2019经济学人考研英文文章阅读十六

Climate change and the threat to companies
气候变化和企业面临的风险
Firms urgently need to rethink how they approach climate risk
企业迫切需要重新考虑如果应对气候风险了
C hief executives who care about climate change—and these days most profess to—often highlight headquarters bedecked with solar panels and other efforts to lower their carbon footprint.
那些关心气候变化的首席执行官们（如今大多数的CEO都自称如此）常常强调，他们的公司总部采用了太阳能电池板以及其他措施来减少碳足迹。

Last week Volkswagen, a carmaker, told its 40,000 suppliers to cut emissions or risk losing its custom.
上周，汽车制造商大众集团要求其4万家供应商减少碳排放，否则他们将面临失去大众这位客户的风险。

Plenty of investors, meanwhile, say they are worried about being saddled with worthless stakes in coal-fired power plants if carbon taxes eventually bite. Yet the reality is that meaningful global environmental regulations are nowhere on the horizon.
与此同时，许多投资者表示，他们担心如果碳排放税最终开始实施，那么他们所持有的燃煤电厂的股票将变得一文不值。

然而，现实情况是，有实际意义的全球性环境法规还遥遥无期。

The risk of severe climate change is thus rising, posing physical threats to many firms. Most remain blind to these, often wilfully so. They should start worrying about them.
因此，发生严重气候变化的风险正在上升，这对许多公司构成了实质性的威胁。

大多数公司对此视而不见，并且往往是故意如此。

但现在他们应该开始担心了。

Nature disrupting supply chains is nothing new. Businesses have coped with floods, droughts and storms since long before the joint-stock company became popular in the 19th century.
自然灾害破坏供应链已经不是什么新鲜事了。

早在19世纪股份公司开始流行之前，企业们就已经在应对洪水、干旱和风暴了。

Two things have changed. First, supply chains have grown complex and global (just look at VW). As links have multiplied so, too, have points of possible failure. Many sit in the tropics, more given to weather extremes than the temperate West.
有两件事发生了变化。

首先，供应链变得越来越复杂化和全球化了（看看大众公司就知道了）。

成倍增长的供应链使得出问题的可能性也增大了。

有很多中间链位于热带地区，受极端天气的影响要比处于温带的西方国家更大。

Second, global warming is fuelling more such extremes everywhere. In 2017 Houston experienced its third “500-year flood”in less than four decades, California suffered five of its 20 worst wildfires ever and parts of the Indian subcontinent were underwater for days following epic monsoon downpours.
其次，全球变暖正在世界各地引发更多的极端自然灾害。

2017年，休斯顿经历了近40年来的第三次“500年一遇的大洪水”，加州遭受了有史以来20场最严重的山林大火中的5场，印度次大陆的部分地区在季风暴雨过后遭水淹多日。

That year insurers paid out a monumental $135bn in compensation. Another $195bn in estimated losses was uninsured. Power plants often run slow because the river water they use for cooling is too hot.
那一年，保险公司总计支付了1350亿美元的巨额赔款。

据估计，另有1950亿的损失并未投保。

发电厂常常运行缓慢，因为用于冷却的河水温度过高。

Last year commercial traffic along the Rhine, the world’s busiest waterway, ran aground when rains failed to replenish its sources.
去年，世界上最繁忙的水路莱茵河因降雨不足未能补充水源而导致了商业通航的中断。

Corporate-risk managers have just about come to grips with tangled supply chains. But they are rotten at assessing their exposure to a changing climate (see article).
企业风险管理人员才刚刚开始着手解决错综复杂的供应链问题。

但他们对于评估企业在不断变化的气候中的暴露确是一塌糊涂。

Unfamiliar with bleeding-edge climate models, which tell you what disruption to expect next, risk managers fall back on retrospective tools like flood maps, which are tried, tested—and wrong.
由于不熟悉前沿的气候模型（这样的模型能够预测未来什么将遭到破坏），风险管理人员只能依赖洪水地图等这类回溯性工具，这类工具被反复的尝试、测试，但最终被证明是无效的。

One study last year found that accounting for physical risks to corporate assets would shave 2-3% off the total market value of over 11,000 globally listed firms.
去年的一项研究发现，如果把自然风险考虑在企业资产之内，会让全球1.1万多家上市公司的总市值减少2%-3%。

That is less than many stocks move in a given day, and a fraction of the estimated 15% downward effect of a transition to cleaner energy. Unlike the energy transition, though, some physical harm to corporate assets is all but guaranteed.
这远不及许多股票在某一天的涨幅，也远远小于向清洁新能源转型对公司股价影响的下行效应（即15％）。

不过，与能源转型不同的是，对企业资产的某些自然损害几乎是肯定会发生的。

Not only that, but the risks rise as the world warms. And the average conceals a huge range. Some companies would lose nearly one-fifth of their enterprise value. Most have no clue where they stand.
不仅如此，随着全球变暖，损害发生的风险也在上升。

而平均值掩盖了不同企业间遭受损害的巨大差异。

有些企业将会损失其五分之一的价值，而大多数企业都不知道自己面临着多大的风险。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇)
重难点词汇：
bedeck [bɪ'dɛk] vt. 装饰；修饰
wilfully ['wilfəli] adv. 任意地
subcontinent [,sʌb'kɑntɪnənt] n. 次大陆
downpour ['daʊnpɔr] n. 倾盆大雨；注下
monumental [,mɑnju'mɛntl] adj. 不朽的；纪念碑的；非常的compensation [,kɑmpɛn'seʃən] n. 补偿；报酬；赔偿金。