关于中国制冷业的快速发展，有一个有趣的事实：

　　It is not simply transforming how Chinese people grow, distribute and consume food. It also stands to become a formidable new factor in climate change; cooling is already responsible for 15 percent of all electricity consumption worldwide, and leaks of chemical refrigerants are a major source of greenhouse-gas pollution. Of all the shifts in lifestyle that threaten the planet right now, perhaps not one is as important as the changing way that Chinese people eat.

　　制冷业的发展不仅在改变中国人种植、分配、消费粮食的方式，还成为影响气候变化的一个不容忽视的新因素。制冷业消耗的电能站到了全球电能消耗总量的15%，化学制冷剂的泄露是造成温室气体污染的一个主要原因。人类生活方式的诸多变化都会给地球带来威胁，在这些变化中，最重要的就是中国人饮食方式的变化。

　　Take a look at the rapid growth of the cold chain in China, which its corporate and government promoters envision will reduce waste and improve food safety.

　　让我们看看中国制冷产业链的高速发展现状吧。中国的企业和政府说客们预言说制冷产业链的高速发展将减少能源浪费，提高食品安全性。

　　Leading up to the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing municipal authorities embarked on an ambitious program of “supermarketization,” designed to get meat and vegetables out of the open-air “wet” markets — where food is cooled by standing fans and the occasional hose down from the cold tap — and safely behind sneeze-guards in modern, climate-controlled grocery stores. Mass refrigeration would provide an added value worth $160 billion per year by 2017.

　　2008年北京奥林匹克运动会前期，北京市政府曾发起一场雄心勃勃的“食品进超市”项目，旨在肉类和蔬菜都从露天的、“潮湿”的菜市场搬出来——在菜市场里，人们通过立扇给食品降温，或者通过时不时的用自来水管里的冷水冲淋食物来给它们降温，把食物搬进现代化的，温控的杂货店里的的东盆里去。到2017年，民用制冷业可以创造的产值高达平均每年1600亿美元。

　　An artificial winter has begun to stretch across the country, through its fields and its ports, its logistics hubs and freeways. China had 250 million cubic feet of refrigerated storage capacity in 2007; by 2017, the country is on track to have 20 times that. At five billion cubic feet, China will surpass even the United States, which has led the world in cold storage ever since artificial refrigeration was invented. And even that translates to only 3.7 cubic feet of cold storage per capita, or roughly a third of what Americans currently have — meaning that the Chinese refrigeration boom is only just beginning.

　　一个人造的冬季正逐渐覆盖整个中国大地，从田野到港口，从交通枢纽站到高速公路。在2007年，中国的冷冻货物总量为2亿5千万立方英尺；到2017年，中国的冷冻货物总量将达到这一数字的20倍。届时，中国将拥有50亿立方英尺的冷冻货物，超过了美国的冷冻货物总量，自从人工制冷业诞生以来，美国一直在冷冻存储量上位居世界第一。不过这一总量也仅意味着中国的人均拥有冷冻存储量为3.7立方英尺，仅为美国人均现有量的1/3——中国冷冻业的勃兴才刚刚开始。

　　Feels like anytime China's mentioned it's drama, but the article's a sharp reminder of the high costs of contemporary – corporate – food supply systems; there's simply no future, anywhere – in China, in Asia, in Africa, anywhere – in adopting variations of what dominates in the US or Europe... well, apart from future profits for the handful of dominant players who will quickly replace the hundreds of millions of street hawkers, fresh market vendors, small-scale processors and peasant farmers that much of the world's food supply rests on now.

　　似乎每次面对这种质疑，中国都会觉得这是夸大其词，不过，这篇文章旨在警示人们注意当代企业化的食品供应链所导致的高昂代价。无论是中国、亚洲、非洲或任何地方，想要把美国和欧洲现行的食品供应链化为己用都是毫无出路的，只有那少数几家食品储存垄断企业可能感到前途光明，利润丰厚，他们很快就会取代数以百万的街头菜贩、菜市场商贩、小额食品供应商和农民，而全世界的食品供应如今正是这些人的贡献。