"我们加州完蛋了"｜Albert书房

1

背景

加利福尼亚是美国经济最发达的州，经济总量超过3万亿美元。如果加州独立成一个国家，那么它将排在美国、中国、日本、德国之后位列世界第五大经济体。

去过的人立刻能感受到这是一片富饶的土地，难怪昵称是Golden State/金州。没去过的也清楚地知道这里是硅谷的故乡、好莱坞的大本营。如果只是匆匆路过，你会觉得这里的一切都富足得有点不太像话，一排排绿色草坪点缀的独栋房屋看不到尽头，一辆辆马力十足的汽车沿着双向十几根甚至二十几根车道奔腾不息。

但如果褪去游客的激动心情和猎奇心理真正生活在这里，你能看到的真实模样是什么呢？虽然面积和日本相当，4000万的人口让加州成为美国人口最多的州。不断上涨的房价让越来越多人越住越远，而路也越修越远，越修越宽。这不是我们所羡慕的美国生活嘛，你可能会想，毕竟他们有看不到尽头的土地。但似乎美国也是有尽头的，人人独立而居让城市的饼摊到了山林，而一年将近300天的日照让这些城市的边缘一点就着。于是我们经常从新闻上看到加州大火的样子。

加州专栏作家Farhad Manjoo意识到了这个问题，近日在《纽约时报》上发表了下面这篇文章。我朗读了全文并在每段下方对重要的语言、文化知识点进行了注释。阅读时碰到生词再正常不过，但如果每个都去单独查，阅读效率会很低，而且语感时常就被破坏会导致你文章根本读不下去。其实很多时候你会发现单词、短语的意思你可以猜出来。积累一段时间的阅读量后，你再集中去查频繁出现的一些词和短语，你会发现更容易豁然开朗并牢牢记住。

我把这个栏目取名为“Albert书房”，如果你喜欢欢迎留言提各种文章类型、题材的建议。如果不喜欢，我将及时止损^^

2

原文

《The New York Times》评论文章：

It’s the End of California as We Know It

By Farhad Manjoo

I have lived nearly all my life in California, and my love for this place and its people runs deep and true. There have been many times in the past few years when I’ve called myself a California nationalist: Sure, America seemed to be going crazy, but at least I lived in the Golden State, where things were still pretty chill.

德州和加州常有独立思潮，觉得就是和其它州不一样。所以作者提到自己多次把自己称作a California nationalist/加州国家主义者。

But lately my affinity for my home state has soured. Maybe it’s the smoke and the blackouts, but a very un-Californian nihilism has been creeping into my thinking. I’m starting to suspect we’re over. It’s the end of California as we know it. I don’t feel fine.

affinity/亲密关系，亲切感；sour/变酸，食物变味；nihilism/虚无主义；

加州除了山火多还经常停电，所以作者写道the smoke and the blackouts.

It isn’t just the fires — although, my God, the fires. Is this what life in America’s most populous, most prosperous state is going to be like from now on? Every year, hundreds of thousands evacuating, millions losing power, hundreds losing property and lives? Last year, the air near where I live in Northern California — within driving distance of some of the largest and most powerful and advanced corporations in the history of the world — was more hazardous than the air in Beijing and New Delhi. There’s a good chance that will happen again this month, and that it will keep happening every year from now on. Is this really the best America can do?

populous/人口多的；prosperous/繁荣的；corporation/企业；hazardous/有害的

Probably, because it’s only going to get worse. The fires and the blackouts aren’t like the earthquakes, a natural threat we’ve all chosen to ignore. They are more like California’s other problems, like housing affordability and homelessness and traffic — human-made catastrophes we’ve all chosen to ignore, connected to the larger dysfunction at the heart of our state’s rot: a failure to live sustainably.

housing affordability/住房可承受度；catastrophe/灾难；dysfunction/异常；rot/逐步的恶化

Now choking under the smoke of a changing climate, California feels stuck. We are BlackBerry after the iPhone, Blockbuster after Netflix: We’ve got the wrong design, we bet on the wrong technologies, we’ve got the wrong incentives, and we’re saddled with the wrong culture. The founding idea of this place is infinitude — mile after endless mile of cute houses connected by freeways and uninsulated power lines stretching out far into the forested hills. Our whole way of life is built on a series of myths — the myth of endless space, endless fuel, endless water, endless optimism, endless outward reach and endless free parking.

Blockbuster是美国以前家喻户晓的租DVD的连锁店，有了在线下载观看电影平台Netflix后你猜它命运如何？

saddle原本是马鞍的意思，这里saddled是不是很容易猜到是“背着”的意思。

The founding idea of this place is infinitude. 总结精辟的一句话“这个地方最开始的理念就是infinitude/无限性，然后延展说到人民头脑里各种myth.。

One by one, those myths are bursting into flame. We are running out of land, housing, water, road space and now electricity. Fixing all this requires systemic change, but we aren’t up to the task. We are hemmed in by a resentful national government and an uncaring national media, and we have never been able to prize sustainability and equality over quick-fix hacks and outsized prizes to the rich.

而如今一个接着一个这些myths都化为乌有，这里burst into flame是不是一语双关，影射加州大火多。

hem in/限制；life hacks是生活窍门的意思，这里quick-fix hacks你猜到了吧。

All of our instincts seem to make things worse. Our de facto solution to housing affordability has been forcing people to move farther and farther away from cities, so they commute longer, make traffic worse and increase the population of fire-prone areas. We “solved” the problem of poor urban transportation by inviting private companies like Uber and Lyft to take over our roads. To keep the fires at bay, we are now employing the oldest I.T. hack in the book: turning the power off and then turning it back on again. Meanwhile, the rich are getting by: When the fires come, they hire their own firefighters. (Their gardeners and housekeepers still had to go to work, though.)

de facto/实际上的；commute/上下班，通勤；

有报道说加州某些富人雇佣专属的消防员灭火，当然有时也帮助周边灭火。

Does all this sound overdramatic? You might point out that if it seems like dystopian apocalypse in California, it’s because it has always felt like dystopian apocalypse in California. The California of Joan Didion, Charles Manson and Ronald Reagan was no picnic; nor was the California of Pete Wilson, Rodney King or Arnold Schwarzenegger. California has always been a place that seems to be on the edge and running on empty, and maybe the best you can ever say about it is, hey, at least we’re not Florida.

dystopian当然是utopian的反面，而utopia音译为乌托邦，那dystopian意思你猜到了吧？

apocalypse 圣经里说的天启，即世界末日那一天；

后面列举的都是加州名人，包括了几任州长，比如施瓦辛格/ Arnold Schwarzenegger。

最后一句at least we’re not Florida充分表达很多加州人的阿Q精神。

But this time it’s different. The apocalypse now feels more elemental — as if the place is not working in a fundamental way, at the level of geography and climate. And everything we need to do to avoid the end goes against everything we’ve ever done.

elemental来自于element/元素，所以说到了最基本最根本的层面；

而fundamental表达了相似的意思。

The long-term solutions to many of our problems are obvious: To stave off fire and housing costs and so much else, the people of California should live together more densely. We should rely less on cars. And we should be more inclusive in the way we design infrastructure — transportation, the power grid, housing stock — aiming to design for the many rather than for the wealthy few.

stave off/阻隔；dense/稠密的;

the people of California should live together more densely说到了重点，直白点就是要学亚洲多建高层住宅楼。

If we redesigned our cities for the modern world, they’d be taller and less stretched out into the fire-prone far reaches — what scientists call the wildland-urban interface. Housing would be affordable because there’d be more of it. You’d be able to get around more cheaply because we’d ditch cars and turn to buses and trains and other ways we know how to move around a lot of people at high speeds, for low prices. It wouldn’t be the end of the California dream, but a reconceptualization — not as many endless blocks of backyards and swimming pools, but perhaps a new kind of more livable, more accessible life for all.

果然说到要建高楼而不是摊大饼they’d be taller and less stretched out into the fire-prone far reaches.

ditch/甩掉，拜托；reconceptualization不明觉厉的一个词，其实不就是“再次产生一个concept”的意思嘛;

not as many endless blocks of backyards and swimming pools这是美国人批评美帝的生活方式，家家户户都有院子和游泳池怎么行。

But who wants to do all this? Not the people of this state. Sure, we’ll ban plastic bags and try to increase gas-mileage standards (until the federal government tries to stop us, which of course it can, because our 40 million people get the same voting power in the Senate as Wyoming’s 600,000).

这样的自残行为现在的加州人会做吗？作者对答案清楚的很：Not the people of this state/本州人民绝对不干。

末尾括号里涉及一个背景知识：美国参议院一共100名参议员，每个州派出两位参议员，所以在参议院里4000万人口的加州和60万人口的怀俄明州投票权一样大。

But the big things still seem impossible here. In a state where 40 years ago, homeowners passed a constitutional amendment enshrining their demands for low property taxes forever, where every initiative at increasing density still seems to fail, where vital resources like electricity are managed by unscrupulous corporations and where cars are still far and away the most beloved way to get around, it’s hard to imagine systemic change happening anytime soon.

这段建议能看懂多少就多少，关键在末尾it’s hard to imagine systemic change happening anytime soon. 反正意思就是要改变现状太难太难。

And so we muddle on toward the end. All the leaves are burned and the sky is gray. California, as it’s currently designed, will not survive the coming climate. Either we alter how we live here, or many of us won’t live here anymore.

muddle on/得过且过；虽然没办法说服加州人现在自残做出改变，但作者我可以吓唬吓唬你。末尾描绘了一幅末日的样子：All the leaves are burned and the sky is gray/树叶烧尽，天空阴霾；

Either we alter how we live here, or many of us won’t live here anymore./不改变这儿的生活方式，将来很多人想住也住不了。