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On August 9th, 2021 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the first part of their sixth assessment of the climate crisis.
2021年8月9日，政府间气候变化专门委员会发布了他们对气候危机的第六次评估报告的第一部分。
Years in the making, the report once again warned the world of our dire circumstances.
经过多年的酝酿，该报告再次警告世界，我们的情况很糟糕。
Climate change is now rapid widespread and intensifying.
气候变化现在正在迅速扩张和加剧。
The alarm bells are definitely… It is unequivocal.
警钟确实敲响了……它是明确的。
Within the nearly 4000 page breakdown of the physical science driving climate chaos lies a particularly disturbing section.
在近4000页的驱动气候混乱的物理科学分类中，有一节特别令人不安的内容。
One that illuminates just what's at stake if we continue on the path of unhindered extraction and emissions.
它阐明了如果我们继续进行无阻碍的开采和排放，我们会面临什么危险。
This is the story of tipping points: what they are, when they will happen, and what actions we can take now to stop drastic domino effects in the future.
这是一个关于临界点的故事：它们是什么，何时会发生，以及我们现在可以采取什么行动来阻止未来激烈的多米诺效应。
Imagine you're playing Jenga.
想象一下，你在玩层层叠。
You and your friends are slowly taking apart the tower brick by brick until, suddenly, one of you pulls out a wooden block and the whole tower collapses.
你和你的朋友们正在慢慢地把塔一砖一瓦地拆开，直到突然，你们中的一个人拉出一个木块，整个塔就塌了。
This is a tipping point in a nutshell.
简而言之，这就是一个转折点。
As our global capitalist system pulls more and more wooden blocks, which on the global scale represent carbon emissions or deforestation, the physical states of ocean currents, glaciers and whole forests become unstable.
随着我们的全球资本主义体系拉出越来越多的木块，这些木块在全球范围内代表碳排放或森林砍伐，洋流、冰川，和整个森林的物理状态都在变得不稳定。
So with one small push, or the removal of one more block, whole glacial or rainforest systems can cascade into a different state, often with no ability to return back to normal.
因此，只要轻轻一推，或者再移开一个木块，整个冰川或雨林系统就会连带着进入不同的状态，而且往往没有能力恢复正常。
The climate crisis is now driving us headlong past these precipices.
气候危机现在正驱使我们一头扎进这些悬崖峭壁中。
Carbon Brief, the award winning science explainer website, identified nine of the biggest possible tipping points around the world, that if triggered, could create "abrupt and irreversible change."
获奖的科学解释网站“碳简报”（Carbon Brief）确定了全世界九个最大的可能临界点，如果被触发，可能会产生 "突然和不可逆转的变化"。
These tipping points look like everything from irreversible coral reef die-offs, to catastrophic shifts in West African and Indian monsoons, or even the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which includes the Gulf Stream, and we all know what happens when the Gulf Stream collapses.
这些临界点看起来像一切，例如不可逆转的珊瑚礁死亡，西非和印度季风的灾难性转变，甚至包括湾流在内的大西洋经向翻转环流的崩溃，我们都知道当湾流崩溃时会发生什么。
In short, once these systems have barrelled past their tipping points, there's very little chance of reverting back to the environments humanity has grown accustomed to.
简而言之，一旦这些系统已经超过了它们的临界点，几乎没有机会恢复到人类已经习惯的环境。
So with this in mind, let's take a look at two of the most consequential tipping points we face in the coming decades of the climate crisis.
所以考虑到这一点，让我们来看看我们在未来几十年的气候危机中所面临的两个最重要的临界点。
The Amazon rainforest, with its abundance of flora and fauna was once the lungs of the world.
亚马逊雨林拥有丰富的动植物资源，曾经是世界之肺。
Sucking in deep breaths of carbon dioxide and sequestering it into its wide trunks, the Amazon absorbed 5-10% of human-caused CO2 emissions per year.
亚马逊雨林深吸二氧化碳并将二氧化碳封存在其宽阔的树干中，每年吸收了人类造成的二氧化碳排放量的5-10%。
But in 2021, that's no longer the case for the southeastern section of the rainforest.
但在2021年，雨林东南部的情况不再是这样了。
According to a recent study, some areas of the massive rainforest located in Brazil have now become a net source of carbon dioxide emissions, emitting as much as a billion metric tons of carbon per year.
根据最近的一项研究，位于巴西的巨大雨林的一些地区现在已经成为二氧化碳的净排放源，每年排放的碳多达10亿公吨。
This is just a taste of what a wholesale dieback of the Amazon could mean.
对于亚马逊河全面枯萎可能意味着什么来说，只是小牛试刀。
And if left unchecked, the capitalist exploitation that got us into this mess will only accelerate the destabilization of the Amazon.
如果不加控制，使我们陷入这种困境的资本主义剥削只会加速亚马逊的不稳定。
But the forces that could push us into a large-scale forest die-off are complex.
将我们推向大规模森林死亡的力量可能是复杂的。
Ultimately though they boil down to increased drought and fires driven by climate change and deforestation.
但最终归结为气候变化和砍伐森林所导致的干旱和火灾的增加。
Together these two could fragment and degrade the Amazon to such a state that it would no longer support itself and thus transition into an ecosystem much more like a savannah than a rainforest.
这两种力量结合在一起，将使亚马逊河流域变得支离破碎和退化，以至于它将不再支持自己，从而过渡到一个更像大草原而不是雨林的生态系统。
And, according to one study, this process of savannah-fication could happen in just a 50-year timeframe.
而且，根据一项研究，这种草原化的过程可能在50年的时间内发生。
The current research, however, reveals that there is some time before we reach this dieback tipping point.
然而，目前的研究显示，在我们达到这个枯萎的临界点之前，还有一些时间。
If deforestation weren't an issue, 3 degrees Celsius of warming could be enough to tip towards an Amazonian dieback, with 4 degrees Celsius being much more realistic.
如果森林砍伐不是一个问题，3摄氏度的变暖就足以使亚马逊地区走向死亡，而4摄氏度则更为现实。
The problem is that extensive deforestation driven by soybean farming for livestock, and slash and burn clearing for cattle pasture is further destabilizing the Amazon.
问题是，为畜牧业而进行的大豆种植以及为牛群牧场而进行的砍伐和焚烧所导致的广泛的森林砍伐正在进一步破坏亚马逊的稳定。
Continued deforestation means an accelerated pace towards irreversible large-scale Amazoninan transformation.
持续的森林砍伐意味着加速了不可逆转的大规模亚马逊地区的转型步伐。
And the Amazon's rapid transition from rainforest to savannah not only spells disaster for its rich biodiversity of the ecosystem, but it also means a lot of the carbon that the Amazon has captured over the years will release into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, potentially pushing us deeper into climate chaos.
而亚马逊从雨林到草原的快速转变不仅对生态系统丰富的生物多样性来说意味着灾难，而且还意味着亚马逊多年来捕获的大量碳将作为二氧化碳释放到大气中，有可能使我们更深地陷入气候混乱。
