(单词翻译:单击)
Humans have been adapting to our environment as long as we’ve been around—it’s how we’ve settled everywhere from the bitter cold Arctic to the scorching desert heat.
自从人来存在以来，就一直在适应环境。从寒冷的北极到炎热的沙漠，人来不断适应环境，在各地定居了下来。
But with the heat waves, storms and other extreme events fueled by our rapidly changing climate, we’re having to adapt on a scale we’ve never experienced before.
但是，快速变化的气候加剧了热浪、暴风雨和其他极端天气的发生，我们必须适应以往从未经历过的这么大规模的变化。
And the choices we make in how we adapt can sometimes come back to bite us—as in the case of embankments built in Bangladesh that were supposed to stop floods but have made them worse.
我们在如何适应环境方面做出的选择有时会招致祸事，以孟加拉国修建的堤坝为例，堤坝本来要抵挡洪水，却让情况雪上加霜。
Or they can lull us into a false sense of safety—as in the case of sea walls in Japan that were no match for the 2011 tsunami.
或者，这些选择会让我们产生一种虚假的安全感，以日本海堤为例，这些海堤没有抵挡住2011年的海啸。
This is Science, Quickly. I'm Andrea Thompson, Scientific American's news editor for earth and environment.
这里是《科学快播》栏目，我是安德里亚·汤普森，是《科学美国人》地球与环境新闻编辑。
Even our best intentions have unintended consequences, and when looking at past mistakes—as journalist Stephen Robert Miller does in his new book, Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought and the Delusion of Controlling Nature—it’s clear that the more we try to hold nature in our grip, the more damage we ultimately do.
即使是心怀好意也会产生意外后果，当我们回顾过去的错误时---就像记者斯蒂芬·罗伯特·米勒在他的新书《越过海堤：海啸、飓风、干旱与控制自然的妄想》中所说的那样--很明显，我们越是试图控制自然，最终造成的破坏就越大。
Miller joins us to talk about what he learned in his reporting about these maladaptations and what they can tell us about the potential pitfalls of adapting to climate change.
米勒加入我们，与我们聊了聊在关于适应不良的报道中了解了什么，还告诉了我们适应气候变化的潜在陷阱。
Hi, Stephen, thank you for speaking with us.
你好，斯蒂芬，谢谢你接受我们的采访。
Thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.
感谢邀请我参加，非常感激。
To start, can you briefly tell us about one or two of the maladaptations that you write about in your book and how they may have yielded some short-term success but came with long-term consequences?
首先，你能简单列举一两个你书中写到的关于适应不良的情况吗，它们是如何收获短期成功后又带来长期不良影响的？
Sure I'll kind of book it I think with—I have three case studies—I'll talk about the first and the last.
当然可以，我的书中记录了三个案例研究，我会讲第一个和最后一个案例。
The first one takes place in Japan. And it has to do with the tsunami that hit in 2011 that killed something like 20,000 people.
第一个案例的发生地是日本，2011年日本发生海啸，造成大约2万人死亡。
The coast of Japan had been protected by sea walls for years already.
多年来，沿岸的海堤一直保护着日本海岸。
It's just that none of the walls and breakers and everything that was in place to protect the people along the coast at the time, was up to what came that day.
只是当时用来保护海岸人民的防护墙、防波堤和一切设施都无法应对那天的情况。
And that's largely because nobody at the time expected that that kind of wave could come.
这在很大程度上是因为当时没有人预料到会出现这样的海浪。
There had been warnings, there had actually been warnings, but they hadn't really been listened to.
有过警告，确实有过警告，但人们并没有真正听进这些警告。
And so the walls that were there were totally inadequate for this wave that came, which was just enormous.
海岸的防护墙完全抵御不了来袭的海浪，那是惊天巨浪。
And it might seem kind of cut and dry.
这似乎是老生常谈了。
But one of the bits of research that I came across early in my reporting for this book, talked about the impact the walls had had on the people who live behind them.
但在我为这本书写报告的早期阶段遇到了一项研究，这项研究谈到墙对住在墙后的人产生的影响。
And what it found was that in towns along the coast, where there had been a recent investment in this infrastructure—sea walls and levees—and where people did not have a close memory of, a recent memory, of a tsunami, which at this time was a lot most people, the walls had actually, they cause there to be a higher death toll.
研究发现，在沿海城镇，在那些近期对海堤、防洪堤等基础设施进行了投资的地方，那里的人们对海啸没有记忆，当时这样的群体数量相当庞大，这些防洪堤实际上导致了更多的人死亡。
And they attribute it largely to the kind of false sense of security that the walls provided.
他们把高死亡人数大部分归因于防护墙提供的那种虚假的安全感。
They also found that evacuation times behind the walls were slightly longer than in towns that did not have these walls.
他们还发现，建有防护墙的城镇的撤离时间略长于没有防护墙的。
And again, they attributed it to a false sense of security.
他们再次将撤离时间上的差异归因于一种虚假的安全感。
And so what really struck me, of course, was just this issue of the false sense of security this infrastructure could provide and how you might kind of parlay that into climate change about all the sea walls.
当然，真正让我震惊的是这个基础设施所能提供的虚假安全感的问题，以及如何利用这种虚假的安全感发展成与所有海堤有关的气候变化。
We're building in Miami, in New York City and along the coast in Oregon and California, and how this infrastructure maybe might make us feel like we're safer than we actually are.
我们正在迈阿密、纽约、俄勒冈州和加利福尼亚州沿海地区建设这些基础设施。这些基础设施可能会让我们觉得比实际情况更安全。
