A useful system comes from the military, which frequently places a conflict in one of three different categories, according to the theater in which it takes place.
军方创造了几套有用的方法。它经常把一项冲突按其发生的场所范围归人三大不同类 别中的一类。
There are" local" skirmishes, “regional" battles, and "strategic" conflicts. This third category is reserved for struggles that can threaten a nation's survival and must be understood in a global context.
这三大类冲突是：“地方性”小规模战斗、“地区性’”战役和“战略性”冲突。第三类 专指可能威胁一国生存因而必须从全球角度考虑的争。
Environmental threats can be considered in the same way. For example, most instances of water pollution, air pollution, and illegal waste dumping are essentially 6 local in nature.
破坏环境的威胁也可以用同样的方式来考虑。例如，大多数有关水被全部污染、空气 被全部污染和非法倾倒垃圾的事例，其性质从根本上讲是地方性的。
Problems like acid rain, the contamination of underground aquifers, and large oil spills are fundamentally regional.
像酸雨、地下含水土层被污染以及大片鲨出的石油基本上是地区性的。
In both of these categories, there may be so many similar instances of particular local and regional problems occurring simultaneously all over the world that the pattern appears to be global, but the problems themselves are still not truly strategic because the operation of the global environment is not affected and the survival of civilization is not at stake.
在上述两类中，可能有如此之多类似的具有地方性和地区性特殊问题性质的事例在全 世界范围内同时发生，以致从表面形式看似乎是全球性的。然而这些问题本身仍然不真正是 战略性的，因为全球环境的运转并没有受到影响，文明的存在并没有处于危险之中。
However, a new class of environmental problems does affect the global ecological system, and these threats are fundamentally strategic.
然而，有一类新的破坏环境的问题确实影响全球的生态系统，而且这些威胁基本上是战略性的。
The 600 percent increase in the amount of chlorine in the atmosphere during the last forty years has taken place not just in those countries producing the chlorofluorocarbons responsible but in the air above every country, above Antarctica, above the North Pole and the Pacific Ocean-all the way from the surface of the earth to the top of the sky.
过去四十年中大气层氯的含量增加了百分之六百，这不仅发生在那些生产与此直接相关的氟里昂的国家，而且发生在所有国家的上空，还同样发生在南极上空、北极上空和太平洋上空—从地球表面一直到天空深处。