剑桥雅思15阅读Test4Passage3原文翻译

本文的主要观点是，大型企业的环境实践常常受到盈利动机的影响，导致它们可能通过破坏环境和伤害他人来追求短期利润。然而，文章也指出公众和政府具有最终责任，通过监管有效和环境意识的提高来推动企业改善环境实践。文章强调，仅仅指责企业是不够的，公众应通过购买可持续产品、对不良环境记录的公司施加压力以及政府颁布和执行相关法律和法规等方式行动起来。同时，企业也可以对供应商施加压力，通过供应链的影响来实现改变。最终，文章认为公众的态度和期望对企业环境实践的改变起着至关重要的作用。

第1段

The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that for many of us offends our sense of justice. Depending on the circumstances, a business may maximize the amount of money it makes, at least in the short term, by damaging the environment and hurting people. That is still the case today for fishermen in an unmanaged fishery without quotas, and for international logging companies with short-term leases on tropical rainforest land in places with corrupt officials and unsophisticated landowners. When government regulation is effective, and when the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and if the public doesn’t care.

大型企业的环境实践往往受到一个基本事实的影响，这让我们中的许多人感到不公正。根据具体情况，企业可能通过破坏环境和伤害他人来最大化其盈利，至少在短期内是如此。在没有配额管理的无管理渔业中，这种情况仍然存在；在存在腐败官员和缺乏经验的土地所有者的热带雨林土地上，国际伐木公司可以获得短期租约，也会如此。当政府监管有效，并且公众具有环境意识时，环境清洁的大企业可能会超过污染企业，但如果政府监管无效，公众对环境问题漠不关心，情况恰恰相反。

第2段

It is easy for the rest of us to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and that publicly owned companies with shareholders are under obligation to those shareholders to maximize profits, provided that they do so by legal means. US laws make a company’s directors legally liable for something termed ‘breach of fiduciary responsibility’ if they knowingly manage a company in a way that reduces profits. The car manufacturer Henry Ford was in fact successfully sued by shareholders in 1919 for raising the minimum wage of his workers to $5 per day: the courts declared that, while Ford’s humanitarian sentiments about his employees were nice, his business existed to make profits for its stockholders.

我们很容易指责企业通过伤害他人来谋取自身利益。但仅靠指责是不够产生改变的。这忽视了企业并非慈善机构而是以盈利为目的的公司的事实，上市公司在股东的监管下有义务通过合法手段最大化利润。美国法律规定，如果公司董事会知ingly管理一家公司以降低利润，将对其进行所谓的“违反受托责任”的法律追责。事实上，汽车制造商亨利·福特在1919年曾因将其工人的最低工资提高到每日5美元而被股东成功起诉：法院宣布，尽管福特对员工的人道主义情怀是好的，但他的公司存在是为了为股东创造利润。

第3段

Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.

我们指责企业也忽视了公众为创造条件以让企业通过破坏性的环境政策获利而负有最终责任。从长远来看，公众通过直接或通过政治家的方式，有权力使这些破坏性政策不再具有盈利性并且是非法的，同时也有权力使可持续环境政策具有盈利性。

第4段

The public can do that by suing businesses for harming them, as happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which over 40,000 m3 of oil were spilled off the coast of Alaska. The public may also make their opinion felt by preferring to buy sustainably harvested products; by making employees of companies with poor track records feel ashamed of their company and complain to their own management; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.

公众可以通过起诉侵害自己的企业来实现这一点，就像在埃克森-瓦尔迪兹灾难之后发生的那样。在那次事故中，超过40,000立方米的石油泄漏到阿拉斯加海岸。公众还可以通过选择购买可持续收获的产品来表达自己的意见；通过让那些有糟糕记录的公司的员工感到对自己的公司感到羞耻并向自己的管理层投诉；通过更倾向于让政府向具有良好环境记录的企业授予有价值的合同；以及通过督促政府通过和执行要求良好环境实践的法律和法规。

第5段

In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease known as BSE, which was transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government’s Food and Drug Administration introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But for five years the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a major fast-food company then made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers plummeted, the meat industry complied within weeks. The public’s task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure: for instance, fast-food chains or jewelry stores, but not meat packers or gold miners.

反过来，大型企业可以对任何忽视公众或政府压力的供应商施加强大压力。例如，在美国公众开始担心一种名为疯牛病的疾病传播时，美国政府的食品和药物管理局出台了规定，要求肉类行业放弃与该疾病传播风险相关的做法。但是五年来，肉类加工商拒绝遵守这些规定，声称遵守这些规定会造成太高的成本。然而，当一家主要快餐公司在其汉堡销售量暴跌后提出相同要求时，肉类加工业在几周内就遵守了这些规定。因此，公众的任务是确定供应链中哪些环节对公众压力敏感：例如，快餐连锁店或珠宝店，而不是肉类加工商或金矿商。

第6段

Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs, if any, of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, in all politically complex human societies, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.

有些读者可能会对我将大型企业实践伤害公众的最终责任归咎于公众本身感到失望或愤怒。我也认为公众必须接受为了覆盖声音环境实践所增加的成本（如果有的话）而支付更高价格的必要性。我的观点可能似乎忽视了一种信念，即企业应该根据道德原则行事，即使这样做会减少它们的利润。但我认为我们必须认识到，在人类历史上，在所有政治复杂的人类社会中，政府监管之所以出现，正是因为发现不仅道德原则需要明确，而且还需要得到执行。

第7段

To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. In the past, businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn’t want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses’ environmental practices.

对我来说，结论是公众对甚至最大的企业行为负有最终责任是富有授权和希望，而不是失望。我的结论并不是关于谁是对还是错，令人钦佩还是自私，好人还是坏人的道德观点。过去，当公众开始期望和要求不同的行为，对公众所希望的行为奖励企业，并且对采取公众不希望的行为的企业制造困难时，企业就发生了变化。我预测，在将来，就像过去一样，公众态度的改变对于企业环境实践的改变至关重要。