美国国家公共电台 NPR Can Anyone, Even Walmart, Stem The Heat-Trapping Flood Of Nitrogen On Farms?

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

A lot of companies have promised to do their part to reduce their releases of greenhouse gases that are trapping heat and giving the planet a fever. Among them are big food companies, including the biggest American grocer, Walmart. But companies are finding that reducing their climate impact is complicated because the emissions¹ from food production come from unexpected places. NPR's Dan Charles reports.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE²: Decisions by a company like Walmart about what products it will sell can leave their mark on fields and forests and factories around the globe. The company is so huge and influential³ that 10 years ago, the advocacy group Environmental Defense⁴ Fund set up an office near Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Here's Suzy Friedman, a senior director at EDF.

SUZY FRIEDMAN: And we really saw that working with companies could be transformative at a scale that was pretty unmatched.

CHARLES: EDF wants to persuade companies that going green could be good for business. And Walmart often sounds like a convert to the cause. Laura Phillips, a senior vice⁵ president there, says Walmart is committed to fighting climate change.

LAURA PHILLIPS: It's really one of the most important issues we work on. Our customers are interested in climate and many of our stakeholders.

CHARLES: Last year, Walmart promised to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by a billion tons of carbon between now and 2030. Now, that's way more than what's released by Walmart's own stores and trucks. Most of those reductions will have to come from Walmart's suppliers, all those other companies that make the products it sells. So Walmart's been calculating the climate price tags of those products, figuring out how much making each one contributes to global warming. When Phillips looked at that data, she was startled to see how high the price tag was on simple food items that didn't seem like they'd require burning a lot of fossil fuels - baked goods, for instance.

PHILLIPS: Why is that? You know, why are we seeing bread have high emissions?

CHARLES: Other food companies are asking the same question because a lot of them have made their own climate promises. They've set up an organization called Field to Market to measure and reduce the environmental impact of their operations. Allison Thomson is the group's research director.

ALLISON THOMSON: It has been a process of discovery mapping out the emissions and understanding there's a huge portion of the footprint that comes from the farm.

CHARLES: From the farm, not factories or fleets of trucks. And on the farm, the big greenhouse source is something most people don't think about very much. It's the fertilizer, mainly nitrogen, that farmers spread on their fields to feed their crops. Manufacturing this fertilizer releases a lot of carbon dioxide. And then when you spread nitrogen on a field, bacteria in the soil feed on it and release an even more powerful greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide⁶. Add it all up and fertilizer is the biggest part of the global warming price tag of a loaf of bread or a box of Corn Flakes⁷. According to one study, greenhouse emissions from fertilizer are the biggest single piece of the global warming price tag for almost half of the top-selling items on the shelves at Walmart. I asked Walmart executive Laura Phillips what her company could even do about that.

You see that. You see fertilizer's really significant. But do you have any control over that?

PHILLIPS: No. We don't make the product ourselves. We work with our suppliers. And I think we would want to work with our suppliers towards a path of continuous improvement.

CHARLES: But those suppliers don't control fertilizer use either. Bakers⁸ just buy the grain that the farmers grow. Meatpackers buy the cattle that ate that grain. They don't apply fertilizer to the fields. This is the big hitch⁹ in the whole strategy that environmental advocates like Suzy Friedman have been pursuing in working with big companies like Walmart.

FRIEDMAN: So that was one really big eye-opener. This is a whole lot more complicated than we even thought in the beginning.

CHARLES: You sort of had the idea in the beginning that Walmart can just do it.

FRIEDMAN: I think even Walmart had that idea in the beginning. And we really learned that you need to engage the whole supply chain.

CHARLES: They're trying to do that now, but it's not easy. It's a new frontier for environmentalists who are trying to fight climate change, not just dealing¹⁰ with the CEOs of big companies, but also fertilizer dealers¹¹ and farmers in small towns where the food on store shelves gets its start. Dan Charles, NPR News.

1 emissions   

排放物( emission的名词复数 )； 散发物（尤指气体）

参考例句：

• Most scientists accept that climate change is linked to carbon emissions. 大多数科学家都相信气候变化与排放的含碳气体有关。
• Dangerous emissions radiate from plutonium. 危险的辐射物从钚放散出来。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 influential   

adj.有影响的，有权势的

参考例句：

• He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
• He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。

4 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

5 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

6 oxide   

n.氧化物

参考例句：

• Oxide is usually seen in our daily life.在我们的日常生活中氧化物很常见。
• How can you get rid of this oxide coating?你们该怎样除去这些氧化皮？

7 flakes   

小薄片( flake的名词复数 )； （尤指）碎片； 雪花； 古怪的人

参考例句：

• It's snowing in great flakes. 天下着鹅毛大雪。
• It is snowing in great flakes. 正值大雪纷飞。

8 bakers   

n.面包师( baker的名词复数 )；面包店；面包店店主；十三

参考例句：

• The Bakers have invited us out for a meal tonight. 贝克一家今晚请我们到外面去吃饭。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The bakers specialize in catering for large parties. 那些面包师专门负责为大型宴会提供食品。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 hitch   

v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉

参考例句：

• They had an eighty-mile journey and decided to hitch hike.他们要走80英里的路程，最后决定搭便车。
• All the candidates are able to answer the questions without any hitch.所有报考者都能对答如流。

10 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

11 dealers   

n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者

参考例句：

• There was fast bidding between private collectors and dealers. 私人收藏家和交易商急速竞相喊价。
• The police were corrupt and were operating in collusion with the drug dealers. 警察腐败，与那伙毒品贩子内外勾结。