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Extinction is a difficult concept to grasp. It is an eternal concept. It's not at all like the killing of individual life forms that can be renewed through normal processes of reproduction. Nor is it simply diminishing numbers. Nor is it damage that can somehow be remedied or for which some substitute can be found. Nor is it something that simply affects our own generation. Nor is it something that could be remedied by some supernatural power. It is rather an absolute and final act for which there is no remedy on earth or in heaven. A species once extinct is gone forever. However many generations succeed us in coming centuries, none of them will ever see this species that we extinguish.
灭绝是难以理解的一个概念。这是一种永恒的概念。与杀掉个体生命形式，再通过正常繁殖的过程得到新的生命体不同。这不是简单的减少数量。这种毁灭也不可以补救，不可以用其他发现来替代。另外，这种毁灭也不仅仅只影响我们这一代。同时这种毁灭也不能通过超自然力量进行补救。这是一种绝对的、最终的行为，人间或天堂都没有补救方法。一个物种一旦灭绝，就表示该物种将永远消失。无论未来几个世纪我们传承了多少代人，他们也不会再有人看到被我们灭绝掉的物种。
Not only are we bringing about the extinction of life on a vast scale, we are also making the land and the air and the sea so toxic that the very conditions of life are being destroyed. As regards basic natural resources, not only are the nonrenewable resources being used up in a frenzy(疯狂) of processing, consuming, and disposing, but we are also ruining much of our renewable resources, such as the very soil itself on which terrestrial(地球上的) life depends.
我们不仅仅会让生物大规模的灭绝，我们还让土地、空气和海洋这些生物赖以生存的环境充满毒性，以致遭到破坏。至于基本自然资源，不仅仅是非再生资源被我们疯狂地加工、消耗、处置后耗尽，连地球上的生物赖于生存的土壤这种可再生资源都已被我们破坏。
The change that is taking place on the earth and in our minds is one of the greatest changes ever to take place in human affairs, perhaps the greatest, since what we are talking about is not simply another historical change or cultural modification, but a change of geological and biological as well as psychological order of magnitude.
地球上和我们的脑海中正在发生的改变是有史以来人类事务中发生的最伟大的改变，因为我们在谈论的不仅仅是另一场历史变革或文化改良，而是地质、生物以及心理数量级的变革。
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