jet out or using it herself, Swift’s private plane made 170 trips in just seven months, pouring an estimated 8,293 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atomosphere.
无论是把那架喷气式飞机借给别人还是自己用,斯威夫特的私人飞机都在短短7个月内飞行了170次,相当于向大气中排放了约8293公吨的二氧化碳。
Needless to say, those who cared about climate action were not happy.
不用说,那些关心气候行动的人很不高兴。
This was yet another example of the world’s richest people disproportionately driving climate change.
这是世界上最富有的人大肆推动气候变化恶化的又一个例子。
But as I sat there scrolling through tweet after tweet shaming Taylor Swift for her huge carbon footprint, I couldn’t help but feel like something was a little off.
但当我坐着浏览让泰勒·斯威夫特因巨大碳足迹而感到羞愧的一条又一条推文时,我不禁觉得有些不对劲。
And so I began to do some research.
于是我做了一些研究。
This is what I found.
这是我的发现。
This is the story of inequality and how the rich really drive climate change.
这是一个讲述不平等以及富人如何真正加剧气候变化的故事。
Why we shouldn’t actually care that much about Taylor Swift’s personal carbon footprint, why this guy is far worse, and how of this might show us a better way to think about carbon inequality.
本视频会说明,为什么我们其实不应该太在意泰勒·斯威夫特的个人碳足迹,为什么这个人要糟糕得多,以及这可能会给我们提供一个更好的思考碳不平等的方法。
The current narrative around inequality and climate change looks a lot like the findings of an Oxfam report on household income and emissions.
目前关于不平等和气候变化的说法,看起来很像乐施会的一份家庭收入和排放报告的结果。
The report found that the richest 1% emit double that of the poorest 50%.
该报告发现,最富有的1%人口的排放量是最贫穷的50%人口的两倍。
And newspaper headlines like this and this perpetuate this narrative that the consumption habits of the rich are driving climate change.
像这样和这样的报纸标题让人们一直相信,富人的资源消耗习惯正在加剧气候变化。
I even made a short video about the outsized impact of rich people’s emissions footprint.
我甚至制作了一段简短的视频,分析富人的排放足迹带来的巨大影响。
Because, this is a glaring problem.
因为,这是一个很明显的问题。
The rich across the globe are consuming resources and churning through fossil fuels at a rate way higher than their fair share.
全球富人消耗资源和使用化石燃料的速度远远高于他们的合理速率。
But the frameworks of studies like this and headlines like this, often narrow in on the carbon footprint of the individual as the crux of the problem.
但像这样的研究框架和这样的头条新闻,往往把个人的碳足迹当作问题的症结。
These studies argue that the rich are doing damage to the environment because of how many steaks they eat and how many extra homes they own.
这些研究认为,富人会破坏环境,是因为他们吃了很多牛排,拥有很多额外住房。
These are certainly excessive and harmful to the environment, but the recent crucifying of Taylor Swift’s flight log made me feel like we might be missing the mark a little bit.
这些当然是过量的,且对环境有害,但最近对于泰勒·斯威夫特飞行日志的严厉批评,让我觉得我们可能有点偏离了目标。
Under this carbon footprint shaming model there seems to be a little nuance between what Taylor Swift does, and say, what the CEO of Exxonmobil, Darren Woods, does.
在这种以碳足迹为耻的模式下,泰勒·斯威夫特的所作所为与埃克森美孚首席执行官达伦·伍兹的所作所为之间似乎有些微妙的差别。
Indeed, a carbon footprint analysis would show us that Taylor Swift’s impact is probably larger than that of Darren Woods’s.
事实上,碳足迹分析会表明,泰勒·斯威夫特的影响可能比达伦·伍兹的影响更大。
This seems not only wrong, but implies that the climate crisis is driven primarily by consumption.
这看起来不仅是错误的,还意味着气候危机主要是因资源消耗而加剧的。
In this view of the problem, the solution would just require the CEO of Exxonmobil and all rich people at the helms of polluting industry to just stop eating steak and flying as much.
从这个角度来看,要想解决问题,只需要埃克森美孚的首席执行官和所有执掌污染行业的富人停止吃牛排和坐飞机。
In short, when we talk about economic inequality and emissions we too often focus in on the connection between unequal consumption habits leading to unequal emissions.
简而言之,当我们谈论经济不平等和排放时,我们往往过于关注导致排放量不等的不平等资源消耗习惯之间的联系。
A lens that’s only solution is a politics of less.
唯一的解决方案是“减少”策略。
One where decreasing personal consumption, traveling less, and having less is the only way to avoid climate chaos.
减少个人消耗,减少出行,减少进食是避免气候混乱的唯一途径。
For the ultrarich, a contraction of wealth definitely needs to happen, but for the working class who’re living paycheck to paycheck, this solution is unappealing and unrealistic.
对于超级富豪来说,财富缩水肯定是必要的,但对于靠薪水过活的工薪阶层来说,这个解决方案既没有吸引力,也不现实。
It also conveniently avoids the root cause of the climate crisis.
它还轻易地避开了造成气候危机的根本原因。
All of this is not to say that looking at inequality is useless.
所有这一切并不是说,研究不平等是无用的。
Just the opposite– inequality is an essential concept for tackling the climate crisis, we just have to move our analysis away from unequal consumption to that of unequal control of production.
恰恰相反--不平等是应对气候危机的一个基本概念,我们只需将我们的分析对象从资源消耗的不平等转向生产控制的不平等。