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Regarded only as a failure in the plant's function, the accident at Chernobyl amounts to a serious but local fire that destroyed the plant. But the resultant release of radioactivity threatens many thousands of people all over Europe with cancer.
若仅仅被视为工厂功能的失败，切尔诺贝利事故充其量也就相当于当地发生的一次破坏了工厂的严重大火。但随之释放出来的辐射，却使整个欧洲数以千计的人面临患上癌症的威胁。
A free lunch is really a debt. In the technosphere, a debt is an acknowledged but unmet cost-the mortgage on a factory building for example. Such a debt is tolerable because the technosphere is a system of production which-if—it functions properly-generate—goods that represent wealth potentially capable of repaying the debt. In the technosphere, debts are repald from within and, at least in theory, are always capable of being paid off, or, in some cases, canceled. In contrast, when the debts represented by environmental pollution are created by the technosphere and transferred to the ecosphere, they are never canceled; damage is unavoidable. The debts represented by the radioactivity disseminated from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, and by the toxic chemicals that enveloped Bhopal, have not been canceled. These debts were merely transferred to the victims, and are paid as they sicken and die.
免费的午餐实际上是一种债务。在技术圈中，债务是指已承认但尚未归还的欠款，比如说抵在工厂建筑上的押金。这种欠款可以忍受，因为术圈是个生产系统，如果正常工作，生产的产品便代表着财富，日后定能还清欠款。在技术领域，债务从内部被偿还，至少在理论上总能还清或者有时会被消除。相反，当债务以技术圈制造的环境污染的形式出现，然后又转嫁到生态圈时，这种债务将永远无法消除。造成破坏是不可避免的。切尔诺贝利核事故泄漏的放射性物质和弥漫在博帕尔的有毒化学物都是无法消除的债务。它们只是被转嫁给其受害者，并以其受害者病亡的形式得以偿还。
Since they inhabit both worlds, people are caught in the clash between the ecosphere and the technosphere. What we call the "environmental crisis"-the array of critical unsolved problems ranging from local toxic dumps to the disruption of global climate-is a product of the drastic mismatch between the cyclical, conservative, and self-cons-processes of the ecosphere and the linear, innovative, but ecologically disharmonious processes of the technosphere.
既然生活在两个世界中，人们就陷于生态圈和技术困的激烈冲突中。我们所说的环境危机——一系列从地方性的倾倒毒物到全球性气候受到破坏，这些关键而又未得到解决的问题——是一种激烈冲突的产物。这种冲突就存在于循环、保守而又和谐的生态圈进程与线性的、创新的却破坏生态和谐的技术圈进程之间。
