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| A decade ago, the capitals of Asia’s two largest countries both had some of the dirtiest skies in the world. On the worst days, millions were enveloped in thick gray canopies of smog that darkened the sun and besieged the lungs. | 十年前，亚洲两个最大国家的首都都有着世界上最脏的天空。在最糟糕的日子里，数千万人被遮天蔽日、阻塞肺部的厚厚灰色雾霾笼罩。 |
| Since then, one of those cities has made significant improvements. After the Chinese government declared a war against pollution in 2013, Beijing pressed ahead with a multiyear, $100 billion effort to clean its air. The authorities clamped down on factories, forced old vehicles off the road and shifted from coal to natural gas. While more still needs to be done, Beijing officials say the city now has over 100 more days of clear skies each year than when the campaign began. | 从那以后，其中一个城市取得了重大改善。2013年，中国政府宣布向污染开战后，北京推进了一项历时数年、耗资1000亿美元的空气净化计划。当局取缔工厂，禁止老旧车辆上路，并且从煤炭转向天然气。虽然还有很多工作要做，但北京官员表示，与运动开始时相比，该市现在每年有超过100天的空气是干净的。 |
| But in the other city, New Delhi, the air this autumn has been as foul as ever. The onset of air pollution season brought weeks of haze to the city, prompting officials to briefly halt truck traffic, close schools and ask people to work from home. Those who still ventured out coughed into their masks and rubbed their eyes. The air felt bitter on the tongue. | 但在另一个城市新德里，今年秋天的空气一如既往地污浊。空气污染季节的到来给这座城市带来了数周的雾霾，促使官员暂时停止卡车通行，关闭学校，并要求人们在家工作。仍然冒险出门的人戴着口罩咳嗽，揉着眼睛。空气在舌尖上留下苦味。 |
| Every year, the skies in the Delhi region turn acrid from pollution generated by millions of vehicles, the burning of stubble on surrounding farms and the use of open fires for heating and cooking in rural homes. And every year, residents are left to ask why nothing changes. | 每年，德里地区的天空都会因数以百万计汽车产生的污染、周围农场的秸秆焚烧以及农村家庭使用的明火取暖和烹饪而变得刺鼻。每年，居民们都在问为什么什么都没有改变。 |
| The diverging fortunes come down, in no small part, to differences between China’s authoritarian system and India’s huge and messy democracy. | 在很大程度上，这种截然不同的命运归因于中国的威权体制与印度庞大而混乱的民主制度之间的差异。 |
| Overall, China ranks relatively low on international indexes of environmental performance. But in the case of Beijing’s pollution, the Chinese government tackled it with single-minded focus when its scale became too daunting to ignore, forcing rapid, coordinated action in response to public anger. | 总体而言，中国在国际环境绩效指标上排名较低。但在北京的污染问题上，当其规模变得令人难以忽视，中国政府一心一意地解决了它，迫使政府迅速采取协调一致的行动，以应对公众的愤怒。 |
| India, experts say, has lacked both political resolve and public pressure to address the issue. Voters have more pressing concerns in a country where tens of millions still live in poverty. Politicians use the crisis to attack adversaries, rather than seek solutions. | 专家说，印度既缺乏解决这一问题的政治决心，也缺乏公众压力。在这个仍有数千万人生活在贫困中的国家，选民们有更紧迫的担忧。政治人士利用危机攻击对手，而不是寻求解决方案。 |
| “A lot of it has to do with the political will and the coordination between the various governments,” said Avikal Somvanshi, a data specialist for the Clean Air Campaign at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. | “这在很大程度上与政治意愿和各机构之间的协调有关，”新德里科学与环境中心清洁空气运动的数据专家阿维卡尔·索姆万什说。 |
| “The infighting,” he lamented, “keeps happening.” | “内斗，”他哀叹道，“一直就没停过。” |
| Take, for instance, a recent exchange between local and national leaders in India, who have perennially traded blame over who is responsible for the capital’s poor air quality. | 以印度地方和国家领导人最近的一次交锋为例，他们常年就谁该为首都糟糕的空气质量负责而相互指责。 |
| An official in the party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi compared Delhi’s chief minister — a member of an opposition party — to Hitler, saying the minister had “converted his city into a gas chamber.” | 印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪领导的政党中的一名官员将德里的首席部长——反对党成员——比作希特勒，称这位部长“把他的城市变成了毒气室”。 |
| The chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, swiped back on a television show, asking why “the central government is sitting in hiding, locked up in a room.” | 首席部长阿尔温德·凯杰里瓦尔在一档电视节目中反驳道，为什么“中央政府躲起来，把自己锁在一个房间里”。 |
| In China, the one-party system brooks no opposition; when the central government prioritizes an initiative, local authorities fall in line. That happened in the case of Beijing’s pollution, as the capital worked in tandem with regional officials and neighboring cities, said Zongbo Shi, an atmospheric science professor at the University of Birmingham in England. | 在中国，一党制不容反对；当中央政府优先考虑一项计划时，地方政府就会服从。英国伯明翰大学大气科学教授时宗波说，北京的污染问题就是这种情况，首都会与地方官员和周边城市通力合作。 |
| In India, where local governments are run by an array of parties, coordination is “really complicated,” Professor Shi said. In the absence of political will, economic interests win out; Delhi is surrounded by regions that are home predominantly to farmers and blue-collar workers who typically prioritize urgent economic needs over the environment. | 时宗波说，在印度，地方政府由多个党派掌控，协调工作“非常复杂”。在缺乏政治意愿的情况下，经济利益占上风；德里周围的地区主要是农民和蓝领工人的居住地，他们通常把紧迫的经济需求置于环境之上。 |
| India is much less wealthy than China, which has enjoyed four decades of rapid growth, so Delhi cannot invest as much in environmental cleanup. India’s economic output was $2,300 per person last year, while China’s was $12,500. | 印度的富裕程度远不如已经享受了40年快速增长的中国，因此德里无法在环境清理方面投入那么多。去年，印度的人均经济产出为2300美元，而中国为1.25万美元。 |
| “It’s very hard to trade off air pollution with money — money is likely to win that fight,” said Michael Greenstone, the head of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. “There are dual and conflicting goals here: reducing air pollution and growing the economy.” | “牺牲金钱换来好环境是很困难的——基本上胜出的会是金钱，”芝加哥大学能源政策研究所所长迈克尔·格林斯通说。“有两个相互冲突的目标：减少空气污染和发展经济。” |
| Indian leaders have little incentive to bridge the divides in part because cleaning the skies is low among voters’ priorities. Even as air pollution has been known to kill more Indians than any other risk factor, voters ranked air quality as their 17th most urgent concern in a countrywide survey before the 2019 election, well behind jobs, health care and infrastructure. Only about 12 percent of respondents called air pollution a priority. | 印度领导人缺乏弥合分歧的动力，部分原因是清洁天空在选民的优先事项中排名较低。尽管众所周知，空气污染造成的印度人死亡人数超过其他任何风险因素，但在2019年大选前的一项全国调查中，选民将空气质量排在他们最紧迫关注的第17位，远远落后于就业、医疗保健和基础设施。只有约12%的受访者将空气污染列为首要任务。 |
| In China, by contrast, residents — especially a growing middle class — made their frustration known even within the authoritarian system. Some in Beijing began to call the most toxic bouts of smog an “airpocalypse.” Alarm grew as studies showed that air pollution was contributing to more than one million premature deaths across China each year. (Today, censorship makes it harder to express complaints on all issues, including environmental ones.) | 相比之下，即便是在一个威权体制内，中国居民，尤其是不断壮大的中产阶级，也表达了他们的不满。北京的一些人开始将最严重的雾霾称为“空气末日”。研究表明，空气污染每年在中国造成超过100万人过早死亡，情况越来越危急。（如今，审查制度让人们难以抱怨任何问题，包括环境问题。） |
| “The people’s will can have a great influence on what happens,” Professor Greenstone said. “Until there’s consistent demand, it’s very, very hard to get real improvements.” In India, he added, air pollution “has not taken the same central political priority as it has in China to date.” | 格林斯通说：“人们的意愿会对事情的走向产生重大影响。除非人们需求一致，否则很难获得真正的改进。”他还说，在印度，空气污染“迄今还没有像在中国那样成为核心政治优先事项”。 |
| With no unified effort, experts say, Delhi officials have taken limited action. | 专家说，由于没有团结一致的努力，德里官员采取的行动有限。 |
| In recent years, the city has closed two coal-burning power plants and required factories to switch to piped natural gas from coal, and there are plans to deploy at least 8,000 electric buses by 2025, said Jasmine Shah, a vice chairman of the Delhi government think tank that helps create the city’s air pollution policy. | 帮助制定城市空气污染政策的德里政府智囊团副主席雅思敏·沙阿表示，近年来，该市关闭了两座燃煤发电厂，要求工厂从煤炭转向管道天然气，并计划到2025年部署至少8000辆电动公交车。 |
| But officials have also turned to more dubious solutions. On a recent afternoon, giant fans fitted at the bottom of a green “smog tower” threw out cool, filtered air near an imposing Sikh temple in the heart of Delhi. Nearby, an “anti-smog gun” attached to a truck sprayed water into the air. | 但官员们的解决方案里也有一些不太可靠。最近的一个下午，在德里市中心一座雄伟的锡克教寺庙附近，一座绿色“雾霾塔”底部的巨型风扇向外吹出过滤后的凉爽空气。附近，卡车上安装的“防雾霾枪”向空中喷水。 |
| Ishmeet Kaur, a 19-year-old college student, considered the smog tower from across the street. “A cosmetic effort by the government,” she said, “to make us feel better.” | 19岁的大学生伊什梅特·考尔在街对面观察雾霾塔。“政府做的是表面功夫，”她说，“为了让我们感觉好点。” |
| “If only the politicians took our health seriously and did something real about this problem,” she added as she coughed into a black face mask. “We will have to rely on the weather gods.” | “要是政客们认真看待我们的健康，对这个问题做点实事就好了，”她戴着黑色口罩，说话的时候还在咳嗽。“我们将不得不依靠掌管天气的神灵。” |
| When China acted on its own pollution problem, it took on a crisis decades in the making. | 当中国针对自己的污染问题采取行动时，它经历了一场了潜伏了几十年的危机。 |
| Since the 1980s, rapid industrialization and urbanization had driven China’s extraordinary rise as an economic power. But its reliance on energy-intensive heavy industry to fuel that growth came at an immense environmental cost. | 自1980年代以来，快速的工业化和城市化推动了中国作为经济大国的非凡崛起。但它依赖能源密集型重工业来推动经济增长，付出了巨大的环境代价。 |
| In 2013, Chinese officials released a new national air action plan, began publishing important air-quality data and publicly raised alarms about the pollution problem. | 2013年，中国官员发布了新的国家空气行动计划，开始发布重要的空气质量数据，并公开对污染问题发出警告。 |
| As part of the national plan, Beijing was required to reduce its pollution by 25 percent. China then undertook an array of steps, experts said: It tightened industrial emission standards on some factories and phased out or upgraded other outdated ones; discarded 20 million old vehicles; upgraded 200,000 industrial boilers; and switched to natural gas from coal as the source of electricity for six million households. | 作为国家计划的一部分，北京被要求将污染减少25%。专家表示，中国随后采取了一系列措施：对一些工厂的工业排放标准收紧，将其他落后的工厂淘汰或升级；报废2000万辆旧车；改造20万台工业锅炉；并将600万户家庭的电力来源从煤炭转向天然气。 |
| In some cases, the decisive action came with a cost: When officials removed the coal boilers, for instance, some homes were temporarily left without winter heating. “A clear example of a poor execution of a plan to make a massive difference,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, based in Helsinki, Finland. “It caused major suffering for a lot of people.” | 在某些情况下，果断的行动是有代价的：例如，当官员拆除燃煤锅炉时，一些房屋失去了冬季供暖。“这是一个清晰的例子，一个旨在带来巨大变化的计划没能得到妥善执行，”位于芬兰赫尔辛基的能源和清洁空气研究中心的分析师劳里·米利维尔塔说。“给许多人带去深重的苦难。” |
| Nonetheless, researchers found that the tough policies worked. From 2013 to 2017, the concentration of dangerous fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5 in China’s atmosphere declined by roughly a third. | 尽管如此，研究人员发现强硬政策奏效了。从2013年到2017年，中国大气中被称为PM2.5的危险细颗粒物浓度下降了大约三分之一。 |
| Beijing’s air is still far from perfect, especially in the winter. For more than 100 days last year, the air was considered “unhealthy for sensitive groups of people” or carried a worse rating. According to Professor Greenstone of the University of Chicago, Beijing’s average level of microparticle pollution in 2020 was three times that in Los Angeles. This weekend, Beijing’s smog reached levels classified as “very unhealthy.” | 北京的空气还远谈不上完美，尤其是在冬天。去年，在超过100天的时间里，北京的空气得到“对敏感人群健康不利”或更糟的评级。芝加哥大学的格林斯通表示，2020年北京的平均微粒子污染水平是洛杉矶的三倍。本周末，北京的雾霾达到了“非常不利于健康”的级别。 |
| But while the city has seen improvement overall, in Delhi, the concentration of air pollutants remained at roughly the same hazardous levels between 2013 and 2020, according to the Energy Policy Institute. | 但是，根据能源政策研究所的数据，尽管德里总体上有所改善，但在2013年至2020年间，该市的空气污染物浓度仍保持在大致相同的危险水平。 |
| India has long known how to fix Delhi’s air pollution. A 1997 government white paper identified vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions as the main culprits and suggested sweeping action. During the 1990s, the city tightened emission standards, relocated polluting industries and required thousands of its buses and auto rickshaws to switch to compressed natural gas from diesel fuel. | 印度早就知道如何解决德里的空气污染问题。1997年的一份政府白皮书将汽车尾气和工业排放确定为污染的原因，并建议采取全面行动。在1990年代，该市收紧排放标准，搬迁污染行业，并要求其数千辆公共汽车和机动人力车从柴油燃料转换为压缩天然气。 |
| But Delhi continues to struggle with poor air quality. | 但德里仍在与糟糕的空气质量作斗争。 |
| On a recent Monday, the sky was a lovely light blue. But the tint was misleading. The air quality was classified as “poor,” according to government data, which gave it a “very unhealthy” index score of 294. Anything 50 or under is considered satisfactory. | 最近的一个星期一，天空呈现出喜人的淡蓝色。但这样的颜色会让人有误会。根据政府数据，空气质量属于“差”，294的指数得分“非常不健康”。令人满意的空气质量需要在50分或以下。 |
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