week3 翻譯作業-1.3.2.4

1.3.2.4

According to William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel, the developers of the ecological footprint concept, it would take the land area of about five more planet earths for the rest of the world to reach current U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology. Put another way, if everyone consumed as much as the average American does today, the earth is natural capital could support only about 1.3 billion people-not today is 6.7 billion. In other words, we are living unsustainably by depleting and degrading some of the earth is irreplaceable natural capital and the natural renewable income it provides as our ecological footprints grow and spread across the earth is surface (Concept 1-3). For more on this subject see the Guest Essay by Michael Cain at ThomsonNOWTM. See the Case Study that follows about the growing ecological footprint of China.

根據威廉‧裡斯與馬西斯‧華克納傑，生態足跡概念的發明者，以現有的科技，對於世界其它地方來說，要達到美國目前的消耗水準，大約還要有5個(甚至)更多行星地球的陸地區域。換句話說，如果每個人的消耗和一般的美國人一樣那麼多的話，地球的自然資源大約只能支持13億的人口而不是今天67億。換句話說，我們正生活在一顆難以承受一些不可替代和可再生的自然資源的耗盡且惡化的地球和提供我們生態足跡發展和遍佈的地球（概念1-3）。要瞭解更多這個的主題詳見由邁克爾・凱因在ThomsonNOWTM發表的客座評論(短文)。密切注意關於中國日益增加的生態足跡的專案研究。