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下班早感到内疚?为环保早点下班吧

分类: 英语美文 

Time off isn't so much a luxury, new research argues, as an urgent necessity.
新研究认为,休假不是奢侈品,而是必需品。

Working long hours on the job is bad for your health, raising your risk of stroke, heart attack, and depression. And to top it off, it's also bad for the planet. According to a paper from Autonomy, a future-focused think tank in the U.K, the number of hours spent working every week needs to be slashed in the absence of larger efforts to decarbonize our economies. Businesses are still mostly powered by fossil fuels.
长时间工作不利于身体健康,易增加患中风、心脏病和抑郁的风险。最重要的是,长时间工作不利于地球环境。据Autonomy(一个以未来为重点的英国智囊团)的一篇文章表示,应缩短每周的工作时间使经济"脱碳"。目前,化石燃料依然是企业的发电主力。

"Provided current levels of carbon intensity of our economies and current levels of productivity," the report asks, "how much work can we afford?"
"考虑到当前经济的碳强度水平和目前的生产力水平,"这份报告问道,"我们还能够工作多久?"

下班早感到内疚?为环保早点下班吧

Not much, apparently. The report, which came out on Wednesday, found that working hours in high-income countries like the United States "vastly exceed the levels that might be considered sustainable." These countries would have to drastically cut their working weeks to stay beneath the target of 2 degrees C of warming over pre-industrial levels, assuming no other action was taken.
显然,并不多了。这份报告于周三发布,发现:美国等高收入国家的工作时长"大大超过可持续工作时长。"在没有采取其它措施的前提下,这些国家应大幅度缩短工作周,努力将全球平均气温较工业化前水平升高控制在2摄氏度之内。

Workers in the U.K. could only put in nine hours a week. Germany, which still relies on coal power, would have to shorten the workweek to just six hours. And Sweden, one of Europe's cleanest economies, would have to shift to a 12-hour week. To come up with these numbers, researchers analyzed data from the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tracks how much greenhouse gas different industries are pumping out.
按照这一标准,英国的工作时长不能超过每周9小时。仍依赖煤发电的德国应将工作时长缩短至每周6小时。作为欧洲最清洁的经济体之一的瑞典,其每周工作时长为12小时。研究员分析了联合国和经济合作与发展组织的数据(跟踪了不同行业抽出的温室气体量)后得出了这些工作时长数据。

Sure, productivity sounds like a good thing, but making stuff and keeping offices humming results in a bunch of climate-warming pollution. Oh, and don't forget about all that gas we burn driving to work and back every day!
当然,生产力听起来是件好事,但保持办公室一直处于运转状态却会带来气候变暖。哦,别忘了每天开车上下班燃烧的汽油哦!

This is the most recent in a growing list of studies that suggest shorter work weeks could lower our carbon dioxide emissions. One found that a 1 percent decrease in work hours could shrink the carbon footprint of several high-income countries by nearly 1.5 percent.
越来越多的研究表明,工作周时长缩短或能降低二氧化碳的排放量。有研究员发现:工作时长减少1%或能使高收入国家的碳足迹减少近1.5%。

OK, you're thinking, so people in Germany would have to cut down to working just six hours a week now? What's going to happen to all the pretzels and beer and Volkswagens?
好吧,也许你在想:现在德国人必须将每周工作时长减少至6小时吗?那还会有人生产椒盐脆饼,啤酒和大众汽车吗?

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