7.Using Straws

7.使用吸管

Chances are good that if you get a cold drink at any restaurant, you'll be handed a straw, too. We curse the people working the drive-through when we're halfway¹ down the block and realize we don't have one, but straws are having a pretty devastating² impact on our planet.

无论在哪家餐厅，如果你买一杯冷饮，很可能就要用上一根吸管。当我们买冷饮后，走到半路才发现餐厅工作人员忘了给吸管，在默默咒骂他们的疏忽的同时，不要忘了，吸管对地球有着极其毁灭性的影响。

Every day, the United States alone uses about 500 million drinking straws. For a visual, that means we could fill 46,400 school buses with straws every year. In the last 25 years, about six million of those have been picked up on beaches across the country during annual cleanups. Those are just part of the sum that ends up on the beach, and according to the Ocean Conservancy, drinking straws rank in the top 10 types of trash found floating in the ocean. Straws are light, easily picked up by wind and water currents, and made from a polypropylene plastic that doesn't disintegrate³ or dissolve. These millions of straws are around forever, making up a huge part of the estimated 12 to 24 tons of plastic that ends up ingested by fish and other marine⁴ wildlife every year. And that includes about one million seabirds that die after eating plastics. One of the most common items found in autopsies⁵? The drinking straws that come attached to juice boxes.

单单美国一个国家平均每天就会用掉大约5亿支吸管，这些吸管每年都能填满整整四万六千四百辆校车了！在过去的25年中，美国每年都可以在海滩上清扫出大约600万支吸管，而这还不包括除海滩外的其他地方。海洋保护协会表示，吸管已经成为十大海洋漂浮垃圾之一。吸管由不易分解或溶解的聚丙烯塑料制成，重量轻致使其极易随风飘走，或是被水流卷去。这样，成千上万的吸管就永远留在了地球上，预计每年大约有12到24吨的塑料最终被鱼类和其他海洋生物所摄取。其中，每年大约有一百万只海鸟就是死于食用塑料。尸检发现，这种附带在果汁盒子里的吸管便是罪魁祸首。

6.Eating Frog

6.吃青蛙

Far from exclusively a fancy French entree⁶, frog is such a popular food that it has become a huge global industry. Bullfrogs are typically raised on farms in South America. They are then either used there for food or shipped overseas. Japan and the United States are two of the biggest consumers of frogs, with more than five million imported into the US alone each year. That's proving fatal for countless⁷ amphibians—and not just those being eaten.

青蛙远不止是法国特有的一道菜，其以独特的风味广受人们喜爱，养殖青蛙已成为一项巨大的全球性产业。南美农场里的特色养殖产业就是牛蛙。然后它们会被当地用作食物或是被船只运往海外。日本和美国是最大的两个牛蛙消费国，每年单是出口到美国的牛蛙就有五百多万只。这对于不计其数的两栖动物——不仅仅是那些被食用的——来说是致命的。

Many of the bullfrogs shipped out of South America are infected with chytrid fungus⁸. The fungus is completely harmless to humans. The North American bullfrog is highly resistant⁹ to it, making them the ideal carrier for the fungal disease that can infect toads¹⁰, salamanders, and other types of frogs. The fungus that's being spread by the live food trade is different than one that's being blamed for most of the recent die-offs. It's thought that the strain is not only being spread, but that it's being hybridized into a new, extremely virulent¹¹ strain. There are a few different strains of the fungus, and researchers from the University of Michigan have been able to track which frogs are carrying which strains into which countries. They've also been able to trace which strains of the fungus can reproduce with other strains, leading to more and more different varieties of deadly fungus. The consequences of the fungus and its ability to hybridize create the potential to unleash¹² an epidemic¹³ across the globe.

许多被海运出南美的牛蛙都感染了壶菌霉菌。这种霉菌对人类是完全无害的。北美的牛蛙对这种霉菌有极高的抵抗力，这使它们成为这种霉菌疾病的理想携带者。蟾蜍、火蜥蜴和其他种类的青蛙却难逃被感染的厄运。这种寄居在活着的生物体内并利用其贸易运输而传播的霉菌不同于以往引起大部分物种死亡的霉菌类型。据认为，这种菌株不仅仅被传播，还会混合变异成一种新型的，极具毒性的菌株。霉菌菌株分为一些不同的种类，来自密歇根大学的调查者们已能追踪到哪种青蛙携带着哪种菌株去了哪些国家。他们也已能够查探到哪种霉菌菌株可以和其它菌株杂交并再生出越来越多不同种类的致死菌株。这些霉菌及它们的杂交性能很有可能引起一场全球性的流行性传染病。