“黄左”谈洛杉矶圣经级大洪水/ 鸭嘴兽协会主办“中国与左派”讨论

美国“黄左”？：洛杉矶圣经级大洪水 我们束手无策

观点：在洛杉矶，这相当于圣经中的洪水 我们没有应对

杰夫·杨 (Jeff Yang) 的观点

编者注：杰夫·杨 (Jeff Yang) 经常为 CNN Opinion 撰稿。 他是播客“他们叫我们布鲁斯”的共同主持人，也是畅销书《崛起：从九十年代至今亚裔美国人的流行史》的合著者，也是《黄金银幕：成就亚裔美国人的电影》一书的作者 ”。 本评论中表达的观点是他自己的。(Editor’s note: Jeff Yang is a frequent contributor to CNN Opinion. He co-hosts the podcast “They Call Us Bruce” and is co-author of the bestselling book “Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now” and author of “The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. ) 

当我写这篇文章时，雨水不仅仅只是落在床单上——我们谈论的是全套加州特大号床上用品、湿透的枕套和充满水的羽绒被，将自由放养的 Acqua Panna 倾倒在我们通常干燥的洛杉矶景观上。 由于一条富含水分的大气河悬挂在南部地区，洛杉矶和文图拉县的一些地区在过去 48 小时内已经出现了超过 10 英寸的大雨，而且还会有更多的雨。(As I write this, rain isn’t just coming down in sheets — we’re talking full California King bed sets, drenched pillow shams and water-filled duvet covers dumping free-range Acqua Panna on our usually parched L.A. landscape. Due to a moisture-rich atmospheric river hanging over the Southland, some areas of Los Angeles and Ventura County have already gotten more than 10 inches of big wet in the past 48 hours, with plenty more on the way.)

诚然，对于世界上潮湿地区的读者来说，我们在这里经历的风暴可能看起来很奇怪。 来自亚洲的朋友给我发短信询问我如何享受“季风季节”。 就连我在纽约的亲戚也没有同情心，他们给我发了他们自己的特大风暴的链接，其中有游客之前涉水穿过拉瓜迪亚机场、被可疑径流淹没的曼哈顿地铁站以及人们在城市大道上划皮划艇的照片。(Granted, for readers in soggier parts of the world, the storm we’re experiencing here might seem almost quaint. Friends from Asia have texted me asking how I’m enjoying “monsoon season.” Even my relatives back in New York have been unsympathetic, sending me links from their own massive storms, featuring images of tourists previously wading through LaGuardia Airport, Manhattan subway stations inundated with suspicious-looking runoff and people kayaking down city avenues.)

但对于洛杉矶这个习惯了永久干旱警告和高速公路沿线自发丛林火灾的城市来说，这样的降水量是历史性的。 两天内的降雨量已经超过了过去 20 年来的任何时候，而且不会很快停止。 尽管在气候变化不祥地推进的时代，我们不断收到有关极端气象波动的严厉警告，但洛杉矶人仍然无法应对从天而降的液体的可怕威胁。(But for L.A, a city used to permanent drought warnings and spontaneous brushfires along its freeways, this amount of precipitation is historic. We’ve already gotten more rain in a two-day period than any time in the past 20 years, and it’s not stopping soon. And despite the stark warnings we continue to get about extreme meteorological volatility in an era of ominously advancing climate change, Angelenos still just can’t when it comes to the diabolical threat of fluid falling from the sky.)

即使是微弱的雾气也足以将高速公路交通变成一场高速、全接触的州际汽车九柱游戏。 当雨水威胁到后院的游泳池时，人们就会开始囤积食物。 因此，连续三天的倾盆大雨相当于圣经中的洪水，绝望的当地人准备用瑜伽垫为他们的吉娃娃狗和查斯狗建造方舟，月亮汁空了，脱脂乳(Skim) 膨胀了。(Even a faint mist is enough to turn highway traffic into a high-velocity, full-contact interstate game of automotive skittles. When rain threatens to top off backyard pools, hoarding commences. As such, three solid days of downpour is the equivalent of the biblical flood, with desperate locals preparing to build arks for their Chihuahuas and Chausies out of yoga mats, Moon Juice empties and inflated Skims.)

洛杉矶的房屋也不是为垂直水而建造的。 住在平屋顶的房子里，几乎没有一层薄薄的太阳能电池板连接在一起，这意味着我和 SoakedCal 的许多其他居民被迫从我们的智能手机上抬起头来，绕过我们家中放置的水桶和平底锅来接滴水。 -从上面滴下来。 （说到太阳能电池板：随着每天不间断的灰色，我的电费增加了一个档次。电动汽车红利就这么多了。）(L.A. houses are also not built for vertical water. Living in homes with flat roofs barely held together by a thin layer of solar panels means that I and many other denizens of SoakedCal are being forced to actually look up from our smartphones to step around buckets and pans placed throughout our homes to catch drip-drip-drips from above. (Speaking of solar panels: With every day of nonstop gray, my electric bill ratchets up a notch. So much for that electric vehicle dividend.))

这场风暴造成了真实而可怕的损失。 三人因树木倒塌砸中自己或房屋而死亡。 据报道，洛杉矶消防局已经应对了 130 起洪水紧急情况、49 起泥石流事件（在某些情况下房屋受损并导致社区疏散），并对被困在被水包围的汽车中的驾车者进行了多次水上救援。 洛杉矶时报。 数千人仍然断电。 州和市都宣布进入紧急状态，人们被明确告知：待在家里。(Detaching tongue from cheek, there have been real and horrific losses to this storm. Three people have died from separate incidents of trees falling on them or their homes. The Los Angeles Fire Department has had to respond to 130 flooding emergencies, 49 mud and debris flow incidents (which have in some cases damaged homes and led to neighborhood evacuations), and several water rescues for motorists trapped in cars surrounded by water, according to the Los Angeles Times. Thousands remain without power. The state and the city have both declared a state of emergency, and people are being told in no uncertain terms: Stay the hell at home.)

在暴风雨中被困在城市里已经够糟糕的了，但考虑到即使天气晴朗，我们的支线机场也是一场地狱般的噩梦，过去几天真正的恐怖是被赶出洛杉矶并试图 回家。 当天空开始变暗时，我的朋友艾米·安德森错误地前往俄勒冈州度过了一个有趣的周末。 在返回的航班上，他们经历了极度颠簸，被迫降落并绕机场飞行了 40 分钟，然后改道飞往圣地亚哥，几小时后，航空公司慷慨地为他们提供了返回洛杉矶的航班，并在圣何塞中转过夜 没有酒店优惠券。

(Being stuck inside in the city in a storm is bad enough, but given that our regional airports are an infernal nightmare to negotiate even when the weather is fair, the true horror of the past few days was being caught away from Los Angeles and trying to get home. My friend Amy Anderson made the mistake of being in Oregon for a fun weekend getaway when the skies began to darken. On the flight back in, they experienced extreme turbulence, pulled back up and circled the airport for 40 minutes, then were rerouted to San Diego, where hours later, the airline generously offered them a flight back to L.A. featuring an overnight layover in San Jose with no hotel voucher.)

“我决定与飞机上坐在我旁边的一位陌生人合租一辆汽车前往圣费尔南多谷，”艾米说。 “我们在疯狂的风雨中行驶了几个小时。 我直到凌晨1点40分才回到家，我已经12个小时没有吃东西了，我的膀胱都快要爆炸了。”(“I decided to share a rental car to the San Fernando Valley with a stranger I sat next to on the plane,” Amy said. “We drove through crazy wind and rain for hours. I didn’t get home until 1:40 a.m., I hadn’t eaten for 12 hours, and my bladder was about to explode.”)

现实情况是，当谈到天气时，一切照旧不再是平常，即使对于因下雪天而关闭的城市来说也是如此。(The reality is that when it comes to the weather, business as usual is no longer usual, even for places that smirk at cities that shut down for snow days.)

气候变化不是未来，而是现在，我们才刚刚开始亲身体验其影响。 鉴于我们几乎肯定会突破科学家警告的“升温 1.5 度”阈值，这将导致灾难，因此我们能否避免即将发生的最坏情况尚无定论。 根据联合国的数据，过去 50 年来，极端天气事件导致全球超额死亡 200 万人，造成 4.3 万亿美元的经济损失，而且这些情况只会变得更加频繁、更加严重。(Climate change isn’t the future, it’s the present, and we have just begun to experience its impact firsthand. The jury is still out as to whether we can stave off the worst of what’s coming, given that we’re almost certainly going to blow through the “1.5 degrees of warming” threshold that scientists warned would lead to catastrophe. According to the United Nations, we’ve already seen over the past 50 years, 2 million excess global deaths and $4.3 trillion in economic losses from extreme weather events, and these are only becoming more frequent — and more intense.)

大多数美国人，当然还有大多数洛杉矶人，仍然基本上没有受到“千年一遇”气象事件造成的伤害，尽管伊利诺伊州、肯塔基州、圣路易斯和达拉斯就没有那么幸运了，这四个州都经历了数千年的气象灾害。 仅 2022 年就有一年的风暴。 但也许我们现在遇到的每两年一次的洪水在未来几十年内发生频率会增加 2.5 倍的消息会促使爱乐之城的居民更加严肃地对待气候危机。(Most Americans, and certainly most Angelenos, are still mostly insulated from the harm caused by “once in a millennium” meteorological incidents, though Illinois, Kentucky, St. Louis and Dallas haven’t been so lucky, with all four of them experiencing thousand-year storms in 2022 alone. But maybe news that this once-every-two-decade deluge we’re getting right now will happen 2.5 times more frequently in decades to come will prod annoyed and anxious residents of La La Land to take the climate crisis more seriously.)

要么这样，要么我们将不得不开始从纽约进口街头皮划艇。(Either that, or we’ll have to start importing street kayaks from New York.)