中國在職研究生招生信息網(wǎng)：同等學(xué)力申碩考試英語，關(guān)注首都北京霧霾，關(guān)注我們生存的環(huán)境：

　　With Beijing suffering its fourth bout of heavy smog this month, figures ranging from Chinese premier Wen Jiabao to real estate mogul Pan Shiyi have issued calls for the government and industry to get serious about pollution. But the government's flagship English-language newspaper China Daily is putting the onus on another group to help tackle the smog problem: regular people.

　　In a front-page story on Wednesday, the paper said a 'joint effort' was required to fight air pollution, arguing that citizens should do their part by taking more public transportation and driving less.

　　'Tackling air pollution requires input from individuals as well as officials,' the newspaper said, citing experts.

　　'Everyone is responsible for creating air pollution. No one will act if we all just place our hopes in others,' the paper quoted Du Shaozhong, director of the China Beijing Environment Exchange, as saying.

　　Civic-minded exhortation, or an effort to shift the blame?

　　Urging individuals to take responsibility for their impact on the environment lies at the core of environmental movements in the U.S. and Europe. And no one can argue that more people taking public transportation won't help reduce some of the pollution afflicting China's cities not to mention the sclerotic traffic that chokes roads in major urban centers like Beijing. The suggestion is nevertheless problematic in China for a couple of reasons.

　　First, the contribution of individuals to China's air pollution problem is small compared to that of companies and power plants. The China Daily story quotes Xiao Yan, a 30-year-old lawyer who takes public transportation in Beijing to the dismay of her colleagues, as saying vehicle emissions are 'not much less than those from industry.' That may be true as far as major cities are concerned, but it's also misleading.

　　Although vehicle pollution is a large and growing source of urban air pollution, it isn't clear how much passenger vehicles are contributing to the smog that has engulfed Beijing over the past few weeks. Almost 80% of fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, emitted from vehicles in China comes from diesel-powered trucks, which represent less than a fifth of the country's vehicle fleet.

　　And while Beijing itself is home to relatively few smoke-spewing factories and steel mills, heavy industrial pollution from surrounding areas has a way of blowing over to blanket the city.

　　The call for individuals to take responsibility for improving China's air also risks falling on deaf ears. China's government, anxious to limit the role and power of civil society, has long positioned itself as the country's ultimate problem solver, making individuals less inclined to see themselves as having the power or the responsibility to tackle social issues themselves.

　　In a 2011 survey of Chinese people's attitudes toward environmental protection, the World Wide Fund for Nature found 56% of 1,600 respondents agreed at least somewhat with the idea that environmental protection was a government, rather than an individual, issue.

　　The China Daily did pay lip-service in the end to the notion that individual impacts on China's pollution problem could be limited, quoting Zhou Rong, a climate and energy project manager at Greenpeace, as saying blame for China's pollution problem lies elsewhere.

　　I agree that people should not drive and then complain about the bad air, but the major problem is still in the structure of the economy and energy consumption, which cannot be changed by ordinary people,' Ms. Zhou told the newspaper.

　　隨著北京第四次遭遇濃霧霾天氣，從中國國務(wù)院總理溫家寶到房地產(chǎn)大亨潘石屹等多位重量級人物都發(fā)出呼吁，希望政府和各行業(yè)能夠嚴(yán)肅對待污染問題。但中國政府旗下最重要的英文報紙《中國日報》(China Daily)則把幫助解決霧霾問題的責(zé)任放到了普通民眾身上。

　　在周三的一篇頭版報道中，該報說對抗空氣污染需要各方共同努力。文章認(rèn)為市民可以通過多坐公共交通工具、少開車的方式為減少污染做出自己的貢獻(xiàn)。

　　《中國日報》援引專家的話說，解決空氣污染問題需要個人和政府的共同努力。

　　該報援引北京環(huán)境交易所(China Beijing Environment Exchange)董事長杜少中的話說，每個人都要對空氣污染問題負(fù)責(zé)。如果我們只是把希望寄托在別人身上，那么沒有人會采取行動。

　　這是具有公民意識的勸告，還是為了推卸責(zé)任?

　　敦促個人為自己對環(huán)境造成的影響承擔(dān)責(zé)任是歐美環(huán)保運(yùn)動的核心。沒有人可以否認(rèn)的是，更多人乘坐公共交通工具有助于在一定程度上減少困擾中國各大城市的污染問題，更不用說這還能降低北京等各大中心城市的道路擁堵問題。但是這一建議在中國是有問題的，理由如下：

　　首先，相比企業(yè)和發(fā)電廠，個人對中國空氣污染問題的“貢獻(xiàn)”要小得多。《中國日報》這篇報道援引北京一位30歲律師肖艷(音)的話說，機(jī)動車尾氣排放量并不比工業(yè)廢氣少很多。就大城市而言，這么說或許沒錯，但這同樣具有誤導(dǎo)性。肖艷在北京總是使用公共交通工具，但她的同事對此不以為然。

　　雖然機(jī)動車尾氣排放是造成城市空氣污染的一大源頭，而且排放量還在不斷增加，但乘用車對霧霾天氣的形成起到多大作用現(xiàn)在還不清楚。過去幾周，北京都籠罩在霧霾中。在中國，機(jī)動車排放出來的PM2.5細(xì)微顆粒物，有大約80%來自柴油卡車，這類車在中國總體機(jī)動車中的比例不到五分之一。

　　雖然北京吐黑煙的工廠和鋼鐵廠相對較少，但周邊地區(qū)嚴(yán)重的工業(yè)污染會隨著風(fēng)刮到北京，并覆蓋整座城市。

　　要求個人肩負(fù)起改善中國空氣質(zhì)量責(zé)任的呼吁有可能會被人們當(dāng)作耳旁風(fēng)。急于限制公民社會角色和權(quán)力的中國政府長期以來都將自己定位成國家問題的最終解決者，這讓百姓不太覺得自己有權(quán)力或責(zé)任解決社會問題。

　　世界自然基金會(World Wide Fund for Nature)2011年對中國人環(huán)保態(tài)度的調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，在1,600名受訪者中，有56%的人至少在一定程度上認(rèn)同這樣一種觀點(diǎn)，那就是環(huán)保是政府的事，跟個人沒太大關(guān)系。

　　不過，《中國日報》文章最后還是稍微提到了個人對中國污染問題影響有限的觀點(diǎn)。文章援引綠色和平組織(Greenpeace)氣象和能源項(xiàng)目經(jīng)理周榮(音)的話說，中國污染問題的責(zé)任另有出處。

　　周榮對《中國日報》說：我也同意，人們不應(yīng)一邊開車一邊抱怨空氣差，但主要問題仍在于經(jīng)濟(jì)結(jié)構(gòu)和能耗，這些是普通百姓改變不了的。