The end times are here, and I am at Target

It’s a theory of mine that life in most societies involves being keenly aware that the end is coming.

我的理论是，大多数社会的生活都需要敏锐地意识到末日即将到来。

Your own individual end, yes, but also the end of this , the entire experience that is life as you’ve known it.

是的，你个人的结局，也是这一切的终结，整个体验就是你所知道的生活。

The mass of our collective canon is littered with stories about the world’s end , where the death of mankind and the death of the universe can be seen as linked or interchangeable.

我们的集体经典中充斥着关于世界末日的故事，其中人类的死亡和宇宙的死亡可以被视为相互关联或可以互换。

It’s almost as if the second humans evolved enough to contemplate that we each must someday die, those early people immediately assumed that when we go, we all go, the entire world coming along for the ride, an unwritten murder-suicide pact between species and planet.

就好像第二代人类进化到足以考虑到我们每个人总有一天都会死亡，那些早期的人们立即认为，当我们离开时，我们都会离开，整个世界都会跟着一起走，这是物种和星球之间不成文的谋杀自杀协议。

There’s a certain similarity in the way across the years that people have resigned themselves to meeting the end, often to the to the point of welcoming it with open arms.

多年来，人们对末日的到来有一定的相似之处，甚至常常张开双臂欢迎它。

The exact beliefs of a new age group awaiting our planet’s collision with another in 2012 or a sect devoted to the numerology contained in the book of Eli or whatever don’t ultimately matter.

等待我们的星球在 2012 年与另一个星球相撞的新时代群体的确切信仰，或者致力于伊莱书中所含数字命理学的教派或其他什么最终都不重要。

Each of them decided that whatever doctrine was their truth, they felt it with every fiber of their being, they were convinced: “This is it, this is the time, the signs are all aligned for us, the universe, the whole mess of reality to call it quits.

他们每个人都决定，无论教义是什么，他们的真理，他们用自己的每一根纤维感受到它，他们确信：“就是这样，现在是时候了，迹象都对齐了，让我们、宇宙、整个混乱的现实结束。

Make what preparations you can, cast off your worldly goods, the next awaits us!

做好你能做的准备，抛开你的世俗物品，下一个等待着我们！

And it will be even more beautiful and peaceful than you’ve ever dreamed and the ills and suffering of this mortal plane shall trouble you no longer.” Death in the end is just a big temporary road bump before the next version of the world or humanity or both can come to pass.

它将比你梦想的更加美丽和宁静，这个凡人位面的疾病和痛苦将不再困扰你。”最终的死亡只是在下一个版本的世界或人类或两者实现之前的一个巨大的临时障碍。

I find myself thinking about doomsday cults fairly often as I wander the aisles inside the Target near the apartment I share with my girlfriend and our dog.

当我在与女友和狗合住的公寓附近的塔吉特百货公司内的过道上漫步时，我发现自己经常想到世界末日邪教。

This happened most recently during New York’s first heatwave of the year, the air doing its best to convince you it’s nearing 110 degrees, a preview of what’s to come .

这种情况最近发生在纽约今年的第一场热浪期间，空气竭尽全力让你相信温度已接近 110 度，这是即将发生的事情的预演。

It’s impossible to tell from the inside, an almost pathological level of self-deception.

从内部看是不可能的，这是一种近乎病态的自欺欺人。

Every minute spent inside that artificial oasis is another ticked away before our contract with the Earth runs out.

在我们与地球的合同到期之前，在人工绿洲中度过的每一分钟都在流逝。

The plentiful “ Live, Laugh, Love ” decor shapeshifts from a directive for your kooky aunt into a taunt.

丰富的“生活、欢笑、爱”装饰从对你古怪阿姨的指令变成了嘲讽。

It feels intensely unfair that after all the false starts and failed predictions that have stacked up throughout humanity’s run of things, each doled out with the utmost confidence, there’s finally honest proof that our finale is fast approaching.

在人类的所有错误的开始和失败的预测堆积如山之后，每一个都以最大的信心发布，最终有诚实的证据表明我们的结局即将到来，这感觉非常不公平。

Maybe it’s a case of too many disappointments causing us to become more cynical.

也许是太多的失望让我们变得更加愤世嫉俗。

But while The Seekers’ UFO never came to transport them to another planet , Christ didn’t actually return in 1844, and Y2K preppers found themselves with a surplus of canned goods, climate change’s increasing impact on our lives can be felt daily and are only slated to get worse.

然而，虽然探索者号的不明飞行物从未将他们运送到另一个星球，基督也没有在 1844 年真正回归，而千禧年末日准备者也发现自己拥有过剩的罐头食品，但气候变化对我们生活的影响每天都可以感受到，而且只会变得更糟。

We have a preponderance of evidence at this point and yet the very existence of anthropogenic climate change is still considered something to debate.

目前我们拥有大量证据，但人为气候变化的存在仍然被认为是值得争论的问题。

Meanwhile, we — you, me, the other New Yorkers shuffling through the Target around me, your neighbors wherever you’re reading this — are somehow not stockpiling non-perishables and fleeing the coasts in search of high ground ahead of the looming end like you’d expect in a proper End Times.

与此同时，我们——你，我，在我周围拖着脚步穿过塔吉特百货的其他纽约人，无论你在哪里读到这篇文章，你的邻居——不知怎的，并没有像你在一个适当的末世中所期望的那样，在即将到来的末日到来之前，囤积不易腐烂的物品，逃离海岸，寻找制高点。

Instead, we’re just trying to get through the next day or week as we suffer through the early throes of our collective demise, hoping that we might be wrong about the whole thing.

相反，我们只是试图度过接下来的一天或一周，因为我们正在经历集体灭亡的早期阵痛，希望我们对整件事的看法可能是错误的。

We don’t have to wait long for the worst to arrive.

我们不需要等待很长时间，最坏的情况就会到来。

Come 2050, civilization as we know it will start to tap out thanks to climate change, if a report from earlier this year is to be believed.

如果今年早些时候的一份报告可信的话，到 2050 年，由于气候变化，我们所知道的文明将开始崩溃。

Drawing on existing research and modeling, authors David Spratt and Ian Dunlop make a case that more than a billion people will be displaced as melting ice caps and glaciers raises the sea levels and the increased heat becomes lethal for huge swathes of the population for multiple days out of the year.

作者戴维·斯普拉特 (David Spratt) 和伊恩·邓洛普 (Ian Dunlop) 根据现有的研究和模型，提出了一个理由：随着冰盖和冰川融化导致海平面上升，一年中的多天，增加的热量对大量人口造成致命影响，超过 10 亿人将流离失所。

It’s not conclusive — but it’s convincing.

这不是结论性的——但它是令人信服的。

Compare the works informing Spratt and Dunlop — including last year’s United Nations-backed report that warned of severe changes coming even sooner, in 2040 — to those at the fingertips of the men two thousand-odd years ago who foretold of the impending Second Kingdom.

将斯普拉特和邓洛普的著作与两千多年前预言第二王国即将到来的人们手头的著作进行比较——包括去年联合国支持的报告，该报告警告说，2040 年将会更快地发生严重变化。

They had no precise models for when these crude forms would melt away, but their zeal, their conviction that it was just around the corner, helped win them their first converts.

他们没有准确的模型来预测这些原始形式何时会消失，但他们的热情和相信它即将到来的信念帮助他们赢得了第一批皈依者。

Many others since, most lost to history, have spent thir lives trying to predict Judgement Day’s arrival .

此后的许多人，大多数都消失在历史中，一生都在试图预测审判日的到来。

Countless other people in turn followed them and their message.

无数其他人也纷纷关注他们和他们的信息。

It was hard times for most of those years with even the privileged classes living in what would be considered squalor by modern standards.

那些年的大部分时间都过得很艰难，即使是特权阶层也生活在按照现代标准衡量的肮脏环境中。

You could see why the promise of better days just around the corner, even if it meant the destruction of all that ever was, sounded appealing to the masses.

你会明白为什么更好的日子即将到来的承诺，即使这意味着毁灭一切，听起来对大众很有吸引力。

In the 21st century, we have raised the bar in terms of comfort.

在 21 世纪，我们提高了舒适度的标准。

Under Target’s glaring fluorescent lights, assorted goods line the gleaming shelves, each full to bursting as if mocking the very idea of want.

在塔吉特百货刺眼的荧光灯下，闪闪发光的货架上摆满了各种各样的商品，每一件商品都装满了，仿佛在嘲笑匮乏的想法。

Ten varieties and scents of what’s basically the same laundry detergent which may or may not linger in the water supply fill my line of sight.

我的视线里充满了十种不同的洗衣粉，它们的气味基本相同，它们可能会或可能不会留在供水系统中。

In the grocery section, produce is picked over and left to spoil at the hint of a bruise.

在杂货区，农产品被挑选出来并在有瘀伤的地方腐烂。

Life for the few — the massively wealthy on a global scale, the powerless compared to the truly rich in this world, the average human in the United States of America — is more convenient than it has ever been in human history.

少数人——全球范围内的巨富、与这个世界上真正富有的人相比的弱势群体、美利坚合众国的普通人——的生活比人类历史上任何时候都更加便利。

Small wonder that we aren’t exactly keen on imagining it all going away, either by choice or at the whims of a planet that feels as vengeful as an ancient god, and justifiably so.

难怪我们并不热衷于想象这一切都会消失，无论是出于选择还是出于一个像古神一样复仇的星球的一时兴起，这是理所当然的。

Of course, unlike proponents of the Mayan calendar’s supposed prophecies or Nostradamus’s writings, the augurs of the climate movement come armed with science — repeatable and verifiable and very sure we’re on the edge of disaster.

当然，与玛雅历法所谓预言的支持者或诺查丹玛斯著作的支持者不同，气候运动的预兆是以科学为武器的——可重复、可验证，并且非常确定我们正处于灾难的边缘。

"This scenario provides a glimpse into a world of 'outright chaos' on a path to the end of human civilization and modern society as we have known it," Spratt and Dunlop wrote in exceedingly clear terms, "in which the challenges to global security are simply overwhelming and political panic becomes the norm." One of the authors of the UN’s report told the New York Times the evidence is “telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime.”

斯普拉特和邓洛普以极其清晰的措辞写道：“这种情况让我们得以一睹‘彻底混乱’的世界，正走向我们所知的人类文明和现代社会的终结，其中全球安全面临的挑战简直是压倒性的，政治恐慌成为常态。”联合国报告的一位作者告诉《纽约时报》，证据“告诉我们，我们需要扭转排放趋势并扭转世界经济”。

Climate scientists have a body of evidence that no other sibyl has ever produced and yet it’s still falling on deaf ears .

气候科学家有大量证据表明，没有其他女预言家产生过，但它仍然充耳不闻。

And in the U.S. and in growing numbers abroad , powerful people have used a small fraction of their resources to stifle that message further.

在美国和越来越多的国外，有权势的人使用了一小部分资源来进一步压制这一信息。

They deliver sermons of their own, telling the gathered throngs that the prophets are liars and the stars are being read wrong and Cassandra is a woman and a fool.

他们发表自己的布道，告诉聚集的人群，先知是骗子，星星被读错了，卡桑德拉是一个女人和一个傻瓜。

It’s a scheme, a plot, a drive to take away your rights and their taxes and profits.

这是一个计划，一个阴谋，一个剥夺你的权利以及他们的税收和利润的动力。

The “political will” to avert Ragnarok just isn’t there.

避免诸神黄昏的“政治意愿”根本不存在。

Even without their efforts, the Church of Climate Change’s weakness is clear in its followers.

即使没有他们的努力，气候变化教会的弱点在其追随者身上也是显而易见的。

Once you’re convinced that the Earth is rapidly heating and there’s only a little time left to stop it, then you’re in, you believe.

一旦你确信地球正在迅速升温，并且只剩下一点时间来阻止它，那么你就相信了。

You’re Paul on the road from Damascus, ready to spread the Word and call out the sinners who dare doubt the Newest Testament.

你是从大马士革出发的保罗，准备传播神的话语，并呼唤那些敢于怀疑新约的罪人。

But what kind of devotee secretly hopes that their principles of faith are wrong?

但什么样的奉献者会暗自希望自己的信仰原则是错误的呢？

What true believer wishes deep down inside that things will actually be fine in the end, so let’s just go back to not worrying about it and enjoying things exactly as they are now.

真正的信徒内心深处希望事情最终会好起来，所以让我们回到不担心的状态，享受现在的事情。

“Here’s hoping what we’re predicting doesn’t come true after all” isn’t exactly a religion likely to retain members, let alone gain apostles.

“希望我们的预测最终不会实现”并不是一个可能留住成员的宗教，更不用说获得使徒了。

After the recession placed a new cap on what milestones we can ever hope to achieve — owning a home, starting a family, planning our retirement, all former givens that now feel impossible to many of us — people in their thirties today are unlikely to see it that get much easier.

经济衰退给我们希望实现的里程碑设定了新的上限——拥有一套房子、组建家庭、规划退休生活，所有以前的目标现在对我们许多人来说都是不可能的——如今，三十多岁的人不太可能看到这一切变得容易得多。

Not given the trajectory of everything, not absent massive changes across the board societally — the kind of changes on a scale that manage to trouble both the fabulously wealthy and the merely comfortable.

一切都没有既定的轨迹，社会也没有发生全面的巨大变化——这种规模的变化不仅给超级富有的人带来了麻烦，也给普通人带来了麻烦。

Even the most unshakeable in their worship of the dogma that climate change is our certain doom, the most committed vegans and environmentalists and ecologists and politicians living in the U.S. and Europe, are left hoping that surely it can’t be all that bad, can it?

即使是生活在美国和欧洲的最坚定的素食主义者、环保主义者、生态学家和政客，对气候变化是我们注定的厄运这一教条的最坚定的崇拜，也希望事情不会那么糟糕，不是吗？

How much sacrifice will actually be necessary to keep us all alive?

为了让我们所有人活下去，实际上需要多少牺牲？

Isn’t not living through the Mad Max series worth the ignomimity that comes with being wrong?

不经历《疯狂的麦克斯》系列难道不值得因犯错而蒙受耻辱吗？

We’re left wondering what we could possibly do as we turn up the air conditioning .

当我们打开空调时，我们不禁想知道我们能做什么。

Corporations continue to avoid paying additional taxes to help reverse the harm they’ve caused all while individuals are left to fret about whether their plastic straw is to blame for the ocean’s collapse and billionaires race to send people to space .

企业继续避免缴纳额外税款，以帮助扭转它们所造成的伤害，而个人则担心他们的塑料吸管是否是海洋崩溃的罪魁祸首，亿万富翁竞相将人们送入太空。

Meanwhile, Anchorage, Alaska hit 90 degrees for the first time ever last month.

与此同时，阿拉斯加的安克雷奇上个月首次出现 90 度气温。

Part of the Arctic is apparently on fire , spilling even more captured carbon into the air, a striking example of how self-reinforcing this is going to become, a perpetual motion machine but for environmental decay.

北极的部分地区显然着火了，更多捕获的碳泄漏到空气中，这是一个引人注目的例子，说明了这将如何自我强化，成为一台永动机，但环境会恶化。

Greenland’s ice is melting at a rate we weren’t supposed to see for another few decades, reading the waters to push higher than we’ve come to expect.

格陵兰岛的冰正在以我们未来几十年都不会看到的速度融化，预计水位将比我们预期的更高。

And yet when people actually have rushed into the streets with signs — begging that something, anything be done to stop this — they’ve been told sorry, it would be quite expensive and your plans would never work anyway.

然而，当人们真的举着标语冲上街头时——乞求采取什么措施，采取任何措施来阻止这种情况——他们被告知抱歉，这将是相当昂贵的，而且你的计划无论如何也不会奏效。

This from the same trustworthy visionaries who launched a Forever War and tanked the global economy.

这句话出自同样值得信赖的远见者之手，他们发动了一场永远的战争，并摧毁了全球经济。

We won’t even touch on the sixth great extinction occurring all around us or the rapid depletion of non-renewable resources, we only have the capacity to consider one facet of our annihilation at a time.

我们甚至不会触及我们周围发生的第六次大灭绝或不可再生资源的迅速耗尽，我们一次只能考虑我们毁灭的一个方面。

Generation Z, bless them, seems to be determined to not go down without a fight as they’ve shown in the climate marches taking place around the globe.

Z世代，祝福他们，似乎决心不战而屈人之兵，正如他们在全球各地举行的气候游行中所表现的那样。

Even their more conservative members are pushing for climate change to be taken seriously .

即使是较为保守的成员也在推动人们认真对待气候变化。

And who knows?

谁知道呢？

Maybe the Green New Deal or the Paris Climate Accord or Extinction Rebellion or some other Proper Noun Yet To Come is the thing that saves us all.

也许绿色新政、巴黎气候协议、灭绝叛乱或其他尚未出现的专有名词能够拯救我们所有人。

I still want to hope that someone or something big swoops in last second, a secular messiah, some deus ex machina of world-altering proportions.

我仍然希望有人或某件事在最后一秒突然出现，一个世俗的救世主，一个改变世界的神灵。

But it’s getting harder to see that happening as the days tick away.

但随着时间的流逝，这种情况的发生变得越来越困难。

Maybe it’s the whole rebirth thing that this particular looming doomsday is missing.

也许正是这个即将到来的世界末日所缺失的整个重生的事情。

There’s no better place awaiting us in the gospel according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .

根据政府间气候变化专门委员会的说法，福音中没有比这更好的地方在等待着我们了。

Only struggle and suffering and the seven seals opening make an appearance in their Revelation.

在他们的启示录中只出现了挣扎、苦难和七印的开启。

That could be why it’s so difficult to convert true zealots from the casual climate believer, let alone the entirely unconvinced — what’s the point of an apocalypse without a Rapture?

这可能就是为什么要从随意的气候信徒转变为真正的狂热者如此困难，更不用说完全不相信的人了——没有狂喜的世界末日有什么意义呢？

The IPCC should consider adding one, shifting focus to the new utopia that could arise if only we repent from our sinful ways.

IPCC 应该考虑增加一个，将焦点转移到只要我们从罪恶的方式中悔改就可能出现的新乌托邦。

We’re about due for a new major religion in any case, historically speaking.

从历史上看，无论如何，我们都将迎来一个新的主要宗教。

Maybe the scientists of today will wind up becoming the oracles of the post-apocalypse tomorrow, seen as warning against the wrath of the new gods that have taken root during whatever comes next.

也许今天的科学家最终会成为明天后世界末日的神谕，被视为对新神的愤怒的警告，这些新神的愤怒在接下来的任何事情中都会扎根。

Neo-priests could someday be poring over the documents that have survived as they attempt to piece together how the last era ended and the gods of the water and the sun chose to punish us our hubris.

新牧师有一天可能会仔细研究幸存下来的文件，试图拼凑出上一个时代是如何结束的，以及水神和太阳之神如何选择惩罚我们的傲慢。

I reflect on this as I grab another plastic box of fruit imported from Latin America and grown using a massive amount of resources that I may or may not get around to actually eating.

当我拿起另一塑料盒从拉丁美洲进口的水果时，我反思了这一点，这些水果是使用大量我可能抽出时间或可能抽不出时间实际食用的资源种植的。

The weight of knowing, this time really knowing, our future is taking its toll.

知道的重量，这一次真正知道，我们的未来正在付出代价。

It can’t not — the crush of bad news is unavoidable lately and the climate going haywire manages to be just one of another dozen issues that demands our attention at any given moment, even as it towers over them in terms of potential long-term impact.

这是不可能的——最近坏消息的铺天盖地是不可避免的，而失控的气候问题只是在任何特定时刻都需要我们关注的另外十几个问题之一，尽管就潜在的长期影响而言，它远远超过了这些问题。

We’re clearly not the first generation to be sure ours is the last, but we’re definitely the first to have overburdened the field of psychology with our rising dread .

我们显然不是第一代确信自己是最后一代的人，但我们绝对是第一代因日益增长的恐惧而让心理学领域不堪重负的人。

Still, it’s amazing how much the human mind can compartmentalize when faced with something as vast as extinction.

尽管如此，令人惊讶的是，当面对灭绝这样巨大的事情时，人类的思维能够进行如此多的区分。

The headlines and news alerts and marches and panels get filed in the mental Pocket folder marked “for later” that you have absolutely intention of ever going back to but gives you the satisfaction of having been interested in the article in the first place.

头条新闻、新闻提醒、游行和专题讨论会被归档在标记为“稍后使用”的心理口袋文件夹中，您绝对打算再回去查看，但会让您满足于首先对这篇文章感兴趣。

We do our best to go about our days, filling them with a constant stream of distractions.

我们尽最大努力过好自己的日子，并用源源不断的干扰来填满它们。

I’m right there with them, making my way home from the store, arms laden with groceries, sweat forcing my T-shirt to cling to my back, yet already pondering whether my craving for a chopped cheese from the bodega is more important to me in this moment than using up the fresh vegetables already in my refrigerator before they rot.

我就在他们身边，从商店回家，双臂拎着食品杂货，汗水迫使我的 T 恤贴在背上，但我已经在思考，此刻对我来说，对来自杂货店的切碎奶酪的渴望是否比在冰箱里的新鲜蔬菜腐烂之前把它们吃完更重要。

But then my phone vibrates and there’s another push alert imploring that I read a fellow journalist’s new report on the fate rushing towards us.

但随后我的手机震动了，又传来一条推送警报，恳求我阅读一位记者同行关于我们即将遭遇的命运的新报道。

There’s a moment’s hesitation before I swipe up, sending it into oblivion, forgotten as so many other divinations before it.

我犹豫了一会儿，然后向上滑动，将其遗忘，就像之前的许多其他占卜一样被遗忘。