你对气候变化的了解，可能只是误解

你对气候变化的了解，可能只是误解

We humans have a natural tendency to focus on negative stories. We tend to assume things are worse than they really are, and going downhill fast. We forget how bad things were in the past and how far we've come.

我们人类天生就倾向于关注负面故事。我们倾向于认为事情比实际情况更糟，而且走下坡路很快。我们忘记了过去的坏事，忘记了我们已经走了多远。

In reality, the world is often better — and getting better — than we think, something I wrote about in my book, The Perils of Perception: Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything.

事实上，这个世界往往比我们想象的要好——而且越来越好——这是我在《感知的危险：为什么我们对几乎所有事情都错了》一书中写的。

Murder rates, deaths from terrorism and extreme poverty are all down. Life expectancy, health and education levels are up. And yet, there is one vital, urgent exception to this rule: we still don't realise how badly wrong our global climate and environment have gone.

谋杀率、恐怖主义死亡人数和赤贫率都在下降。预期寿命、健康和教育水平都在提高。然而，这条规则有一个至关重要的紧急例外：我们仍然没有意识到，我们的全球气候和环境已经变得多么糟糕。

A new survey of Britons which tested understanding of some key facts about the environment reveals the extent of environmental misperceptions. Rather than asking people what they thought might happen, this study instead focused on assessing knowledge of the world as it is right now.

一项对英国人的新调查测试了对环境的一些关键事实的理解，揭示了人们对环境的误解程度。这项研究并没有问人们他们认为会发生什么，而是着重于评估人们对当前世界的认知。

One question, for example, was how many of the past 22 years have been the hottest on record?

例如，有一个问题是，过去22年中有多少年是有记录以来最热的?

The answer is 20, but the average guess was just 12. And one in five people guessed five or fewer.

答案是20，但平均猜测只有12。五分之一的人猜测五个或更少。

Britons also overestimated some facts, such as how much air travel contributes to greenhouse guesses. The average guess was that 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from air travel, when in fact it only accounts for around 2 percent.

英国人也高估了一些事实，比如航空旅行对温室效应的影响有多大。人们的平均猜测是，全球20%的温室气体排放来自航空旅行，而实际上它只占2%左右。

Respondents also assumed that air travel's emissions are about equal to that of all other forms of transport put together, when in reality, the latter contributes about ten times as much as flights. This is due to the relative rarity of flights compared to other forms of transport.

受访者还认为，航空旅行的排放量约等于所有其他交通方式的排放量，而实际上，后者的排放量是航班的10倍左右。这是因为与其他运输方式相比，航班相对较少。

Yet despite aviation's relatively limited contribution to emissions overall, one of the most effective environmental actions we can take as individuals is to fly less.

然而，尽管航空对总体排放的贡献相对有限，但作为个人，我们能够采取的最有效的环境行动之一是减少飞行。

A study by Swedish academics puts skipping one transatlantic flight as the third most effective action we can take, only behind the much more extreme options of having one fewer child and living entirely car free.

瑞典学者的一项研究表明，少乘坐一次跨大西洋航班，是我们能采取的第三种最有效的行动，仅次于更极端的选择:少生一个孩子或完全不开车。