现代大学英语精读第二版（第四册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——5A - For Want of a Drink（因为缺水）

Unit 5A - For Want of a Drink

For Want of a Drink

Author Unknown

When the word water appears in print nowadays, crisis is rarely far behind. Water, it is said, is the new oil: a resource long squandered, now growing expensive and soon to be overwhelmed by insatiable demand. Aquifers are falling, glaciers vanishing, reservoirs drying up and rivers no longer flowing to the sea. Climate change threatens to make the problem worse. Everyone must use less water if famine, pestilence and mass migration are not to sweep the globe.

The language is often overblown, and the remedies sometimes ill-conceived, but the basic message is not wrong. Water is indeed scarce in many places, and will grow scarcer. Bringing supply and demand into equilibrium will be painful, and political disputes may increase in number and intensify in their capacity to cause trouble. To carry on with present practice would indeed be to invite disaster.

Why? The difficulties start with the sheer number of people using the stuff. When, 60 years ago, the world's population was about 2.5 billion, worries about water supply affected relatively few people. Both drought and hunger existed, as they have throughout history, but most people could be fed without irrigated farming. Then the green revolution, in an inspired combination of new crop breeds, fertilizers and water, made possible a huge rise in the population. The number of people on Earth rose to 6 billion in 2000, nearly 7 billion today, and is heading for 9 billion in 2050. The area under irrigation has doubled and the amount of water drawn for farming has tripled. The proportion of people living in countries chronically short of water is set to rise from 8% at the turn of the 21st century to 45% by 2050.

Farmers' increasing demand for water is caused not only by the growing number of mouths to be fed but also by people's desire for better-tasting, more interesting food. Unfortunately, it takes nearly twice as much water to grow a kilo of peanuts as a kilo of soybeans, nearly four times as much water to produce a kilo of beef as a kilo of chicken. With 2 billion people around the world about to enter the middle class, the agricultural demands on water would increase even if the population stood still. Industry, too, needs water. It takes about 22% of the world's withdrawals. Domestic activities take the other 8%. Together, the demands of these two categories quadrupled in the second half of the 20th century, growing twice as fast as those of farming.

Meeting that demand is a difficult task. One reason is that the supply of water is finite. The world will have no more of it in 2025 or 2050 than it has today, or when it lapped at the sides of Noah's Ark. This is because the law of conservation of mass says, broadly, that however you use it, you cannot destroy the stuff. Neither can you readily make it. If some of it seems to come from the skies, that is because it has evaporated from the Earth's surface, condensed and returned.

Most of this surface is sea, and the water below it—over 97% of the total on Earth—is salty. In principle, the salt can be removed to increase the supply of fresh water, but at present desalination is expensive and uses lots of energy.

Of the 2.5% of water that is not salty, about 70% is frozen, either at the poles, in glaciers or in permafrost. So all living things, except those in the sea, have about 0.75% of the total to survive on. Most of this available water is underground, in aquifers or similar formations. The rest is falling as rain, sitting in lakes and reservoirsor flowing in rivers where it is, with luck, replaced by rainfall and melting snow andice. There is also, take note, water vapor in the atmosphere.

The value of water as a commodity of course varies according to locality, purpose and circumstance. Take locality first. Water is not evenly distributed—just nine countries account for 60% of all available fresh supplies—and among them only Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia and Russia have an abundance. America is relatively well off, but China and India, with over a third of the world's population between them, have less than 10% of its water.

Even within countries the variations may be huge. The average annual rainfall in India's northeast is 110 times that in its western desert. And many places have plenty of water, or even far too much. Flooding is routine, and may become more frequent and damaging with climate change.

Scarce or plentiful, water is above all local. It is heavy—one cubic water weighs a tonne—, so expensive to move. Surface water—mostly rivers, lakes and reservoirs—will not flow from one basin into another without artificial diversion, and usually only with pumping. Within a basin, the water upstream may be useful for irrigation, industrial or domestic use. As it nears the sea, though, the opportunities diminish to the point where it has no uses except to sustain deltas, wetlands and to carry silt out to sea.

These should not be overlooked. If rivers do not flow, nothing can live in them. Over a fifth of the world's freshwater fish species of a century ago are now endangered or extinct. Half the world's wetlands have also disappeared over the past 200 years. The point is, though, that even within a basin water is more valuable in some places than in others.

Almost anywhere arid, the water underground, once largely ignored, has come to be seen as especially valuable as the demands of farmers have outgrown their supplies of rain and surface water. Groundwater has come to the rescue, and for a while it seemed a miraculous solution: drill a borehole, pump the stuff up from below and in due course it will be replaced. In many places, however, from the United States to India and China, the quantities being withdrawn exceed the annual recharge. This is serious for millions of people not just in the country but also in many of the world's biggest cities, which often depend on aquifers for their drinking water.

The 20 million inhabitants of Mexico City and its surrounding area, for example, draw over 70% of their water from an aquifer that will run dry within 200 years, maybe sooner. Already the city is sinking as a result. In the Hai river basin in China, deep-groundwater tables have dropped by up to 90 meters.

Part of the beauty of the borehole is that it requires no elaborate apparatus. A single farmer may be able to sink his own tube well and start pumping. That is why India and China are now perforated with millions of irrigation wells, each drawing on the common resource. Sometimes this resource may be huge. But even big aquifers are not immune to the laws of physics. Many places are seriously overdrawn. In those places, farmers probably have to pay something for the right to draw groundwater. But almost nowhere will the price reflect scarcity, and often there is no charge at all and no one measures how much water is being taken.

Priced or not, water is certainly valued, and that value depends on the use to which it is harnessed. Water is used not just to grow food but to make every kind of product, from microchips to steel girders. The largest industrial purpose to which it is put is cooling in thermal power generation, but it is also used in drilling for and extracting oil, the making of petroleum products and ethanol, and the production of hydroelectricity. Some of the processes involved, such as hydro power generation, consume little water(after driving the turbines, most is returned to the river), but some, such as the techniques used to extract oil from sands, are big consumers.

Industrial use takes about 60% of water in rich countries and 10% in the rest. The difference in domestic use is much smaller, 11% and 8% respectively. Some of the variation is explained by capacious baths, power showers and flush lavatories in the rich world. All humans, however, need a basic minimum of two litres of water in food or drink each day, and for this there is no substitute. No one survived in the ruins of Port-au-Prince for more than a few days after January's earthquake unless they had access to some water-based food or drink. That is why many people in poor and arid countries—usually women or children—set off early each morning to trudge to the nearest well and return five or six hours later burdened with precious supplies. That is why many people believe water to be a human right, a necessity more basic than bread or a roof over the head.

From this much follows. One consequence is a widespread belief that no one should have to pay for water. The Byzantine emperor Justinian declared in the 6th century that "by natural law" air, running water, the sea and seashore were "common to all." Many Indians agree, seeing groundwater in particular as a "democratic resource." In Africa it is said that "even the jackal deserves to drink."

A second consequence is that water often has a sacred or mystical quality that is invested in deities like Gong Gong and Osiris and rivers like the Jordan and the Ganges. Throughout history, man's dependence on water has made him live near it or organize access to it. Water is in his body and in his soul. It has provided not just life and food but a means of transport, a way of keeping clean, a mechanism for removing sewage, a home for fish and other animals, a medium with which to skate and sail, a thing of beauty to provide inspiration, to gaze upon and to enjoy. No wonder a commodity with so many qualities, uses and associations has proved so difficult to organize.

参考译文——因为缺水

因为缺水

作者未知

如今，当“水”这个词出现在印刷品中时，“危机”就会紧随其后。人们说水就像过去的石油那样，是一种长期被随意浪费的资源，现在越来越贵，很快就会无法满足贪得无厌的需求。地下蓄水层正在下降，冰川正在消失，水库正在干涸，江河不再流向大海。气候的变化预示着问题将越来越严重。如果我们不想让饥荒、瘟疫以及人类大规模迁徙横扫全球，就必须人人节约用水。

这些印刷品中的措辞往往言过其实，提出来的解决办法有时也考虑不周，但它们所传递的基本信息没有错。在许多地方水确实稀缺，而且稀缺的状况会愈发严重。使水的供需达到平衡极为困难，由此引起的国与国之间的政治争端次数会增多，水资源稀缺会导致越来越多的麻烦。如果目前的状况不改变，那就等于惹祸上身。

为什么会是这样呢？首要的困难就是用水的人实在太多。60年前，世界人口约为25亿，供水问题只影响到较少的人。那时也有干旱和饥荒，就像它们在整个人类历史进程中都存在—样，但是多数人还可以不靠灌溉农业为生。后来绿色革命兴起了，它将新品种的培育、肥料和水的使用有机地结合起来，使得人口剧增。地球上的人口在2000年猛增到60亿，现在已接近70亿，到2050年将逼近90亿。用水灌溉的土地面积已经翻番，农业用水量增加了两倍。到2050年，居住在长期缺水的国家的人口比例将由21世纪初的8%上升到45%。

农民对水不断增长的需求不仅仅是因为不断增加的人口需要养活，还因为人们对味道更好、更刺激他们味蕾的食品的追求。不幸的是，种植一公斤花生比种植一公斤大豆多需要近一倍的水；要生产一公斤牛肉比生产一公斤鸡肉要多用近三倍的水。随着世界上有20亿人口就要进入中产阶层，即便人口不再增长，农业用水的需求也会增加。

工业同样需要用水。工业用水约占世界总用水量的22%。家庭用水占另外的8%。这两种用水加起来的总量在20世纪后半叶翻了两番，其增长速度是农业用水增长速度的两倍。

满足上述的用水需求是个艰巨的任务。原因之一是水的总量是有限的。无论是到2025年还是到2050年，地球上的水不会比今天的水多，也不会比当年轻拍诺亚方舟船舷的水多。这是因为根据质量守恒定律，大体上而言，无论怎么用，你都消灭不了水这一物质。当然你也不容易制造出这一物质。如果说一部分水好像来自天空，那是因为它从地球表面蒸发、浓缩、又重新降落到地球表面的缘故。

地球的表面大部分是海洋，海洋里的水——占总量的97%以上——是咸的。理论上，可以除掉海水中的盐分，以增加淡水供应量，但目前海水淡化既昂贵又需要消耗大量能源。

在这2.5%的不含盐的水中，约有70%处于冰冻状态，储存在南北两极、冰川或永久冻土里。因此，除海洋生物之外，所有其他生物只能依赖占总量约0.75%的水生存。这些可用的水大部分在地下，存在于地下蓄水层或类似的结构中。其他部分以雨的形式落下，储存于湖泊、水库之中或在江河中流淌，这些江河，如果幸运的话，会得到雨水及融化了的冰雪的补充。值得注意的是，还有一部分水蒸发在大气中。

水作为一种商品，其价值自然因地域、使用目的与具体情况的差异而有所不同。首先看看地域的影响。水并非均衡分布的——仅9个国家就拥有全部可用淡水的60%——其中仅巴西、加拿大、哥伦比亚、刚果、印度尼西亚和俄罗斯水资源十分丰富。美国的水资源也相对较丰富，而中国和印度，尽管两国的人口加起来超过世界人口的三分之一，但是所拥有的水资源还不到10%。

即便在各个国家境内，水资源分布的差别也可能是巨大的。在印度东北部，年平均降雨虽是西部沙漠地区的110倍。许多地方有充足的水，甚至水太多了。那样的地方水灾成了家常便饭，而且由于气候的变化，水灾会越来越频繁，破坏性也越来越强。

匮乏也好，充沛也罢，最重要的一点是水具有地方性的特点。水很重——一立方的水重达一公吨——成本太高而难以移动。地表水——主要储存于江河、湖泊和水库内——如果没有人工的疏导，不会由一个盆地自动流往另一个盆地，一般只能使用抽水机抽取。在一个盆地之内，河流上游的水也许可以用于灌溉、工业以及家庭活动。不过，当它们快要流入大海时，这种能利用的机会就会减少，在那里除了维持出海口的三角洲和湿地，以及将沉积在河口的泥沙冲出大海之外,就没有其他用途了。

这些情况不容忽视。如果江河水不流动，里面的生物就不可能生存。目前，一个世纪之前世界上的淡水鱼类中超过五分之一濒临灭绝或已经灭绝。在过去的200年间，世界上的湿地有一半也已经消失。然而，现在的问题是，即便在同一个盆地内，水的价值在一些地方也会比其他地方的价值要大。

几乎在所有的干旱地区，过去基本被忽视的地下水，如今因为农民对水的需求超过了雨水和地表水的供应而显得尤其珍贵。地下水成了救命水，一时间，有了它，缺水问题似乎有了一个奇迹般的解决方法：钻个洞，把水从地底下抽上来，到时候地下水自然又能得到补充。不过在许多地方，从美国到印度和中国，抽出的水量已经超过每年能补充的水量。这对千百万的人来说已经是非常严重的问题，不仅在农村如此，世界上许多大城市也是如此，这些城市里，人们的饮用水往往依靠地下的蓄水层。

比如，居住在墨西哥城及周边地区的两千万人，70%的用水要从地下蓄水层抽取，而这个蓄水层将会在200年内枯竭，或许比这更快。这个城市因地下水面的降低已经在下沉。在中国的海河流域，地下深水层水位已经下降了90米。

钻井抽水的一个优点是不需要使用复杂的机械设备。一个农民或许就能够自己挖掘管井开始抽水。这就是为什么在印度和中国的大地上，布满了数百万个灌溉井，每口井都在抽取人类共用的水资源。有时候这一资源可能还算丰富，但是即便是那些大的蓄水层也免不了受到物理定律的影响。许多地方抽水严重过量。在那些地方，农民或许也需要为抽取地下水而付些费用。但几乎在任何地方，他们所付的费用都不能真正反映出水的稀缺，通常，用水完全是免费的，也没有人计算究竟有多少水在被抽取。

无论有没有标价，水肯定是有价值的，而其价值取决于用它的用途。水不仅用来种植粮食，还用来制造从芯片到建房、架桥用的钢梁等各种产品。其工业上最大的用途是热电厂发电过程中的冷却处理，但它还用于石油勘探和开采、石油产品和乙醇的生产以及水力发电。其中有些工序，如水力发电，耗水很少（在推动涡轮机转动后，大部分水返回江河)，但是有些工序，如在沙子中开采石油所使用的技术会消耗大量的水。

在富裕的国家，工业用水约占60%，而在其余国家工业用水则占10%。家庭用水所占比例的差别要小得多，富裕的国家和其余国家分别为11%和8%。有些差别的原因是富裕的国家人们所使用的是大浴缸、电动淋浴设备以及抽水马桶。然而，所有的人每天都需要从食物或饮料中摄取至少两升的水，而这些水是没有其他替代品的。一月份海地太子港发生地震后，除非能得到含水的食品和饮料，否则没有人能在废墟中存活几天。那就是为什么在贫困和干旱的国家里许多人——通常是妇女和儿童——每天很早就出发，费力地走到最近的水井，五六个小时后才扛着宝贵的水回到家里。那也是为什么许多人认为水是一种人权，是比面包和头上的屋顶更为基本的必需品。

这一观念产生出了很多后果。其一是人们普遍相信，谁都不必为用水付账。拜占庭君主查士丁尼在六世纪宣布，“根据自然法则”，空气、自来水、海洋和海岸均为“公有”。在非洲，有这样一种说法，“即便是胡狼也应该有饮水的权利”。

另一种后果是水往往被赋予了一种神圣或是神秘的性质，这种性质体现在共工和奥西里斯那样的神灵以及约旦河和恒河那样的江河身上。纵观历史，人对水的依赖使他们依水而居或者想方设法获得它。水存在于人体内，亦存在于人的灵魂中。水不仅维持人们的生命，给人们提供食品，还为人们提供了一种交通工具、一种保持清洁的方法、一种排污的机制，一个鱼类和其他动物的家园，一个能让人们溜冰和航海的媒介，一种能赋予人们灵感、供人观看、供人欣赏的美丽的东西。不难理解，一个有如此多种特性和用途又能激起如此多联想的商品该是多么难以管理。

Key Words:

commodity [kə'mɔditi]

n. 商品，日用品

gong [gɔŋ]

n. 锣 n. 奖章

condensed [kən'denst]

adj. 浓缩的；扼要的

conservation [.kɔnsə:'veiʃən]

n. 保存，防止流失，守恒，保护自然资源

vapor ['veipə]

n. 蒸汽

petroleum [pi'trəuliəm]

n. 石油

trudge [trʌdʒ]

n. 沉重的步伐 v. 沉重地走，蹒跚地走

参考资料：