At the very bottom of the earth, high in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, with the sun glaring at midnight through a hole in the sky, I stood in the unbelievable coldness and talked with a scientist in the late fall of 1988 about the tunnel he was digging through time.
1988年的晚秋，在位于地球最底部的南极，午夜眩目的阳光穿过天空的臭氧层空洞照耀着。天气冷得令人难以置信。我站在横贯南极的山脉高处，同一位科学家谈论着他正在穿 过时间挖凿的隧道。
Slipping his parka back to reveal a badly burned face that was cracked and peeling, he pointed to the annual layers of ice in a core sample dug from the glacier on which we were standing.
他把风雪大衣往后滑落了一点，露出一张被太阳晒焦、龟裂脱皮的脸。他指着从我们正站在其上的那个冰川凿下的一个核心标本上的冰的年层。
He moved his finger back in time to the ice of two decades ago. "Here's where the U. S Congress passed the Clean Air Act," he said.
他把手指顺着年层的时间往回移动，停在20 年前形成的冰层那个地方。“这是美国国会通过《净化空气法案》的地方，”他说。
At the bottom of the world, two continents away from Washington, D. C., even a small reduction in one country's emissions had changed the amount of pollution found in the remotest and 1east accessible place on earth.
位于世界底部的南极与首都华盛顿相隔两大洲，但是一个国家哪怕是稍微减少一点它排出的污染物，也会改变地球上这个最遥远和最难以到达的地方的污染量。
But the most significant change thus far in the earth's atmosphere is the one that began with the industrial revo1ution early in the last century and has picked up speed ever since.
然而迄今为止，地球大气层的最重大的变化，是从上个世纪初的工业革命开始的那个变化，而且从那以后，变化的速度日益加快。
Industry meant coal, and later oil, and we began to burn lots of it-bringing rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), with its ability to trap more heat in the atmosphere and slowly warm the earth.
工业意味着煤，后来意味着石油。我们开始燃烧大量的油—导致二氧化碳的含量上升，结果二氧化碳就能够把更多的热量锁留在大气层内从而使地球逐渐变暖。