文字难度：★★★
On Route 11 north of 1)Tuscaloosa, 2)Ala., last April, a pickup truck pulled up next to Greta Browne, and a young man began lecturing her about global warming. He had seen Ms. Browne’s T-shirt announcing that she was “Walking for the Climate,” and he wanted to 3)set her straight. Humans, he told her, have nothing to do with heating up the planet.
Ms. Browne, 65, a 4)Unitarian minister from 5)Bethlehem, 6)Pa., has encountered more than one global warming 7)naysayer since last March, when she began a trek up the Eastern seaboard to draw attention to climate change. “Sometimes, you just have to stand up,” she said. So far, Ms. Browne has 8)logged about 1,100 miles, walking from outside New Orleans to 9)Rouses Point, N.Y., near the Canadian border, where she will end her journey Saturday.
When she began the trip, Ms. Browne had hoped to attract crowds of other people to walk with her (think Forrest Gump running cross country in the 1994 film). Instead, it has been a mostly solo journey, which she describes as “a meditation, a prayer,” for Earth. Still, her shirt and her 10)beckoning smile invite people to approach. Sometimes they pull their cars over and hand her 11)fistfuls of dollar bills—she is financing the trip with small donations, and her Social Security checks. Sometimes people run up alongside and 12)proffer water bottles to her.
In choosing to promote her cause this way—as opposed to, say, pressing for legislative change—Ms. Browne joins a growing list of environmental activists who are hoping to draw public attention to the issue through stunts: Colin Beavan, for example, the writer who lived without toilet paper and electricity, or David Rothschild, a self-described “eco-adventurer” in San Francisco who has built a boat made of reused plastic water bottles and plans to sail to Sydney, Australia.
去年四月,在阿拉巴马州塔斯卡卢萨北部11号大道上,一辆小型敞篷货车从格里塔·布朗身边经过并停下,一个年轻人走下车开始跟她讲全球变暖问题。他看到布朗女士的T恤衫上宣称她在“为气候而步行”,他觉得要纠正她的观念,于是告诉她,人类和地球变暖没有任何关系。
65岁的布朗女士是一名来自宾夕法尼亚州伯利恒的基督教一位论派牧师,去年三月她开始沿东部海岸徒步行走以引起人们对气候变化的关注,至今她已经遇到过好几个坚称不存在“全球变暖”现象的人。“有时候,你必须得站起来争辩。”她说。到目前为止,布朗女士已经走了约1100英里(约1770公里),路线是从新奥尔良郊区到纽约州劳西斯角村,该村靠近加拿大边境。周六她将在那里结束全部行程。
在行程开始时,布朗女士曾希望能吸引其他人加入到她的行走之列(想想1994年的电影《阿甘正传》中,阿甘跑步横穿美国大陆时引来众多追随者的情景)。然而,事实上大多数时候这只是她一个人的旅程。她将此形容为是为地球作的“一次冥想、祈祷”。尽管如此,她的T恤和具感染力的微笑还是吸引着人们走近她。有时他们会停下车递给她一大把钞 票——她出行的资金来源依赖小额的捐款和自己的社会保险金。有时有人会跑到她身旁,提供瓶装水给她。
As she has 13)plodded along, Ms. Browne said, she has come to understand her journey as a one-woman survey of the American mindset on global warming. “Mostly people think it is a problem,” she said, “but mostly they think it will not impact them anytime soon.”
A longtime member of 14)the Green Party, she has been concerned for years about global warming. But after she retired last year, she joined an environmental group and read 15)Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas. The book, which 16)argues that most of humanity could be 17)wiped out by the end of the century if Earth’s temperatures continue to warm, 18)galvanized her.
As the child of 19)Presbyterian 20)missionaries, Ms. Browne lived in Brazil, China and Niger, and was used to a 21)peripatetic lifestyle, so she decided to take to the road. Her role model was 22)Doris Haddock, better known as Granny D, who in 1999, at age 90, walked across the country for campaign finance reform, generating both crowds and headlines.
Ms. Browne’s trek has not quite turned out that way, and, she says, her adventure has other shortcomings. To make the walk 23)logistically possible, she has lived out of a 1982 van—complete with gold-colored 24)shag carpeting and 25)rust 26)velour sofas—that is, by her own admission, “a disgusting gas 27)guzzler.”
By living 28)abstemiously on other 29)fronts, she said she had managed to keep her 30)carbon footprint to half that of the average American. She never eats out and, except for her T-shirts, all her clothes are second-hand. Even her white 31)Clarks sneakers were bought from a 32)thrift store.
On Sundays, she goes to 33)Unitarian Universalist churches along the way. She has handed out 34)fliers listing small actions people can take to fight global warming, like using 35)compact 36)fluorescent light bulbs and lobbying for schools to teach the subject.
Crowds or no, Ms. Browne says, she is convinced that she has 37)reached people and “raised awareness.” She estimates that 500 to 1,000 cars pass her on the road every day and about 1 percent, she says, honk or give her a thumbs-up.
In the end, Ms. Browne said, she thinks that most people are 38)sympathetic and want to do something—just not too much. “People just don’t see enough urgency to change their life,” she said.
相比去争取立法改变现状,她选择用这样的方式来推广她的“事业”。布朗女士加入到愈加庞大的一群环保人士队伍里,他们希望通过自己的一些惊人之举来引起公众关注环保问题:比如作家柯林·比万,生活中他不用卫生纸也不用电;或者来自旧金山自称为“环保冒险家”的大卫·罗斯切尔德,他利用可循环再用的塑料水瓶造了一艘小船,并打算要乘着这艘小船前往澳大利亚的悉尼。
布朗女士说,随着她一路艰难地跋涉,她已经渐渐把自己的这次行程看作是一名女性就美国人对全球变暖问题的认识而进行的一次调查。“大部分人已经认识到全球变暖这个问题,”她说,“但通常他们认为这个不会在短时间内影响到他们。”
作为绿党的一名老成员,布朗女士多年来一直关注着全球变暖问题。不过,去年退休后,她加入了一个环保组织,并阅读了马克·莱纳斯的书——《六度的变化:一个越来越热星球的未来》。这本书指出,如果地球的温度继续上升,人类将在本世纪末面临灭绝的危险。这一说法促使她奔走疾呼。
作为长老会传教士的后代,布朗女士曾在巴西、中国和尼日尔居住过,而且习惯了游走四方的生活方式,因而她决定徒步奔走。她的榜样是多丽丝·哈达克,也就是众所周知的“D奶奶”。1999年,90岁高龄的多丽丝徒步横穿美国,发起呼吁改革联邦竞选筹款方式的活动,引起了民众和媒体的多方关注。
布朗女士艰苦跋涉的结果与上述情况有所不同,而且她说,她的冒险之旅有其他不足之处。为方便徒步时后勤方面的实际需要,布朗女士一直住在外面,一辆1982年造的有蓬货车里——车上配备了金色的粗线毛毯和深褐色天鹅绒沙发——那辆货车,用她的话说,是“一台讨厌的耗油鬼。”
布朗女士说,通过在其他方面过着有节制的生活,她已经成功地使自己的“碳足迹”维持在美国人平均“碳足迹”的一半。她从不在外面吃饭,而且,除了T恤衫,她所有的衣服都是二手的。甚至连她脚上穿的其乐牌白色运动鞋也是从一间旧货店里淘来的。
每逢星期天,她会去沿途的基督教一位论派的教堂。在那里,她把一些传单分发给大家,上面列出了人们可以通过哪些小举措来缓解全球变暖的状况,比如使用节能的荧光灯泡,游说学校开设有关环保的科目。
布朗女士说,无论有没有得到众人的支持,她深信自己的行为已经影响了众人,并“提高了人们对全球变暖问题的认识”。她说,每天在路上估计有500到1000辆车从她身边经过,大概有1%的司机朝她摁喇叭打招呼,或者竖起大拇指对她表示赞许。
最后,布朗女士说,她认为大多数人都认识到了全球变暖问题,也想要为此做点事情——只要不是太麻烦。“人们只是没意识到去改变他们的生活是件多么紧迫的事。”她说。