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Flames.
火焰。
Licking the coats of koalas, melting trees straight to ash.
正舔着考拉的皮毛，把树直接融化成灰。
Hell on earth.
人间地狱。
Australia is on fire.
澳大利亚正处于火热之中。
Footage of the raging bushfires seems to be taken right out of a disaster movie.
肆虐的丛林大火似乎是直接从一部灾难电影中取材的镜头。
Except this time there’s no magical happy ending.
只是这一次没有神奇的幸福结局。
I sit and scroll through videos of the wreckage and feel fear and helplessness.
我坐着刷残骸的视频，感到恐惧和无助。
I can’t help but ask how did we get to this point?
我不禁要问，我们是怎么走到这一步的？
Why is Australia on fire?
为什么澳大利亚着火了？
And what about the fires in the Congo Basin and Amazon Rainforest that seem to have been pushed to the side as we zoom in on the consequences of an Australia on fire?
当我们放大澳大利亚大火的后果时，刚果盆地和亚马逊雨林的大火似乎被推到了一边，那又是怎么回事呢？
The devastation of Australian bushfires is extensive.
澳大利亚的森林大火造成了广泛的破坏。
Evacuees have fled to wetter, safer grounds, as one professor estimates that more than half a billion animals have already died in the raging infernos.
疏散人员已经逃到了更潮湿、更安全的地方，一名教授估计，已经有超过5亿只动物死于这场熊熊大火。
These bushfires, which at times reached 70 meters tall, have scorched every state in Australia, but primarily continue to decimate two regions in the southeast: New South Wales and Victoria.
这些有时高达70米的丛林大火烧毁了澳大利亚的每个州，但主要是继续摧毁东南部的两个地区：新南威尔士州和维多利亚州。
And since the beginning of the dry season in September, these fires burned an estimated 7.3 to 10 million hectares of land, reducing towns like Balmoral to ash.
自9月份旱季开始以来，这些大火估计烧毁了730万至1000万公顷的土地，使巴尔莫勒尔等城镇化为灰烬。
As I write this, at least 28 people have died in the deadly inferno.
就在我写这篇文章的时候，至少有28人已经在这场致命的大火中丧生。
This apocalyptic destruction is the result of a perfect storm of conditions.
这场世界末日般的破坏是各种能够形成完美风暴的条件造成的后果。
2019 was both Australia’s hottest and driest year on record.
2019年是澳大利亚有记录以来最热也最干燥的一年。
Combined with strong winds, the 2019-2020 bushfire season was primed to be a destructive one, and indeed, the number of fires skyrocketed in November, and continue to be a problem as the Australian dry season drags on.
再加上强风，2019-2020年的森林火灾季注定会是毁灭性的，事实上，11月火灾数量飙升，随着澳大利亚旱季的持续，这仍会是一个问题。
The record temperatures and lack of rain, are, as climate experts assert, a prime example of how climate change exacerbates natural disasters.
正如气候专家所断言的那样，创纪录的气温和少雨是气候变化如何加剧自然灾害的最好例子。
And as these fires burn they push the world further towards the precipice by releasing almost 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
这些大火燃烧时，会向大气中释放近4亿吨二氧化碳，将世界进一步推向悬崖。
But Australia is not the only place experiencing an uptick in devastating wildfires.
但澳大利亚并不是唯一一个毁灭性野火发生次数增加的地方。
Bushfires are a global phenomenon.
森林大火全球都有。
They pepper Indonesia and scorch Siberia.
印度尼西亚和西伯利亚都有大火肆虐。
Today, though, we are going to focus on the ones that burned swaths of Amazon rainforest, as well as the flames that engulf Central Africa.
然而，今天，我们将重点关注烧毁亚马逊雨林大片地区的火灾，以及吞没中非的大火。
Months ago, the world was in an uproar about the fate of the Amazon rainforest.
几个月前，亚马逊雨林的命运在世界引起了轩然大波。
It was hurting, and hurting badly.
它受到了损害，且非常严重。
The result of clearcutting and burning strategies enacted to open up space for cropland, and more specifically, animal agriculture.
采伐和焚烧战略的结果是为农田开辟空间，更具体地说，是为畜牧业开辟空间。
And despite the lack of headlines these days, the Amazon continues to burn.
尽管这些天没有头条新闻，亚马逊仍在继续燃烧。
In 2019, human-caused and out-of-control fires burned 976,200 hectares of Amazon rainforest.
2019年，人为和失控的大火烧毁了97.62万公顷的亚马逊雨林。
That’s the third-highest increase in the rate of deforestation in the Amazon’s history, at a 30% jump from the prior year, second only to 1995, which was 95% and 1998 which was 31%.
这是亚马逊历史上森林砍伐率第三高的增长幅度，较前一年跃升了30%，仅次于1995年的95%和1998年的31%。
The Amazon represents a hub of biodiversity and tackles the essential task of sequestering millions of pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
亚马逊代表着生物多样性的中心，解决了每年封存数百万磅二氧化碳的基本任务。
Essentially it is the green lung of the earth, and as regulations loosened in Brazil, loggers and intensive ranchers set fire to the edges of the rainforest to make way for industrial endeavors.
从本质上讲，它是地球的绿肺，随着巴西放松监管，伐木者和集约化牧场主在热带雨林边缘放火，为工业活动让路。
The Amazon has experienced devastating deforestation before, but as the effects of destroying forest by fire accumulate, the Amazon shrinks, and smaller amounts of deforestation have a greater impact.
亚马逊以前经历过毁灭性的森林砍伐，但随着火灾摧毁森林的影响累积，亚马逊森林有所萎缩，较少的森林砍伐会产生更大的影响。
To top it all off, climate change once again makes these fires worse, as hotter temperatures and drier landscapes make these tree-clearing burns much harder to maintain.
最重要的是，气候变化再次导致这些火灾加剧，因为更高的温度和更干燥的地形使得这些烧光树木的燃烧更难得到控制。
