Creationism at the New York Times 纽约时报的创世论 作者：Scott Sumner @ 2015-04-08

译者：思考一下名字

校对：小册子

来源：TheMoneyIllusion， http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29171 The New York Times does not believe in creationism.  They believe in evolution. They look down their noses at people who do believe in creationism.  But when it comes to the social sciences, the Times believes in creationism, that is, they believe in theories that appeal to kindergarden-level intellects.

《纽约时报》（The New York Times）不相信创世论（creationism）。他们相信进化论。他们看不起相信创世论的人。但是当说到社会科学的时候，时报却相信创世论了：他们相信相当于幼儿园智力水平的理论。

One of those “theories” is the idea that California faces a severe water shortage because lots of people have moved to an area with a dry climate.  All thoughtful economists (on both the left and the right) view this theory as being preposterous. The California water shortage has almost nothing to do with population growth.

这些“理论”之一便是：加州面临严重缺水，是因为太多人在这样一个气候干燥的地区生活。所有经过思考的经济学家，无论左右，都认为这个理论是荒唐的。加州缺水几乎和人口增长毫无关系。

Roughly 80% of the water is used by farmers, who squander vast quantities of water each year by employing extremely wasteful irrigation techniques in order to export crops like almonds.  And that occurs because the price at which water is sold to farmers is absurdly low.  Period. End of story.

加州农民为了出口像杏仁这样的农作物，每年通过极其浪费的灌溉技术挥霍了大量的水，其用水量大约占加州总用水量的80%。而这是因为卖水给农民的价格低得可笑。就这么简单。

This is EC101 economics, and I’ve never met an economist who did not understand this problem.  But the Times can’t be bothered to talk to economists, they rely on historians:

这可是经济学的101（即入门常识），我从没见过不懂这个的经济学家。然而时报却懒得去找找经济学家，他们倚仗的是历史学家： “Mother Nature didn’t intend for 40 million people to live here,” said Kevin Starr, a historian at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about this state. “This is literally a culture that since the 1880s has progressively invented, invented and reinvented itself. At what point does this invention begin to hit limits?”California, Dr. Starr said, “is not going to go under, but we are going to have to go in a different way.”

“大自然没打算让四千万人住在这里，”Kevin Starr，一位就加州写过许多著作的南加州大学历史学家说道。“这完全是一个从1880年代开始被一而再，再而三的不断反复自我创造出来的文化。这种创造发明什么时候是个头儿呢？”Starr博士说：“加州不会倾覆，但我们必须有所改变。” That makes about as much sense as the Times asking a Christian fundamentalist preacher whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

这事的可笑程度，大概和时报去请教基督教原教旨主义牧师恐龙是不是温血动物有得一拼。

The Times is a relatively good newspaper.  But to reach the elite level of papers like The Economist, they need to become familiar with good economic research.  And that means figuring out what economics is capable of telling us about the world, and what it cannot.

时报算是一家还不错的报纸。但想要像《经济学人》那样做到精英级别，他们还得熟悉一些入流的经济学研究。这就意味着能够分辨什么问题是经济学能够解决的，什么不是。

Economists don’t know how to solve very many problems.  But one of the very few we do know how to solve is the California water shortage. Instead the Times is more likely to ask economists to explain complex problems like unemployment, financial instability and inequality, issues where we are not very strong.

很多问题经济学家都不知道如何解决，然而加州缺水却是我们知道如何解决的少数问题之一。但时报却更喜欢问经济学家复杂的问题，比如失业，金融不稳定和不平等；而这些问题我们其实并不是很确定。

The problem is simple to explain and (in a technical sense) simple to solve.  Of course the politics are complex, and thus far have prevented a solution. However, even dysfunctional California will eventually have to work out a political compromise.

（加州缺水）这个问题很好解释，而且从技术角度容易解决。当然政治是复杂的，所以到现在也还没个解决方案。当然了，即使运作失常的加州最终也能搞出个政治妥协来。

PS.  The water used in irrigating just that portion of California’s almond cropthat is exported is more than twice as much as the entire water consumption of San Francisco and Los Angeles combined.  The New York Times should be ashamed of itself.

PS：灌溉加州出口杏仁作物所用的水就比旧金山和洛杉矶用水总和的两倍还多。《纽约时报》应该感到丢脸才是。 【 图内文字由上至下依此是： 标题：每年各个项目的耗水量 旧金山市家居及商业用水 加州出口开心果种植 洛杉矶家居及商业用水 加州出口核桃种植 加州出口杏仁种植 加州所有杏仁种植 （单位：十亿立方米） 】

PPS.  Steven Johnson has an excellent reply to the above quote about “Mother Nature.”

PPS：对于上述有关“自然之母”的言论，Steven Johnson有一段精彩的回应： First of all, Mother Nature didn’t intend for 2 million people to live on Manhattan Island either. Mother Nature would also be baffled by skyscrapers, the Delaware Aqueduct, and the Lincoln Tunnel. Anyone living anywhere in the United States — apart from the most radical of the off-the-gridders, most of whom are probably in northern California anyway — is dependent on a vast web of human engineering designed specifically to mess with Mother Nature’s intentions.

首先，大自然也没打算让两百万人住在曼哈顿岛上。摩天大楼，特拉华引水渠（Delaware Aqueduct）和林肯隧道（Lincoln Tunnel）也会让大自然感到困惑。住在美国任何地方的任何人——除了最激进的“脱网离群主义者”（off-the-gridders），其中大部分可能还就住在加州北部——都依赖于由诸多专为和自然之母对着干而设计的人类工程产物所构成的巨大网络。

The question is whether that engineering is sustainable. What the Times piece explicitly suggests is that California has been living beyond its means environmentally. That’s the point of those extraordinary overhead photographs of lush estates, teeming with greenery, bordering arid desert. You see those images and it’s impossible not to feel that something shameful is happening here.

问题是这些工程产物是不是可持续的。时报的那篇文章明显认为，加州发展超出了其环境限制。这就是那些与不毛沙漠为邻的绿化豪宅的高空俯拍照片的用意吧。你一看到那些照片就很自然觉得有些事情不对劲。

And yet, picture a comparable view of Manhattan sometime in the depths of January, with a thermal imaging filter applied. The boundary between Man and Mother Nature would be just as stark: frigid air surrounding artificial islands of heat. It’s true that New York City distributes that artificial heat much more efficiently than the rest of the country, thanks largely to its density, but it’s still artificially engineering your environment, whether you want to make a dry place wet, or a cold place warm.

但是呢，请想象一幅一月寒冬时曼哈顿的景象，通过热成像滤镜的那种。这里人类和大自然的疆界一样鲜明：寒冷空气包围着人工热岛。得益于其密度，纽约市的供暖效率远胜于国内其它地区，但这还是人工改变环境，无论变干为湿，还是变冷为热。

And while the Northeast has an advantage over California in terms of rainwater, California has a decided advantage in terms of temperature and sunlight, particularly the coastal regions where almost all the people live. Coastal California enjoys one of the most temperate climates anywhere in the world, which allows its residents to consume far less energy heating or cooling their homes. California is dead last in the country in terms of per capita electricity use.

尽管和加州相比，东北部有更多雨水，但加州，特别是聚集了几乎所有加州人的沿海地区，有着明显的温度和日照优势。加州海岸有着全世界最温和适宜的气候之一，这使得居民只用很少的能源来取暖或制冷。加州人均用电量是全国最低。

Thanks to the state’s abundant sunshine (and pioneering environmentalism) there are more home solar panels installed in California than in all the other states combined. If you’re trying to find a sustainable place for 40 million people to live, there are plenty of environmental reasons to put them in California.

得益于充足的阳光（和环保主义先锋），加州的家居太阳能面板比其他所有州加起来还要多。如果你想为四千万人找一个可持续的居住地，其实加州有很多环境优势。 （编辑：@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。 ——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——