The unlimited use of cars may cause many problems. What are those problems? In order to reduce the problems, should we discourage people to use cars?
轿车数量的快速增长带来很多相关问题,值得我们高度重视。
The fast increase in the number of cars have brought along many related problems which are well worth our greatest attention.
首先,城市交通每况愈下。这里我想拿自己的亲身经历作为例证。五年前,我从家里开车到办公室花30分钟。一年后,我路上要花40分钟。两年后,为了准时到达工作岗位,我至少要提前1个小时从家里出发。之后,从去年开始,花1.5小时到达成为家常便饭。交通就像毛毛虫一样在蠕动!
First of all, urban traffic is getting from bad to worse. I’d like to cite my own experience as an example. Five years ago, it took me about 30 minutes to drive from home to office. One year later, I needed to spend about 40 minutes on the way. Then two years later, I had to start out from home at least 1 hour earlier in order to get to my office on good time for work. And then, since last year, it has just been too normal for me to spend about one and half hours to make it. The traffic just moves like a worm!
第二点,随着轿车数量无休止的增长,城市中的空气质量正日趋恶化。我们过去还能看到蔚蓝的天空,呼吸到新鲜的空气,但现在这成了一种奢望。汽车废气已经严重污染了空气,人们的身体受到了严重威胁。似乎已经很明确:我们人类已经犯了一个致命的错误,唯一能够弥补的便是极大地减少轿车的数量。
Second, with the ever growing number of cars, air quality in urban areas is deteriorating with each passing day. We used to see clear blue sky and breathe fresh air, but now this would be a real luxury. Car exhaust has seriously polluted the air and people’s health is greatly endangered. It seems certain that we human beings have already made a fatal mistake that could only be remedied by bringing down the number of cars hugely.
是啊,我们不能否认,轿车给我们带来了速度、舒适和机动性。然而,这一切都已经成为过去。我们从轿车上所蒙受的灾难要远远大于我们所获得的益处。由于我们每一秒钟都要呼吸被污染了的空气和由于我们在汽车上必须要花费的时间日益拉长这双重原因,我们的身体状况正越来越糟。
Sure, we can not deny the fact that cars have brought us speed, comfort and greater mobility. However, these have already been history. We are suffering much more from cars than benefiting from them. Our health conditions are going down rapidly both due to the polluted air that we have to breathe every second and our lack of exercise as a result of the ever increasing amount of time we have to spend behind the wheel!
我们该怎么办呢?从前面的论证中,我相信我们已经找到了解决方案:鼓励人们少开车!我很清楚科学技术也在快速发展,将来也许会有更好的解决办法出现,但是,在这一切成为现实之前,让我们先通过这种被动的方式来自救吧!
What can we do? From the foregoing discussion, I’m sure we have already found a solution: to discourage people to use cars! I know very well that science and technology are also developing very fast and there might be better solutions coming up in the future, but, before that, let’s first salvage ourselves in such a passive way!
n. 会议记录,(复数)分钟