每日英語跟讀 Ep.K208: Greek Island Is New Epicenter of Europe’s Summer of Calamity

Amid twisted cages and scorched trees, Harilaos Tertipis stepped out of his ruined stables dragging the charred corpses of his sheep — burned, like so much else, in the wildfires that have raged across Greece.

在扭曲的籠子與燒焦樹木中，哈里勞斯．特提畢司拖著羊的屍體從他被毀掉馬廄中走出來，這隻羊跟其他許多羊一樣，在肆虐希臘的野火中被燒死。

As the survivors of his flock huddled together on a roadside hill below, the bells on their necks clanging and their legs singed, he said that if he had stayed with his animals instead of rushing home to protect his family and house, “I wouldn’t be here now.”

他倖存的羊群在下面路邊小山擠成一團，牠們脖子上的鈴鐺叮噹作響，牠們的腿燒焦了。他說，若他跟他的動物待在一塊，沒有趕回家保護家人和房子的話，「我現在就不在這裡了」。

As of Friday, the fires around the northern parts of Evia, Greece’s second-largest island, had destroyed more than 120,000 acres of pine forest, razed homes and displaced hundreds of people. They have brought assistance from more than 20 countries and been declared “a natural disaster of unprecedented dimensions” by the Greek prime minister.

截至周五，希臘第二大島艾維亞島北部大火已摧毀超過12萬英畝松樹林，夷平房屋導致數以百計人流離失所。這場大火帶來了20多國援助，並被希臘總理宣布為「規模空前的自然災害」。

The fires, fueled by a record-breaking heat wave that has touched temperatures of up to 46 degrees Celsius, have caused political recriminations, economic disaster and biblical scenes of destruction.

這場大火，由高達攝氏46度的破紀錄熱浪引發，導致了政治上的相互指責、經濟災難和有如聖經描述的毀滅性場景。

But they seem less a random act of God than another inevitable episode of Europe’s extreme weather brought on by the man-made climate change that scientists have now concluded is irreversible.

大火看來並非上帝的隨機行為，而是人為氣候變遷給歐洲帶來另一場不可避免的極端天氣事件。科學家們現在認為氣候變遷不可逆轉。

Europe has always considered itself a climate leader, last month pledging to cut emissions by 55% over the next decade and calling this “a make-or-break moment” for the planet “before we reach irreversible tipping points.”

歐洲一直認為自己是氣候問題領袖，上月承諾未來十年將其碳排放量削減55%，並稱這是地球「在我們達到不可逆轉臨界點之前」的「成敗時刻」。

But a string of disasters this summer has left many to wonder whether that tipping point is already here, driving home the realization that climate change is no longer a distant threat for future generations, but an immediate scourge affecting rich and poor nations alike.

但今年夏天的一系列災難讓許多人懷疑臨界點是否已經到來，促使人們意識到氣候變遷不再是對後代子孫的遙遠威脅，而是同時影響富國和窮國的直接禍害。

Beyond the fires that have raged in the American West, or in Turkey and Algeria, virtually no corner of Europe has been untouched by a bewildering array of calamities, whether fire, flood or heat.

除在美國西部、土耳其和阿爾及利亞肆虐的大火外，歐洲幾乎沒一個角落未遭遇到一系列引發混亂的災害，包括火災、洪水或高溫。

Sweltering temperatures have set off wildfires in Sweden, Finland and Norway. Formerly once-in-a-millennium flooding in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands killed at least 196 people.

酷熱氣溫已在瑞典、芬蘭與挪威引發野火，之前在德國、比利時、瑞士與荷蘭，千年一遇的洪水造成至少196人喪生。

“It’s not just Greece,” said Vasilis Vathrakoyiannis, a spokesperson for the Greek fire service. “It’s the whole European ecosystem.”

希臘消防單位發言人瓦希利斯．瓦特拉科揚尼斯說：「不只是希臘，而是整個歐洲的生態系統有狀況。」

The shifting epicenter of natural disaster has now fallen on Evia, a densely wooded island northeast of Athens, Greece, once best known for its beekeepers and resin producers, its olive groves and seaside resorts, and now a capital of the consequences of a warming planet.

自然災害的震央現已落在艾維亞島上，一座位在希臘雅典東北部森林茂密的島嶼，當地曾以養蜂與樹脂生產、橄欖園和海濱度假勝地而聞名，如今則是地球暖化的後果之都。Source article: https://udn.com/news/story/6904/5704995