经济学人阅读｜扉页文章 America’s better future
02.28｜经济学人阅读｜扉页文章 America’s better future
经济学人The Economist是一份英国的英文新闻周报，分八个版本于每周五向全球发行，编辑部位于伦敦，创办于1843年9月。
经济学人是一本综合性新闻评论刊物，有商业、国家和地区、经济和金融、科学和技术五大类。其中文章文风紧凑且严谨，对语言精准运用，展现出一种克制的风趣幽默，常运用双关语调侃。
经济学人对于英语考试的重要性不言而喻，其文章常常出现在雅思托福、SAT、GRE、GMAT、考研英语、四六级、MTI和CATTI的阅读理解真题中。
今天羚羊君（公众：aa-acad）给大家分享的是经济学人2021年02月20日期刊中扉页文章的第一篇：America’s better future
这篇文章对于美国政府在节能减排方面的政策和行动，提出了建议。
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01
America’s better future
美国更美好的未来
Texas prides itself on being different. Yet it is in the grip of a winter storm that typifies the Snowmageddon-size problems facing energy in America. Although nobody can be sure if this particular freeze is a sign of climate change, the growing frequency of extreme weather across the country is. Texan infrastructure has buckled. The problem is not, as some argue, that Texas has too many renewables. Gas-fired plants and a nuclear reactor were hit, as well as wind turbines. Worse, Texas had too little capacity and its poorly connected grid was unable to import power from elsewhere (see United States section). Texas shows that America needs both a cleaner grid and a more reliable one.
得克萨斯州以其与众不同而骄傲。而正是在冬季暴风雨的影响下，美国能源面临雪暴时的巨大问题才得以凸显。尽管没有人能确定这种寒冬是否意味着气候变化的，但全国极端天气的发生频率的上升放出了气候变化的信号。德克萨斯州的基础设施已经崩溃。有人认为，问题并不在于得克萨斯州有太多可再生能源。燃气发电厂、核反应堆以及风力涡轮机受到了极端天气的袭击。更糟糕的是，得克萨斯州的能源容量太少，而且电网连接不良，导致其无法从其他地方输入电力（请参阅美国部分）。德克萨斯州的经验表明，美国既需要更清洁的电网，也需要更可靠的电网。
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Plans to overhaul American energy will come before Congress in the next few months. President Joe Biden has said that he wants fossil-fuel emissions from power generation to end by 2035 and the economy to be carbon-neutral by 2050. America is not just the world’s second-largest emitter, but also a source of climate-related policy, technology and, potentially, leadership. What is about to unfold in Washington will set the course in America for the next decade—and quite possibly beyond.
彻底改革美国能源的计划将在未来几个月内提交国会。总统拜登（Joe Biden）曾表示，他希望在2035年之前停止发电产生的化石燃料排放，并在2050年之前实现碳中和。美国不仅是世界第二大排放国，而且还是气候政策制定、相关技术开发以及潜在的引导的来源国。未来华盛顿即将发生的这一系列事件将为美国在未来十年乃至更远的将来设定一个发展基调。
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Time is pressing. Neither Mr Biden nor his successors may get a second chance to recast policy on such a scale. Global emissions from fossil fuels and cement production in 2019 were 16% higher than in 2009. It will be even harder to limit climate change to less than 2°C above the pre-industrial level, the global threshold from which America’s target for 2050 comes. To be carbon neutral, the world must curb emissions by 7.6% a year for a decade, a steeper decline than in 2020, when covid-19 cut demand for oil and coal. For America, delaying action to 2030 would nearly double the cost of reaching net zero or, more likely, mean it overshoots its targets.
时间是非常紧迫的。拜登及其继任者都不会有第二次机会来如此大刀阔斧地重新制定政策。2019年全球化石燃料和水泥生产所产生的排放量比2009年增加了16％。将气温变化限制在比前工业时期水平高2°C以下更是难上加难，而这个数字却是美国2050年整体目标的全球性门槛。为了实现碳中和，全世界必须在连续十年每年碳排放量减少7.6％，这比2020年减少的幅度还要大（2020年，新冠病毒削减了人们对石油和煤炭的需求）。对于美国而言，将行动推迟到2030年几乎会使实现零排放的成本增加一倍，这样的推迟也更可能意味着弄巧成拙。
04
Yet there are grounds for hope. Although the Republican Party is against almost all action, voters are increasingly alarmed by climate change. Two-thirds of them think the federal government is doing too little about it, and that share includes plenty of younger Republicans. Although the fossil-fuel lobby remains powerful, many Republican business donors want more action—partly because asset managers are urging firms to align their strategies with the net-zero world Mr Biden envisions.
Most encouraging of all, the costs of power from wind and solar have plunged by 70% and 90% over the past decade. Along with cheap gas, this has already helped America decarbonise at an impressive rate, despite Donald Trump’s rolling back of fossilfuel regulations. Price has not been the only factor; more than half of the states have some sort of clean-energy mandate, a device that Mr Biden wants to introduce on a national scale.
然而，人们仍然有理由保持乐观。尽管共和党几乎反对所有行动，但选民们对气候变化越来越警觉。其中三分之二的人认为联邦政府对气候变化的行动太少，这些人中包括许多年轻的共和党人。尽管化石燃料对于选民们投票的影响仍然很强大，但是许多共和党的金主爸爸希望采取更多行动——有一部分原因是因为资产管理人敦促公司将其战略与拜登所设想的零排放的世界保持一致。
最令人鼓舞的是，过去十年来，风能和太阳能的电力成本分别下降了70％和90％。尽管唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）取消了化石燃料法规，但这样的成本与廉价天然气一起已经帮助美国以惊人的速度脱碳。而价格并不是唯一的因素。超过一半的州都强制执行使用清洁能源的指令，拜登更是想把这类指令推广到全国范围。
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This involves a regulatory framework that favours renewableenergy developments and grid connections to hook them up. It will take a lot of extra investment—about $2.5trn in the coming decade, say researchers at Princeton (see Briefing). In a new book, Bill Gates, a billionaire philanthropist, argues that research is needed into a host of areas such as energy storage, advanced nuclear reactors to complement renewables and technologies for clean concrete-making and other activities that are hard to decarbonise (see Books & arts section). Without these, even if a clean grid is powering electric cars and light trucks, it will displace only around half of emissions.
这类指令的推广涉及到有利于可再生能源发展和能源网络连接的监管框架。普林斯顿大学的研究人员说，这将需要大量额外的投资，在未来十年中，大约需要花费2.5万亿美元。亿万富翁慈善家比尔·盖茨（Bill Gates）在新书中表示，需要对许多领域进行研究，例如储能、先进的核反应堆（以此来补充可再生能源）、清洁混凝土制造技术以及其他难以脱碳的生产活动（参见“图书与艺术”部分）。没有这些，即使清洁的电网为电动汽车和轻型卡车提供动力，这也只能取代大约一半的碳排放量。
06
America is good at innovation, but new ideas need to be deployed at scale, not languish in the lab. One tool is a carbon price which, if it were high enough and if investors believed it would last, would signal what improvements were needed where. But for all its attractions, carbon pricing failed in Congress in 2009. Although many economists and opinion-makers on the right favour it, Republican politicians do not. And even if a carbon price were in place, public-private co-operation would still be needed for America to act as fast as Mr Biden proposes.
美国擅长创新，但人们需要大规模地去执行新的想法，而不是任由新的创意在实验室中枯萎。减少碳排放的一种创新手段是通过碳价进行调节，如果碳价足够高并且投资者相信碳价会持续稳定，那么碳价将会暗示人们哪些方面需要提升。然而，虽然碳价有其吸引人的地方，但在2009年它没有通过的国会投票。尽管许多经济学家和右翼人士对此表示赞同，但共和党政界人士却并不赞成。即使碳价能执行到位，美国仍然需要公私合作才能像拜登所提议的那样迅速行动。
07
For all those reasons, an ambitious climate-oriented infrastructure bill looks like Mr Biden’s best chance of getting new policy on climate through the Senate. Unfortunately such a plan will be lucky to attract any Republican votes. Yet, if mustering the 60 needed to see off a Senate filibuster is improbable, a plan could be stripped of some measures, including a clean-energy standard, and passed with a simple majority through the parliamentary manoeuvre known as reconciliation. The bill must still be of a scale and ambition that matches America’s challenge.
出于所有这些原因，一项雄心勃勃的面向气候的基础设施法案似乎是拜登通过参议院制定新气候政策的最佳机会。这样的计划能吸引任何的共和党人投票。然而不幸的是，如果不可能召集60名参议院议员，这项计划可能会删减一系列的举措，这些举措包括清洁能源标准等。这项计划同时也会以简单多数通过。该法案也必须仍然具有与美国面临的挑战相匹敌的规模和野心。
08
Failure to act would bring big risks. For a start, it would make America less competitive in the new clean-energy economy. China is the dominant producer of solar panels and batteries; it has also invested in foreign mines to secure minerals needed for them. Europe has its own “green deal” to boost its clean-energy industries. It plans to tax imports from countries that do not pledge to lower their emissions.
不采取行动将带来巨大的风险。首先，这将使美国在新的清洁能源经济中的竞争力下降。中国是太阳能电池板和电池的主要生产国。中国还投资了外国矿山，以确保其所需的矿产。欧洲有自己的“绿色协议”来促进其清洁能源产业的发展。欧盟计划对不承诺降低排放量的国家征收进口税。
09
America would also be deprived of global influence over climate. It has direct control over only about 10% of the world’s greenhouse-gas effluvia. If it wants the benefit of a stabler climate—and with it a stabler world economy, stabler geopolitics and much avoided suffering—it needs to influence the other 90%, too. Mr Biden has appointed John Kerry, a former secretary of state, to spearhead that effort (see Lexington). America is to rejoin the Paris agreement on February 19th, making it a full participant in the unconference to be held in Glasgow, in Scotland, in November, when countries will be able to lodge new and more ambitious pledges to cut emissions. If America tables goals and gives evidence that it will back them with domestic policy, it will gain influence.
不采取行动的风险还有：在气候问题上，美国也将失去其全球影响力。它直接控制着全球约10％的温室气体。如果美国希望获得更稳定的气候所带来的好处，以及更稳定的世界经济、更稳定的地缘政治以及更少的痛苦，那么美国也应当让其影响力辐射到除本国之外另外90%温室气体排放的国家。拜登已任命前国务卿约翰·克里（John Kerry）担任领导职务（请参阅列克星敦）。美国将于2月19日重新加入巴黎协定，这将使得美国获得11月在苏格兰格拉斯哥举行的非会议的正式参与资格，届时各国将能够提出新的、更具雄心的减排承诺。如果美国提出减排目标并且能够制定国家政策去有力地支持减排目标的执行，美国将获得更大的影响力。
