I. Human-induced climate change is a moral wrong. It involves one group of humans harming others. People of this generation harming those in future generations. People in the developed world harming those in the developing world. Each of us is emitting carbon that is harming those caught in climate-driven superstorms, floods, droughts and conflicts. And there's the greatest moral wrong of all --the mass extinciton event we have triggered that harms all lige on Earth.
. 人类引发的气候变化是一种道德恶行(a moral wrong)。它涉及一个人类群体对其他人类群体的伤害。现代人伤害后代。发达国家的人伤害发展中国家的人。每个人都在排放碳,伤害那些陷入气候变化所致的超级风暴、洪水、干旱以及纷争中无法脱身的人。最大的道德恶行是,我们所引发的物种大灭绝事件正在伤害地球上所有的生命。
II. Yet until recently, climate change has not been argued as a moral issue. Rather, it has been presented as a technocratic problem, a cost-benefit problem, where the costs of action must be weighed against the benefits of avoiding disaster. The debates have been around taxes, jobs, growth and technologies. While such debates are important -- there are better and worse ways to tackle the climate crisis -- the effect has been decades of inaction, denial and delay. When something is a moral wrong, particularly a deep, systemic moral wrong, we don't wait around debating the optimum path or policy; we stop it.
. 但是在此之前,人们一直未将气候变化当作一个道德问题来讨论。相反,它过去一直被描述为一个技术专家讨论的问题,一个成本收益问题,在这个问题中,人们必须在“行动的成本”与“避开灾难的收益”之间加以权衡。这些争论一直在围绕税收、就业、发展与技术展开。这类争论固然重要 --处理气候危机方式存在好坏之分-- 但是结果却是数十载的不作为、不承认以及拖延。若某事是一种道德恶行,特别是深重的、全面性的,我们便不会一直等待,一直在争论最佳方式或政策;我们会制止它。
III.