如何保护一个星球
How to Protect a Planet
原文地址：https://medium.com/climate-desk/how-to-protect-a-planet-a39e14b84f5c
Once, many years ago, I was sitting on an airplane chatting with an agreeable man in the next seat. He worked at NASA, and his job was to make sure that nothing that left earth on a spacecraft would contaminate the environment on other planets. He gave me his card, and it had the best job title I’ve ever seen: Planetary Protection Officer.
许多年前，我某次坐飞机的时候和邻座的一个讨人喜欢的男士聊天。他在 NASA 工作，工作内容就是确保宇宙飞船上的那些来自地球的物质不会污染其他星球的环境。他给我一张名片，我看到了这辈子见过最棒的职位：行星保护官。
I thought of him again this morning when two remarkable stories criss-crossed in the news: the discovery of liquid water on Mars, and Shell’s decision to back down from drilling in the Arctic.
当今天早上看见这两个交错的新闻的时候我又想起了他：在火星上发现了液态水以及壳牌公司决定放弃在北极的钻探。
The first was a great scientific achievement, as spectrographs on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were able to show through the analysis of chemical signatures that intermittent dark streaks that appear and then fade on Martian canyon walls had to be water.
第一条是卓越的科学发现，NASA 火星轨道探测器上的摄谱仪通过分析在火星峡谷上时隐时现的那些不连续黑色条纹的化学成分得出了那就是水的结论。
That’s amazing — it certainly heightens the chance that there could be microbial life on the red planet.
太惊人了，这增加了在这颗红色星球上存在微生物的的可能性。
But almost as amazing was to read the details of the story and learn that my seat-mate’s successor as NASA’s planetary protection officer, a woman named Catharine Conley, was not letting the Mars Rover anywhere near the streaks, though some of them were within driving distance.
当我仔细阅读这则新闻然后发现当时我的邻座的继任者也就是 NASA 的行星保护官，一位叫做 Catharine Conley 的女性表示火星探测器不可以接近那些条纹，即使那些地方处于可探测距离时同样是惊讶的。
The vehicle hadn’t been fully sterilized before it left earth; therefore at least for now the streaks were off limits. We’re taking enormous care to make sure they stay pristine
探测器在离开地球前没有被完全消毒；因此至少现在那些条纹属于禁区。我们必须尽力保证那些地方处于原始状态。
Meanwhile, back on our own planet, Shell announced that it was pulling the plug on efforts to drill in the Arctic “for the foreseeable future.” The official reason was that they hadn’t found as much oil as they’d hoped for. The unofficial reason, as sources in Shell made clear to reporters, was the brand damage they’d suffered — and rightly so.
同时，在我们自己的星球上，壳牌声称将在“可预见的未来”停止在北极的钻探。官方理由是因为没有找到如预期一样的数量的石油。非官方理由，正如壳牌内部对记者指出的，是他们已经遭受的以及正在遭受的品牌损失。
This was a company prepared until this morning to take advantage of the degree to which the planet had already warmed by drilling the thawed Arctic for yet more oil to run up the temperature some more. Just think about that for a moment.
这是一家直到今天早上还在为开采已融化的北极获取更多的石油，不顾地球已经因为这个原因而变暖的事实，来欺骗大众的公司。你们感受一下。
Enough activists thought about that to make Shell’s life impossible. The company can greenwash a lot — they’re currently trying to rehabilitate their image so they can ‘advise’ European governments on the upcoming climate talks in Paris — but they couldn’t greenwash this. As The Guardian reported this morning, “company sources also accept that Arctic oil polarized debate in a way that damaged the firm. “We were acutely aware of the reputational element to this programme,” one said.
许多环保分子想让壳牌公司不再继续下去。这家公司能绿色粉刷（指公司为树立支持环保的虚假形象而作的公关活动、捐赠等）许多事情，比如最近他们就在修复自己的形象，以便能在接下来在巴黎举办的气候会谈中打动欧洲政府，但他们可不能粉刷这个。卫报今早报道说：“公司认为在北极石油问题上的两极化立场已经损害了集团”。“我们强烈的注意到了在这个项目中的名声问题”，某人说道。
Combined with the ongoing halt to the Keystone pipeline, and the recent end to plans for the world’s largest coal mine in Australia, it means activists have helped to begin defusing three of the planet’s dozen or so largest ‘carbon bombs.’ And Shell’s capitulation will make the next fights easier.
结合 Keystone 输油管道的停工，以及最近在澳大利亚世界最大煤矿计划的完结，环保分子已经开始拆除几个世界最大的“碳炸弹”。壳牌的屈服也会让接下来的战斗更加容易。
It shouldn’t have to be this way. In a rational world governments would be working overtime to shut off the flow of carbon to the atmosphere — instead it was Barack Obama who gave Shell the green light to go north.
并不是非要这么做。理性的世界各国政府应当加班加点地停止往大气层中排放碳，然而事实是奥巴马批准了壳牌的北进计划。
So for now, only other planets have official protection against pollution.
所以至少现在，只有其他星球才有官方的环境保护来对抗污染。
In fact here’s what a Planetary Protection Officer looks like on Mars:
事实上，火星上的行星保护官是这样的：
And here’s what they look like on Terra:
地球上的则是这样的：
来自https://medium.com/climate-desk/how-to-protect-a-planet-a39e14b84f5c
