编者按：
接上一版推送内容，让我们继续来看《大西洋月刊》的撰稿人安妮·劳瑞如何解读这一话题。
（3）先启程吧，不要踟躇
心理学家曾提出过"登门槛"效应，这是指人们倾向于接受较小、易完成的要求，然后在完成小要求后慢慢地接受他人较大的要求。通过这种“登门槛”效应，保护环境的小行动也可以变成大行动。
Little actions have a way of becoming big actions through something psychologists call the “foot-in-the-door” phenomenon, in which people tend to accept smaller, easier-to-complete requirements, and then slowly accept the larger ones after the smaller ones have been fulfilled.
登门栏效应
提升人们对气候问题的政治参与度，让他们以更加积极的姿态采取行动，也许可以启发大众对这一问题的深度思考。借用一句社会心理学中的常用表述：人们总以行动去充实思考，而不以空想去完善行动。我们鼓励人们单车出行，这可能会促使他们关心环境，这就和一个关心环境的人可能会选择单车出行是一样的道理。
Getting people to act better on the climate might get them to think better on the climate too, bolstering their political interest in fixing the problem. To borrow a phrase commonly used in social-psychology textbooks, people often act their way to better thoughts, rather than thinking their way to better actions. Getting people to ride a bike for errands might make them care about the environment, just as caring for the environment might get them to ride a bike.
行动造就积极的环保人士。消费者们现在不仅需要更加负责地对待气候问题，还要关注物种消亡的潜在危机。
Action makes activists, and the world needs consumers not just to behave more responsibly when it comes to the climate, but to understand the survival-of-the-species urgency of the unfolding catastrophe.
美国宇航局的卡尔马斯说：“地球的生态系统正在发生种种（危机），其速度已经超出了我的想象。每当我想起那些观测数据和气候预测模型的结果，巨大的恐慌向我袭来，好几次我都近乎窒息。夜半惊醒之时，我只感觉我们无处可逃，要唤起人们对这些问题的重视，我还需要做的更多。”
“I am absolutely terrified. What’s happening to the Earth system, it is happening so much faster than I thought it would,” said Kalmus of NASA. “The observations, the interpretations, the projections from the climate model—when I translate that into the emotional part of my brain, what I feel is panic and terror. I struggle to breathe sometimes. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I just feel like there’s no place to hide. I can’t do enough to wake people up.”
物种消亡问题日趋严重
“当你这么去想，你就会跟随着你的信念去采取行动”，卡尔马斯说，“跟随着信念的行动同样也强调了这些问题有多么重要。好比我会想：‘我有坐飞机的想法，这好吗？这不好‘。“
When you feel that way, you want to act in accordance with that belief, he said, and acting in accordance with that belief underscores how serious the problem is. “My desire to fly?” he said. “It’s negative.”
三、捍卫个体意义的破与立
某些人主张个体不必改变个人习惯，并坚持政府应该履行其职责，他们从以下几个方面反驳了上述观点。
首先，他们引用了一种叫做“自我许可”或“道德许可”的心理学效应，正因这种心理的存在，人们会在健身后点一杯诱人的含糖咖啡，或是在完成文书工作后后花钱买新衣服来犒劳自己，即做了“好事”之后，人们往往会做些“坏事”。因此，人们在家里付诸环保行动，他们的碳排放也不会有太大变化。
One is by citing what is often called “self-licensing” or “moral licensing”: the thing that makes people order a fancy, sugary coffee drink after hitting the gym, or spend money on new clothes after getting through their paperwork. After doing something “good,” people tend to then do something “bad”. Getting people to do better at home, it follows, might have a null overall effect on their carbon emissions.
一个更严峻的问题是，如果只采取微不足道且毫无意义的行动来改善环境，人们可能会越来越不愿意在社会和政府层面的措施中贡献力量。人们可能会想：我已经开始减少碳排放了，同时我身边的人也在生活中采取行动了，如此一来我们一定会搞定环境问题！社会和政府大可不必再要求我们费其他的功夫！一项研究发现，通过建议微小举动来鼓励人们使用绿色能源，会减少他们对国家征收碳税的支持。
A more serious concern is that taking little, statistically meaningless actions to help the environment might reduce people’s interest in fixing the problem at a societal and governmental level. People might think: I’m cutting my emissions, and the people around me are cutting their emissions. We’re getting it done! One study found that using “nudges” to encourage people to use green energy diminished their support for a carbon tax.
研究还表明，个人对气候的看法并不能与其环保行为挂钩。密歇根大学的一项研究发现，对气候变化持怀疑态度的人“最有可能参与个人层面的环保行为”，而最关心气候变化的人却很少这么做。
Research also suggests that personal beliefs about the climate are not always indicative of environmental behaviors. A University of Michigan study found that people who were not convinced on climate change “were most likely to report engaging in individual-level, pro-environmental behaviors,” and that people who were most concerned were least likely to do so.
但心理学家和气候专家对所有这些反对意见进行了有力的回击。首先，道德许可并不意味着在有意义地减少碳排放影响这一方面，人们无计可施，也不意味着人们没有在这方面取得成效。”Rare“的主席詹克斯说：“我们的行为经济学家和社会科学研究人员组成的团队发现，道德许可确实会带来一定影响，但这种影响很小，当把影响程度和规模用统计结果呈现出来时，你会发现它们的数据处于一个极低的水平。”
But psychologists and climate experts push back on all of that pushback, and hard. For one, moral licensing does not mean that people cannot and do not meaningfully reduce their carbon impact. “Our team of behavioral economists and social-science researchers—they found that moral licensing is a thing, full stop,” said Jenks, the president of Rare. “But the impacts are very small. And when you look at the size and scope of impacts needed to get published as a result, they have a very low bar for significance statistically.”
至于对个人行为的关注是否会削弱政治层面的环境举措，同样，从另一个方向进行的研究也得出了相反的结论。即使是上文提到的鼓励微小措施的研究也发现，仅是提前告诉人们碳税比可再生能源计划更有效，就会让人们同时支持这两项计划。这一发现有助于改善气候危机信息：活动人士可以向公众强调，个人的气候责任需要与碳税、电动汽车强制要求等政策结合起来。
As for whether focusing on personal actions undercuts the case for political actions—again, countervailing research points in the other direction. Even that “nudge” study found that simply telling people in advance that a carbon tax is more effective than a renewable-energy program leads people to support both initiatives. That finding gets at a way to improve messaging on the climate crisis: Activists could stress that personal climate responsibility needs to come alongside policies such as carbon taxes, electric-vehicle mandates, and so on.
最后，个人行动还可能有助于气候行动走出已经陷入的政治陷阱。现在，许多共和党人反对有关气候变化的立法，部分原因是想和民主党人对着干，消极的党派的偏见使妥协很难达成。气候研究人员吉利根告诉我：“个人倡议可能会赢得那些传统上真正反对政府在气候问题上采取行动的人的支持和介入。”如果政府行动是政策制定的途径之一、如果每个人都开始采取行动来拯救地球，那么两党可能会在这个问题上达成一致。
Finally, personal action might help climate action out of the political trap it already finds itself in. Right now, many Republicans oppose climate legislation in part because Democrats want it; negative partisanship is making compromise impossible. “Private initiatives might build support and inroads with people who have traditionally been really opposed to the government taking action on the climate,” Gilligan, the climate researcher, told me. If government action is one of many policy avenues, and if everyone is already taking action to save the planet, the issue might become more bipartisan.
四、欲护我河山，汝该何所事？
如今大气变暖引发了飓风、火灾以及全国性的干旱，我们每个人应该做些什么来对抗气候变暖？又该如何营造一种社会风气来消除气候变化带来的噩梦？
What should individuals do to fight the atmospheric warming that’s spinning off hurricanes and lighting fires and causing droughts across the country? How can individuals help create a culture that will eliminate the nightmare of climate change?
当被问到应该为保护环境做点什么时，大多数美国人都在谈论回收利用。回收利用确实是件好事，但“减量”和“重复利用”却更为重要，回收利用绝不是家庭减排的良策。
Most Americans, when asked what they should be doing, talk about recycling. Recycling is good to do. But “reduce” and “reuse” are more important behaviors, and recycling is not a crucial household-level behavior one way or another.
最好的做法是，选择富含果蔬的饮食、购买碳补偿(尽管有一些争议)、在家里使用可再生能源、减少食物浪费、乘坐公共交通工具、以及少坐飞机。同时，家里火炉和汽车的使用，你的通勤、假期和午餐安排，都可以为应对气候变化作出改变。
The best things to do include adopting a plant-rich diet, buying carbon offsets (though there is some controversy about that), using renewable energy at home, wasting less food, using mass transit, and flying far less often. Your furnace, your car, your commute, your vacations, your lunch: That’s where change needs to happen.
我们应该对气候危机感到恐惧，同时还应付诸行动克服恐惧，这是人类为了生存所必做之事，也是拯救地球几万亿濒临灭绝的生物的唯一选择。即使前路艰巨而漫长，也让我们放平心态，一边享用环保杯里的咖啡，一边奋身前行吧！
Get terrified, and act like it. That’s what our species needs to do to survive, and to help save the trillions of other creatures mortally endangered on this planet. But go ahead and enjoy your coffee in a reusable container while doing it.
编译｜ 张璐瑶 王思雨 李家蕊 陈淑娟 刘海燕 王庶同 高语阳 李翱 储志阳
排版｜ 李翱
审核｜ 赵寒旭
指导老师｜ 刘佳
