Plug-in hybrid automobiles, nearly ready for the market, have the potential to quadruple our miles per gallon. Solar energy, concentrated by rapidly improving systems of parabolic mirrors, could be deployed in Africa's great desert and dry-land regions to provide electricity for Africa and Southern Europe at a cost competitive with fossil fuels. New land-management strategies, backed by modest financial incentives, could end most of today's tropical deforestation, which now contributes around one-fifth of all global carbon emissions as well as causing a massive loss of biodiversity. And all these steps to sustainable energy, according to today's best economic and engineering evidence, can be implemented for less than 1% of annual world income.
插入式混合型汽车不日将问世，这种新型汽车每加仑燃料可以行驶4倍于现在的里程。由于抛物面柱反面镜系统的迅速革新，太阳能将在非洲大部分沙漠和缺水地区投入使用，以低于石化燃料的成本，用于为非洲和南欧供电。由最稳定财政的动机做后盾的新土地管理策略可以终止今天对大多数热带森林的采伐，这里不仅提供给全球五分之一的碳，还引发了大量物种灭绝。凭借今天最好的经济和工程支持，这些保持能源的措施将会带来近1%的全世界年收入。
If the solutions are so attainable, why haven't we reached them already? Part of the reason is that we are facing our problems in the wrong way. We are so convinced that the problems are intractable—or deathly expensive to solve—that paralysis reigns. Even when we are aware of what needs to be done, we are often trapped by a free-market ideology, the same kind of no-regulation policy that has led us into our current financial crisis.
如果所有这些方案都这么可行，为什么我们还是没能完全实现呢？这其中一部分原因是因为我们面对困难的方法有问题。我们坚信这些困难很难处理，或者要为此付出高昂的代价，这种麻痹性的想法占据了我们的思想。甚至你明明知道该做什么，免费的市场意识形态也往往会让你驻足不前，而同时，也是同样的不规则原则导致我们今天的金融危机。
On the three great challenges—environmental sustainability, a stable world population and the end of extreme poverty—market forces will not be enough. The world's producers and consumers currently regard the air as a free dumping ground for carbon dioxide and other climate-changing greenhouse gases. We need to correct market forces—for example, by taxing carbon emissions that are offset by tax reductions elsewhere—in order to create the right incentives. We need to expand greatly our public investments in early-stage clean technologies, such as improved solar-thermal power and carbon capture and sequestration, just as the National Institutes of Health uses public funding to support medical breakthroughs.
面对当今三大挑战：环境的可持续性、稳定世界人口和消除赤贫，我们的市场力量还远远不够。今天，这个世界上的生产者和消费者都把大气视为免费的二氧化碳和其它引起气候变化的绿色气体的大型垃圾排放场。我们需要纠正市场力量向正确的重点的转移，如：通过征收二氧化碳气体排放税来降低其它方面的税收。就像国家健康中心使用公共基金用来支持医药研发一样，我们也应该扩大在净化技术前期的资金投入，例如改良太阳能热量和碳的采集和提取。
Similarly, population stabilization in poor countries requires a determined public investment—in girls' education, health services and child survival—to promote a rapid and voluntary reduction in birth rates. And we should first help the poorest of the poor to get above survival levels of income before we can expect market forces to lift them further, to market-driven prosperity.
同样的，稳定贫困国家人口也需要大量的公共投资，主要用于女孩教育、健康服务和儿童的成活率，以促进快速主动降低出生率。我们可以从帮助贫困国家的最贫困人口入手，使他们达到温饱线，然后再依赖市场力量带领他们走出贫困，从而走向以市场为导向的繁荣。
None of this is expensive, but none of it can happen by itself. Indeed, it is the low cost of success that is perhaps the most remarkable feature of all. Consider malaria, the great African killer disease. Three hundred million antimalaria bed nets are needed to protect impoverished Africans from the disease. Each net costs $5 and lasts five years, for a total cost of $1.5 billion over five years. Yet that is less than one day's Pentagon spending! Add in the costs of medicines and ongoing delivery services, and we find that comprehensive malaria control would cost less than two days' Pentagon spending each year. Sustainable development will not break the bank. The key is, rather, to make the right choices in our public investments and to find ways to harness, and channel, market forces.
所有这些都并不需要投入巨资，但是没有一项可以依靠自己实现。事实上，成功的最低成本可能恰恰就是其最显著的特征。想想疟疾，非洲大陆上最厉害的致命疾病。为了使非洲脱离这种疾病需要生产3亿个抗疟疾网床。每张网床要花费5美元，可持续使用5年，5年总计会花费15亿美元。但是这还不及五角大楼一天的花销呢！！加上药物和后继输送的成本，我们发现每年综合疟疾控制的花费还不到五角大楼两天的花销。可持续发展计划不会让银行倒闭。更确切的说，解决问题的关键在于将公共投资放到正确的选择上，找到得力的工具、渠道和市场力量。
The Power of One
凝聚的力量
Great social transformations—the end of slavery, the women's and civil rights movements, the end of colonial rule, the birth of environmentalism—all began with public awareness and engagement. Our political leaders followed rather than led. It was scientists, engineers, church-goers and young people who truly led the way. If as citizens we vote for war, then war it will be. If instead we support a global commitment to sustainable development, then our leaders will follow, and we will find a way to peace.
蓄奴制的废除、女权运动、殖民地统治的结束及环境保护论的出台，所有这些伟大的社会变革无一不是源于公众的注意和参与。我们的政治领导人在此类活动中往往是跟随而不再是领导。真正的领导人是科学家、工程师、虔诚的基督徒和年轻人。如果公民们都赞成战争，那就会爆发战争。而如果我们支持一项全球性的持续发展工程，我们的领导人也会跟随这个目标，这样就找到一条通向和平的道路。
Each of us has a role to play and a chance for leadership. First, study the problems—in school, in reading, on the Web. Second, when possible, travel. There is no substitute for seeing extreme poverty, or deforestation, or the destructive forces of nature in New Orleans, to understand our generation's real challenges. There is no substitute for meeting and engaging with people across cultures, religions and regions to realize that we are all in this together. Third, get your business, community, church or student group active in some aspect of sustainable development. Americans are promoting the control of malaria, the spread of solar power, the end of polio and the reversal of treatable blindness, to name just a few of today's inspiring examples of private leadership. Finally, demand that our politicians honor our nation's global promises and commitments on climate change and the fight against hunger and poverty. If the public leads, politicians will surely follow.
每个人有领导的一面，也有成为领导的机会。首先，在学校、在互联网上阅读、研究这个问题；然后，如果可能的话，去实地旅行。没有什么比你亲眼看见赤贫、滥砍滥伐、和新奥尔良环境被损坏的惨况更能让你了解我们这代人所面临的真实挑战。也没有什么能比你亲身加入到所有跨越文化、宗教和地域的人们中来更能体会到我们完全是一体的。第三，动员你的公司、社交圈子、教会或学生团体加入到可持续发展的行动中来。美国人正在努力控制疟疾、推广太阳能的使用、灭绝小儿麻痹病和治愈可恢复性失明，这些鼓舞人心的例子都可以称为个人的领导。最后，要求我们的政治家们对气候改变向全球做出承诺，对消除贫困和饥荒承担国家责任。如果公众带头，政治家们必定会跟随。
Our generation's greatest challenges—in environment, demography, poverty and global politics—are also our most exciting opportunity. Ours is the generation that can end extreme poverty, turn the tide against climate change and head off a massive, thoughtless and irreversible extinction of other species. Ours is the generation that can, and must, solve the unresolved conundrum of combining economic well-being with environmental sustainability. We will need science, technology and professionalism, but most of all we will need to subdue our fears and cynicism. John F.Kennedy reminded us that peace will come by recognizing our common wealth. "If we can not end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
我们这一代人在环境、人口、贫困和全球政治上面临的巨大挑战也正是我们最激动人心的机遇。我们是可以终结贫穷、扭转气候变化、逾越庞大而毫无意义、却又无法更改的种族差异的一代；我们是可以，而且必定能解决将经济发展和环境维持完美结合的难题的一代；我们需要科学、技术和专业精神，但是我们最需要的是克服我们的恐惧和玩世不恭。John F.Kennedy 曾提醒我们说当我们意识到我们的多样性时和平自会到来。最后的分析结论就是，我们最基本的共同点就是我们都生活在这个小星球上。我们呼吸同样的空气。我们都珍视自己孩子的未来，我们都是人类。
Sachs, author of The End of Poverty, directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University
