Lesson 47 Too high a price? 代價太高?

    Pollution is the price we pay for an overpopulated, overindustrialized planet. When you come to think about it, there are only fourways you can deal with rubbish: dump it, burn it, turn it into something youcan use again, attempt to produce less of it. We keep trying all four methods,but he sheer volume of rubbish we produce worldwide threatens to overwhelm us.

     Rubbish, however, is only part of the problem of polluting ourplanet. The need to produce ever-increasing quantities of cheap food leads to adifferent kind of pollution. Industrialized farming methods produce cheap meatproducts: beef, pork and chicken. The use of pesticides and fertilizersproduces cheap grain and vegetables. The price we pay for cheap food may bealready too high: Mad Cow Disease (BSE) in cattle, salmonella in chicken andeggs, and wisteria in dairy products. And if you think you'll abandon meat andbecome a vegetarian, you have the choice of very expensive organically-grownvegetables or a steady diet of pesticides every time you think you're eatingfresh salads and vegetables, or just having an innocent glass of water!

     However, there is an even more insidious kind of pollution thatparticularly affects urban areas and invades our daily lives, and that isnoise. Burglar alarms going off at any time of the day or night serve only toannoy passers-by and actually assist burglars to burgle. Car alarms constantlyscream at us in the street and are a source of profound irritation. A recentsurvey of the effects of noise revealed (surprisingly?) that dogs barkingincessantly in the night rated the highest form of noise pollution on a scaleranging from 1 to 7. The survey revealed a large number of sources of noisethat we really dislike. Lawn mowers whining on a summer's day, late-nightparties in apartment blocks, noisy neighbors, vehicles of al kinds, especiallylarge container trucks thundering through quiet village, planes and helicoptersflying overhead, large radios carried round in public places and played atmaximum volume. New technology has also made its own contribution to noise. Alot of people object to mobile phones, especially when they are used in publicplaces like restaurants or on public transport. Loud conversations on mobilephones invade our thoughts or interrupt the pleasure of meeting friends for aquiet chat. The noise pollution survey revealed a rather spurring and      possibly amusing old fashioned source of noise. It turned out to be snoring! Men werefound to be the worst offenders. It was revealed that 20% of men in theirmid-thirties snore. This figure rises to a staggering 60% of men in theirsixties. Against these figures, it was found that only 5% of women snoreregularly, while the rest are constantly woken or kept awake by theirtrumpeting partners. Whatever the source of noise, one thing is certain:silence, it seems, has become a golden memory.

　　污染就是我們為這個人口過密，過度工業化的星球所付出的代價。當我們開始考慮垃圾問題時，我們只有4種對付垃圾的方法：傾倒、焚燒、把垃圾變成再生材料或試圖少產生一些垃圾。我們一直在試這4種方式，但是，我們在世界范圍內僅產生的垃圾的量就有把我們覆蓋的危險。

　　然而，垃圾只是我們這個星球的污染問題的一個方面。日益增長的對廉價食物的需求導致了另一種形式的污染。工業化的農作方式生產出廉價的肉類制品——牛肉、豬肉和雞肉。使用殺蟲劑和化肥生產出廉價的谷物和蔬菜。為了廉價食物我們付出代價已經太高了：牛肉中的瘋牛病，雞肉和雞蛋中的沙門氏菌，奶制品中的利斯特桿菌。如果你想放棄肉類而變成一位素食者，那么你可以兩者擇一：或是選用價格昂貴、有機培植的蔬菜，或是當你認為在享用新鮮色拉和新鮮蔬菜或飲用一杯無害的水的時候，實際上每次都不斷吃進殺蟲劑。

　　但是，還有一種更加隱蔽有害的污染，它專門影響城鎮地區，侵襲我們的日常生活，那就是噪音。防盜警報器在白天和黑夜的任何時候都會響起來，它的作用只是騷擾過路行人，而實際上卻幫助竊賊入室行竊。在街上，汽車的防盜警報不斷對我們吼叫，這是人們極度煩燥的一個原因，最近一個有關噪音的作用的調查(令人吃驚地)指出，夜間連續不斷的狗叫聲，在一個從1級至7級刻度表上應列為最嚴重的噪間污染。這個調查揭示了我們所不喜歡的大量的噪間的來源：夏天嗚嗚作響的割草機，公寓樓里深夜聚會的喧嘩聲，大聲吵鬧的鄰居，各式各樣的車輛，特別是穿越寂靜的村莊的集裝箱卡車，從頭頂飛過的飛機和直升機，被帶到公共場所、音量開到最大的大功率收音機。新技術也為噪音作了它的貢獻。許多人都反對移動式電話，特別是在如飯店，公共交通車等公共場所使用移動電話。用移動電話大聲交談干擾我們的思路，破壞我們和朋友在一起輕聲聊天所得到的樂趣。這個有關噪音的污染調查還揭示了一種出人意外而同時可能會引人意外而同時可能會引人發笑的老式噪音源。它竟然是鼾聲。人類是這方面的罪魁禍首。調查指出，20%的35歲左右的男人打鼾;而到60歲這個年齡段，這個數字上升到令人驚愕的60%。與這些數字相比，只有5% 的女性經常打鼾;而其余則經常被與她們同睡、像吹號似地打著呼嚕的男人吵醒或弄得睡不著。不管噪聲來自何方，有一點是肯定的：看來寂靜已變成一種珍貴的回憶。

 

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