一些触目惊心的环境数字

 

柯 平 编

 

       ■  October 8, 2007: The world used up its “ecological budget” for 2007 almost two months early, exhausting the natural resources that the earth’s ecosystem can regenerate in a calendar year. According to a new measure of environmental impact from the new economics foundation, a think-tank, this is the quickest descent into ecological hock since the world began living beyond its sustainable means in 1987. Andrew Simms, nef’s policy director, said “today is the day when the world, in effect, starts eating into its stock of natural resources and goes into ecological debt. The date has been creeping ever earlier in the year since the world first entered deficit in the 1980s.” The nef study, called Chinadependence in reflection of the growing impact of China on the global economic system, compared the world’s capacity to produce food, minerals and other raw materials with current levels of consumption using UN data on the state of the planet’s forests, fisheries and agriculture. Twenty years ago, the world used up its stock of renewable resources on 18 December, the first year in which it first ran up against the limits of sustainability. By 1995 “world ecological debt” day had come forward to November 21. Five years ago the world had consumed more than it could naturally replace by October 25. Mr Simms said the situation was much more extreme in wealthy countries. “If everyone in the world wanted to live like people in the UK, for example, we would need over three planets like Earth” he added. The ecological footprint of the UK is among the world’s biggest, matched by France and only beaten by the US. Worldwide consumption on an American scale would only be sustainable with the natural resources of more than five Earths, the study claimed. One reason for the accelerating plunder of the world’s resources, nef said, was a little-known quirk of world trade statistics whereby two countries often import and export almost identical amounts of a similar product to and from each other. In 2006, the UK imported 21 tonnes of mineral water from Australia and sent 20 tonnes back again. Britain bought 2,257 tonnes of ice cream from Sweden and sold 2,297 tonnes back to the Scandinavian country. The study also showed how the ecological impact of profligate western life-styles is disguised because a web of interdependent economies shifts the environmental effect of consumption from developed to developing countries. “China is increasingly blamed for its levels of pollution and its rising greenhouse gas emissions” Mr Simms said. “But it is demand from countries like the UK which leads to smoke from Chinese factories and power plants entering the atmosphere. China has become the environmental laundry for the Western world.”

(Stevenson, Tom [2007, October 6]. Today the world’s “ecological budget” for 2007 runs out. The Daily Telegraph.  Retrieved October 8, 2007, from the Daily Telegraph website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/10/06/ccnef106.xml)

 

      ■  中新网2007年10月7日电  据BBC报道，英国“新经济基金会”(New Economics Foundation) 的最新报告说，每一件在中国生产出口到英国的物品，其废气排放量比在英国生产要多1/3。这是新经济基金会连续第二年发表这项报告，重点探讨了英国对进口货品的依赖程度，以及由此对发展中国家造成的影响。报告指出，过去一年英国从中国进口商品上升了10%。新经济基金会的报告显示，如果全世界每个人都像美国那样消耗资源的话，人类需要5.3个地球才能承担全人类的消耗量；如果像法国和英国的消耗水平，人类需要3.1个地球。这一数字相对于西班牙的水平是3，德国是2.5、日本是2.4、而中国则为0.9。去年，新经济基金会的报告指出，按全球目前的能源消耗量，2007年世界将于10月9日进入“生态透支日”(World Ecological Debt Day)，而这一天提前了三天到来。生态透支指的是人类对地球资源的需求和耗用大于地球所能承担的供应。西姆斯说，中国的快速发展促使西方国家把工厂转移到中国大陆，因此中国二氧化碳排放量反映出西方国家的高消费水平。两年前美国研究人员指出，14%的中国废气是由生产出口到美国的货品所造成的。新经济基金会认为，气候变化的讨论焦点应从商品生产国转移到商品消费国。

（英国机构称西方变相把废气排放转嫁到中国. 2007-10-07 . 2007-10-7 检自http://news.jlonline.com/Guonei/2007/10/7/7113933AEKD6IH1DCFB09DCDBC8GH08H.shtml）

 

      ■  根据从正在印尼城市日惹召开的会议上所获得的数据，亚洲污染最严重的城市的空气污染程度是巴黎、伦敦和纽约的五倍，世界卫生组织所规定的安全标准的五到六倍。根据每立方米空气中威胁健康的悬浮微粒的含量(以微克计算)，大城市中污染最严重的是北京，达到了142微克。而巴黎的空气中所含的微尘的重量平均大约有22微克，伦敦是24微克，纽约是27微克。世界卫生组织规定的安全标准是20微克。尽管亚洲城市中的污染灰尘有30%到70%来自于汽车，但由于中印都在培育年轻的汽车产业，两国的汽车拥有量仍将会成倍增长。中国城市可持续交通研究中心的刘(音)经理指出，尽管经过10年的高速增长，但13亿中国人中仍有99%的人没有小汽车。不过，如果中国达到美国的人均汽车拥有量，也就是说每100个中国人中就有77人有小汽车，“连人站的空间都没有了”，更不用说所呼吸的空气的质量了。

（美国《国际先驱论坛报》2006年12月15日报道，原题：亚洲会议聚焦恶化的空气污染. 2006-12-20 检自http://www.jlonline.com/news/News-16195.html）

 

      ■  地球上几乎所有的游离氧均来自植物的光合作用。但是当大气温度升高达到40摄氏度时，植物的光合作用将停止。

      ■  如果全世界的冰山都融化，地球将会变成一个被深达1000米的大水淹没的“水球”。

      ■  海平面只要上升1米，孟加拉国50％的农田就将被淹没，4000万人口将不得不迁居异地。

      ■  生产中国一半以上小麦和三分之一玉米的华北平原已大大淘空了浅层蓄水层，并转向深层蓄水层，而深层蓄水层是不可补充的。据中国地质环境监测院的报告，河北省的深层蓄水层的平均水位在2000年一年里下降了2.9米；该省一些城市的水位更是下降了6米。据世界银行的报告，在北京的周边地区，深井要开凿到1000米才能抽出淡水。

      ■  正是由于水资源的日益紧张，中国的谷物产量已从1998年的历史最高峰3.92亿吨，降到2003年的估计收获量3.38亿吨，这减产的5000万吨相当于加拿大的谷物产量。

      ■  据世界银行预测，由于中国人口在2000年至2010年期间预计将增加9000万，中国城市对水的需求将由500亿立方米增至800亿立方米，即增长60％。同时工业用水的需求也将由1270亿立方米增至2060亿立方米（增加62％），因此农业用水必将更趋紧张。

      ■  美国用于道路和停车场的土地面积估计为1600万公顷，几乎和美国小麦的种植面积——2000万公顷——差不多。倘若中国有朝一日达到日本每两人一辆汽车的拥有率，汽车总量从现在的1300万辆增加到6.4亿辆，那么汽车需要占有的土地面积（用于道路和停车位）将接近1300万公顷，这是中国现有稻田面积（2800万公顷）的一半。

（以上数据分别来源于中央台科教频道节目；《不列颠百科全书》第15版；对美国地球政策研究所所长，30年前率先提出经济可持续发展概念，《B模式：拯救地球延续文明》[林自新 译，东方出版社2003年版）]与《谁来养活中国？》一书的作者莱斯特•Ｐ•布朗的访谈；科学时报社科学网 等）

 

      ■  “中国使用农业化肥的强度是独一无二的，”在中国环境与发展国际合作委员会2004年度会议的主旨发言中，加拿大马尼托巴大学教授斯谬尔说，“中国有着不到世界1/10的耕地，但是近来氮肥的使用量却占全世界的近30%。”由于氮肥施用过量、利用率过低，中国每年有超过1500万吨的废氮流失到了农田之外，并引发了环保问题：污染地下水；使湖泊、池塘、河流和浅海水域生态系统营养化，导致水藻生长过盛、水体缺氧、水生生物死亡；施用的氮肥中约有一半挥发，以一氧化二氮气体形式逸失到空气里——一氧化二氮是对全球气候变化产生影响的温室气体之一。过量的氮肥形成了“从地下到空中”的立体污染。

      ■  中国不但是世界上最大的化肥使用国，也是最大的农药使用国。农药同样存在过度施用问题，目前中国农药的过量施用在水稻生产中达40%，在棉花生产中超过了50%。许多被禁止的农药依然在使用，不仅对环境造成损害，而且导致了在食品中的有害残留。

      ■  化肥和农药过量施用导致的污染，因其污染源广泛分散、没有明确位置，而被称为农业面源污染。在一些发达国家，农业面源污染已经成为水环境污染的主要来源。专家们认为，目前中国正在向这一状况快速发展。中华环保基金会会长曲格平忧心忡忡地对记者说，“化肥、农药污染是一个世界性的难题，但在中国来得这么快，这么严重，令人震惊。中国化肥、农药的使用量已经到了一个极限，已到非治不可的地步，应该采取新的有效措施了。”

（以上数字与言论来源于人民网记者刘毅、赵永新对2004年11月02日在刚刚在北京闭幕的中国环境与发展国际合作委员会（国合会）年度会议上对多位中外著名专家、学者的采访。2004年11月30日转引自环保人网[invalid link]）

 

      ■  The world’s fish and seafood populations will collapse by 2048 if current trends in habitat destruction and overfishing continue, resulting in less food for humans, researchers said on Thursday. In an analysis of scientific data going back to the 1960s and historical records over a thousand years, the researchers found that marine biodiversity — the variety of ocean fish, shellfish, birds, plants and micro-organisms — has declined dramatically, with 29 percent of species already in collapse. Extending this pattern into the future, the scientists calculated that by 2048 all species would be in collapse, which the researchers defined as having catches decline 90 percent from the maximum catch. This applies to all species, from mussels and clams to tuna and swordfish, said Boris Worm, lead author of the study, which was published in the current edition of the journal Science. Ocean mammals, including seals, killer whales and dolphins, are also affected. “Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging,” Worm said in a statement. “In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are — beyond anything we suspected.” When ocean species collapse, it makes the ocean itself weaker and less able to recover from shocks like global climate change, Worm said. The decline in marine biodiversity is largely due to over-fishing and destruction of habitat, Worm said in a telephone interview from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

(Zabarenko, Deborah. [Environment Correspondent 2006]. Ocean fish, seafood could collapse by 2048: study. Reuters Science News. November 2, 2006. Retrieved November 3, 2006, from http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061102/sc_nm/environment_fish_dc_2)

 

      ■  BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s longest river is “cancerous” with pollution and rapidly dying, threatening drinking water supplies in 186 cities along its banks, state media said on Tuesday. Chinese environmental experts fear worsening pollution could kill the Yangtze river within five years, Xinhua news agency said, calling for an urgent clean-up. “Many officials think the pollution is nothing for the Yangtze,” Xinhua quoted Yuan Aiguo, a professor with the China University of Geosciences, as saying. “But the pollution is actually very serious,” it added, warning that experts considered it “cancerous.” Industrial waste and sewage, agricultural pollution and shipping discharges were to blame for the river’s declining health, experts said. The river, the third longest in the world after the Nile and the Amazon, runs from remote far west Qinghai and Tibet through 186 cities including Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanjing and empties into the sea at Shanghai. It absorbed more than 40 percent of the country’s waste water, 80 percent of it untreated, said Lu Jianjian, from East China Normal University. “As the river is the only source of drinking water in Shanghai, it has been a great challenge for Shanghai to get clean water,” Xinhua quoted him as saying. China is facing a severe water crisis — 300 million people do not have access to drinkable water — and the government has been spending heavily to clean major waterways like the Yellow, Huaihe and Yangtze rivers. But those clean-up campaigns have made limited progress because of spotty regional enforcement. Toxic spills are common, the worst recently being in the Songhua river in the northeast which led to the taps of Harbin being turned off for days.

(China's longest river “cancerous” with pollution. Reuters Science News. May 30, 2006. Retrieved May 31, 2006, from http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060530/sc_nm/environment_china_river_dc_1)

 

      ■  Greenhouse gas pollution from China and India rose steeply over the last decade, but rich countries, including the United States, remain the world's biggest polluters, a World Bank official said on Wednesday. The United States accounts for nearly a quarter — 24 percent — of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas linked to global warming, said Steen Jorgensen, the bank’s acting vice-president for sustainable development. The countries of the European Monetary Union contribute 10 percent. But China and India are catching up. “(Greenhouse gas emissions from) China and India are growing very rapidly at the moment, very much because of inefficient investments in energy, in power generation,” said Jorgensen. China, the world’s second-largest polluter after the United States, increased carbon dioxide emissions by 33 percent between 1992 and 2002, according to the bank’s “Little Green Data Book,” a survey of world environmental impact released on Tuesday. India’s emissions rose 57 percent over the same period. Jorgensen said those likely to suffer most from the consequences of these emissions, including the increasingly severe weather patterns associated with global climate change, are farmers in the poorest parts of the world. “The gloom and doom (is) if you are a farmer on a small island state somewhere, looking at sea level rise, looking at more severe weather - those are really the people we should be concerned about,” Jorgensen said in a telephone interview from New York. “It’s an unequal distribution of the people who pollute and the people who suffer from the pollution.” He said the main reason emissions from China and India are rising so fast compared to the rest of the world, which had a 15 percent rise in carbon dioxide emissions between 1992 and 2002, was older, inefficient coal-fired power plants in both countries. While cleaner coal-fired plants are possible, India and China cannot afford to make the switch.

(Reuters Science News. By Deborah Zabarenko. May 11, 2006, Retreived May 11, 2006,  from http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060510/sc_nm/environment_pollution_dc_2)

 

      ■  The world must halt greenhouse gas emissions and reverse them within two decades or watch the planet spiraling toward destruction, scientists said on Monday, January 30, 2006. Saying that evidence of catastrophic global warming from burning fossil fuels was now incontrovertible, the experts from oceanographers to economists, climatologists and politicians stressed that inaction was unacceptable. “Climate change is worse than was previously thought and we need to act now,” Henry Derwent, special climate change adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said at the launch of a book of scientific papers on the global climate crisis. Researcher Rachel Warren from the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, who contributed to the book “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change,” said carbon dioxide emissions had to peak no later than 2025, and painted a picture of rapidly approaching catastrophe. Global average temperatures were already 0.6 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and a rise of just 0.4C more would see coral reefs wiped out, flooding in the Himalayas and millions more people facing hunger, she said. A rise of 3C — just half of what scientists have warned is possible this century — would see 400 million people going hungry, entire species being wiped out and killer diseases such as dengue fever reaching pandemic proportions. “To prevent all of this needs global emissions to peak in 2025 and then come down by 2.6 percent a year,” Warren said. “But even then we would probably face a rise of 2 degrees because of the delay built into the climate system. So we have to start to plan to adapt,” she added.

(Based on Reuters science news “Global warming demands urgent solutions: scientists.” [By Jeremy Lovell. LONDON (Reuters). Retrieved January 31, 2006, from http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060131/sc_nm/environment_climate_dc])

 

      ■  2005 was the warmest recorded on Earth’s surface, and it was unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said on Tuesday. All five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In descending order, the years with the highest global average annual temperatures were 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, NASA said in a statement. “It’s fair to say that it probably is the warmest since we have modern meteorological records,” said Drew Shindell of the NASA institute in New York City. “Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it’s even fair to say that it’s the warmest in the last several thousand years.” Over the past 30 years, Earth has warmed by 1.08 degrees F (0.6 degrees C), NASA said. Over the past 100 years, it has warmed by 1.44 degrees F (0.8 degrees C). The 21st century could see global temperature increases of 6 to 10 degrees F (3 to 5 degrees C), Shindell said. “That will really bring us up to the warmest temperatures the world has experienced probably in the last million years,” he said.

(2005 was warmest year on record: NASA. By Deborah Zabarenko Tue Jan 24, 2006. Reuters Science News. Retrieved January 25, 2006, from http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060124/sc_nm/environment_warming_dc)

 

      ■  A magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the strongest for 40 years, struck off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on December 26, 2005. The tsunami it generated claimed more than 250,000 lives. Two weeks after, the Earth was still vibrating from the massive undersea earthquake. Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorised that a shift of mass towards the Earth’s centre during the quake caused the planet to spin three millionths of a second faster and tilt about 2.5 cm on its axis.

(Stuff World News. January 10, 2005. Retrieved January 10, 2005, from http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3151151a12795,00.html. Mortality figure updated on Feb 1, 2005.)

 

      ■  Kyoto protocol, which aims to cut emissions by developed nations by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, and which ends in 2012, is meant to be a first step against global warming. U.N. projections show, however, that Kyoto will brake rising world temperatures by only about 0.1C (0.2F), a pinprick compared to a forecast rise of 1.4-5.8C by 2100.

(Reuters Science News. November 24, 2004. Retrieved November 25, 2004, from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=3&u=/nm/20041124/sc_nm/environment_kyoto_dc)

 

      ■  World surface temperatures have risen by 0.6 degrees centigrade (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s when the Industrial Revolution started in Europe. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,000 scientists which advises the United Nations, projects a further rise of 1.4-5.8 degrees centigrade by 2100. Even the lowest forecast would be the biggest century-long rise in 10,000 years.

(Reuters Science News. February 11, 2005. Retrieved February 12, 2005, from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=3&u=/nm/20050211/sc_nm/environment_warming_dc)

 

      ■  The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet because of a build-up of gases from fossil fuels burned in cars, factories and power plants, according to a report by 250 scientists from 8 countries this month. That could make the North Pole ice-free in summer by 2100, driving species like polar bears toward extinction and undermining indigenous hunting cultures, the report says. In turn, a global thaw could push up sea levels by almost a meter (3 ft) by 2100, according to U.N. projections, threatening to sink low-lying Pacific island states like Tuvalu or the Marshall Islands or the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

(Reuters Science News. November 25, 2004. Retrieved November 26, 2004, from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=3&u=/nm/20041125/sc_nm/environment_arctic_dc)

 

      ■  SYDNEY (Reuters) - Islanders on tiny Tuvalu in the South Pacific last week saw the future of global warming and rising sea levels, as extreme high tides caused waves to crash over crumbling sea-walls and flood their homes. “Our island is sinking together with our hearts,” wrote Silafaga Lalua in Tuvalu News (www.tuvaluislands.com). Tuvalu is a remote island nation consisting of a fringe of atolls covering just 10 sq miles, with the highest point no more than 17 ft above sea level, but most a mere 6.5 ft. Global warming (news - web sites) from greenhouse gas pollution is regarded as the main reason for higher sea levels, now rising about 2mm (0.08 in) a year, which could swamp low-lying nations such as Tuvalu and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean if temperatures keep rising. “The Kyoto Protocol is not going to fix the problem in terms of rising sea levels,” said Adam Delaney, Kyoto spokesman for the Pacific Islands Forum, which represents 16 island states. Small island states had originally sought a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, but accepted the 5.2 percent agreed at Kyoto as a start. But some scientists say an emissions cut of at least 60 percent is needed to prevent catastrophic impacts of climate change this century, including more intense cyclones in the Pacific.

(Retrieved Feb 12, 2005, from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=2&u=/nm/20050213/sc_nm/environment_kyoto_islands_dc)