Acre by acre, the rain forest is being burned to create fast pasture for fast-food beef; as I learned when I went there in early 1989, the fires are set earlier and earlier in the dry season now, with more than one Tennessee's worth of rain forest being slashed and burned each year.
雨林被一英亩一英亩地烧毁，用来为提供快餐牛肉创建快速养牛场。我于1989 年初去那里时听说现在旱季火烧雨林的时间越来越早，每年要有一个比田纳西州还要大的雨林遭到砍伐和烧毁。
According to our guide, the biologist Tom Lovejoy, there are more different species of birds in each square mile of the Amazon than exist in all of North America-which means we are silencing thousands of songs we have never even heard.
据我们的向导生物学家汤姆?洛夫乔伊说，亚马孙雨林每平方公里上的鸟的种类比生活在整个北美的鸟的种类还要多—这意味着，我们正消灭数以千计的我们甚至从未听到过的歌曲。
But one doesn't have to travel around the world to witness humankind's assault on the earth. Images that signal the distress of our global environment are now commonly seen almost anywhere.
然而人们无需走遍世界就能目睹人类对地球的攻击。如今标志着我们全球环境的痛苦的景象几乎到处可见。
On some nights, in high northern latitudes, the sky itself offers another ghostly image that signals the loss of ecological balance now in progress.
在北纬高纬度地区，有几个夜晚，天空本身提供了又一个标志着生态正在失去平衡的 可怕景象。
If the sky is clear after sunset-and if you are watching from a place where pollution hasn't blotted out the night sky altogether -you can sometimes see a strange kind of cloud high in the sky.
如果日落后天空晴朗—并且如果你观察一块没有完全被污染遮暗的夜空—你有时能够看到一种奇怪的云团高悬天空。
This "noctilucent cloud" occasionally appears when the earth is first cloaked in 4 the evening darkness; shimmering above us with a translucent whiteness, these clouds seem quite unnatural: And they should:
当地球刚被黑夜吞没时，这种“夜光云”会偶尔出现，呈现出半透明的白色，在我们的头顶上闪闪发光，这些云看上去很怪，它们应该看上去很怪。
noctilucent clouds have begun to appear more often because of a huge buildup of methane gas in the atmosphere.
由于大气层中的甲烷气体大量增加，夜光云的出现开始变得更为经常。