2007年VOA标准英语-Are Green Concerts Green?

By Ravi Khanna
Montreal, Canada
24 July 2007
 

The recent "Live Earth" concerts (July 7th) were designed to raise awareness¹ about global warming. But many critics have asked how environmentally friendly were the shows themselves? VOA Urdu service's Ravi Khanna reports on the organizers efforts to make the events as green as possible and how other shows, like the ten-day Montreal Jazz Festival, are benefiting from those steps.

Montreal Jazz Festival

Jazz festivals attract huge crowds -- imagine the number of people and quantity of garbage they involve. Thousands of people at a single concert also means they use and discard thousands of plastic bottles and cups. It also means a huge consumption of electricity and hundreds of gallons of gasoline consumed by the people who throng³ to the festivals.

Montreal Jazz Festival officials said that recycling bins⁴ had been sprinkled all over the festival site and that cleanup teams collected recyclables before sweeping⁵ up. They also said some 150,000 cups are recycled every year. We spoke⁶ with the festival's Benoit Robitaille about what kind of steps they had taken to make it environmentally friendly.

Benoit Robitaille,  spokesperson for the Montreal Jazz Festival

"We are actually doing that since 1989,” says Robitaille. “We put bins for trash and recyclable bins as well. We have partnerships⁷ with a company, they are on the site and they actually take the trash, paper and plastic and send them to be recycled. So it is quite a big organization and if you are willing to, and people are willing to do it, and now people are more concerned so it is not that hard. It is easier now to do recycling because people have now started to think and have improved and you don't have to convince them. People are doing it quite naturally, especially young people who are thinking about the future, so they are doing well.”

However, critics contend the festival is not doing enough. They say being a green event is not just recycling cups and cans. It involves looking at everything consumed, everything bought and everything sold - paper, cups, wood, lights, and down to flowers in the dressing⁸ room.

As the jazz festival was happening, Montreal also held a "Live Earth" concert inspired by former Vice² President Al Gore's drive to raise money and awareness for the environment. The producer of that show, Pierre Lussier, said they had taken every possible step to keep it green.

Pierre Lussier, the producer of the Live Earth concert

"Let us start from the stage,” Lussier shows us. “All this is l-e-d [light emitting diods]. It uses one-fourth of the electricity of conventional lights. If you think most of the electricity is consumed by light, it reduces energy consumption by half. Then all you see is a three-way thing -- recycling, composting and, of course, garbage. All the cups are made of plastic and on top of that it is going to be a dollar for a cup and five dollars for the beer. So it is six dollars for the first beer. But if you bring back your cup, it is going to be 5 dollars. The nice thing I like about it is that at all the events like this, water is free."

Organizers of such festivals are also considering a variety of other options, from solar power and natural gas below the site to a hydrogen generator⁹ that could provide 2-hundred times the energy needed for such festivals.

1 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

2 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。

3 throng   

n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集

参考例句：

• A patient throng was waiting in silence.一大群耐心的人在静静地等着。
• The crowds thronged into the mall.人群涌进大厅。

4 bins   

n.大储藏箱( bin的名词复数 )；宽口箱（如面包箱，垃圾箱等）v.扔掉，丢弃( bin的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Garbage from all sources was deposited in bins on trolleys. 来自各方的垃圾是装在手推车上的垃圾箱里的。 来自辞典例句
• Would you be pleased at the prospect of its being on sale in dump bins? 对于它将被陈列在倾销箱中抛售这件事，你能欣然接受吗？ 来自辞典例句

5 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

6 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

7 partnerships   

n.伙伴关系( partnership的名词复数 )；合伙人身份；合作关系

参考例句：

• Partnerships suffer another major disadvantage: decision-making is shared. 合伙企业的另一主要缺点是决定要由大家来作。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• It involved selling off limited partnerships. 它涉及到售出有限的合伙权。 来自辞典例句

8 dressing   

n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料

参考例句：

• Don't spend such a lot of time in dressing yourself.别花那么多时间来打扮自己。
• The children enjoy dressing up in mother's old clothes.孩子们喜欢穿上妈妈旧时的衣服玩。

9 generator   

n.发电机，发生器

参考例句：

• All the while the giant generator poured out its power.巨大的发电机一刻不停地发出电力。
• This is an alternating current generator.这是一台交流发电机。