来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2021年5月12日
本文适合英语二考生
Carbon is in the news a lot these days. Story after horrifying story tells of how carbon emissions are turning up Earth’s thermostat with serious consequences. But when it comes to the environment, there is another element we need to worry about. Nitrogen, carbon’s next-door neighbour on the periodic table, is at the centre of a different environmental crisis that is rarely in the center of public attention.
最近碳经常出现在新闻中。一个又一个可怕的故事讲述了碳排放如何使地球的恒温器升温并带来严重后果。但说到环境，还有另一种化学元素需要我们担心。氮是碳元素周期表上的邻居，它是另一场环境危机的中心，而这一危机很少引起公众关注。
Like so much in life, nitrogen is good in moderation. It is the fourth most common element in your body, an essential ingredient of DNA and other crucial biomolecules. We get this nitrogen from the food we eat. To enter the food chain, the relatively inert nitrogen gas in the air has to be converted, or fixed, to “reactive nitrogen” compounds in the soil, which are taken up by plants. Over the past century, we’ve added to the natural processes that do this by producing synthetic fertiliser in huge quantities and spreading it on fields. The average person in the US has a nitrogen footprint of about 41 kilograms per year, mostly thanks to the fertiliser used to grow their food.
就像生活中的许多东西一样，适量的氮是有益的。它是人体第四常见的元素，是DNA和其他重要生物分子的基本成分。我们从吃的食物中获取氮。为了进入食物链，空气中相对惰性的氮气必须转化或固定为土壤中的“活性氮”化合物，并被植物吸收。在过去的一个世纪里，我们通过大量生产合成肥料并将其洒在田地里，加快了这一自然过程。美国人平均每年的氮足迹约为41公斤，这主要归功于种植庄稼所使用的化肥。
A lot of reactive nitrogen ends up leaking into the wider environment where it disrupts the natural chemical balance. We have known this for decades. Nitrogen run-off causes blooms of toxic algae – “red tides” – that kill sea life. The long list of effects includes air pollution, acid rain and soil acidification.
许多活性氮最终泄漏到更广泛的环境中，破坏了自然的化学平衡。这一点我们已经知道几十年了。氮的流失导致有毒藻类的大量繁殖——“赤潮”——杀死了海洋生物。这些影响包括空气污染、酸雨和土壤酸化。
Finally, it seems the world might be confronting the problem. A UN-backed group called the International Nitrogen Management System is beginning to chart a well-evidenced course out of the nitrogen emergency. It has helped set a target of cutting nitrogen waste in half by 2030 and put forward a range of ways to pull this off.
最后，世界似乎正着手解决这个问题。一个由联合国支持的名为“国际氮管理系统”的组织已经开始着手制定一个经过充分证明的方案，以摆脱氮污染危机。它帮助制定了到2030年将氮废物减少一半的目标，并提出了一系列实现这一目标的方法。
It is a welcome start. But we shouldn’t forget that the seemingly different environmental catastrophes we are facing, not least biodiversity decline and climate change, are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. This is true of nitrogen too: one nitrogen pollutant, nitrous oxide, is a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. We need to hear a lot more about nitrogen.
这是一个受欢迎的开始。但我们不应忘记，我们正面临的各种看似不同的环境灾难，尤其是生物多样性下降和气候变化，是相互交织、相互促进的。氮也是如此：一种氮污染物，一氧化二氮，是一种比二氧化碳强300倍的温室气体。我们需要更多地了解氮气。