听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:如何转变思维并选择你的未来，希望你会喜欢！

【演讲者及介绍】Tom Rivett-Carnac

汤姆 · 里维特 - 卡纳克是一位专注于创造更美好未来的政治战略家，他在企业和政府的最高层工作，以寻找创造性的方式来解决气候危机。

【演讲主题】How to shift your mindset and choose your future

如何转变思维并选择你的未来

【中英文字幕】

翻译者 Jiasi Hao 校对者 Yolanda Zhang

00:10

Like half of humanity, I've spent the last four weeks under lockdown due to the global pandemic created by COVID-19. I am extremely fortunate that during this time I've been able to come here to these woods near my home in southern England. These woods have always inspired me, and as humanity now tries to think about how we can find the inspiration to retake control of our actions so that terrible things don't come down the road without us taking action to avert them, I thought this is a good place for us to talk. And I'd like to begin that story six years ago, when I had first joined the United Nations.

和全球半数人口一样， 因为新冠病毒引发的 全球流行病，过去 4 周 我都在自我隔离中度过。 幸运的是，在这段时间里， 我能来到英格兰南部， 位于我家附近的这片树林。 这些树木总能给我启发—— 作为人类，我开始尝试着思考 我们如何能找到灵感 来重新掌控我们的行为， 让那些糟糕的事情不至于 在我们没有采取 任何规避行动的情况下发生。 我认为，这是一个开展对话的好地方。 我想从 6 年前我刚刚加入联合国 开始讲起。

00:57

Now, I firmly believe that the UN is of unparalleled importance in the world right now to promote collaboration and cooperation. But what they don't tell you when you join is that this essential work is delivered mainly in the form of extremely boring meetings -- extremely long, boring meetings. Now, you may feel that you have attended some long, boring meetings in your life, and I'm sure you have. But these UN meetings are next-level, and everyone who works there approaches them with a level of calm normally only achieved by Zen masters. But myself, I wasn't ready for that. I joined expecting drama and tension and breakthrough. What I wasn't ready for was a process that seemed to move at the speed of a glacier, at the speed that a glacier used to move at.

我坚定的认为， 联合国在当今世界上 促进合作的组织中 起着无可替代的重要作用。 但是在你加入联合国的时候， 他们不会告诉你， 这些核心工作主要是通过 极其冗长、万分无聊的 会议完成的。 你可能会觉得， 你也参加过不少冗长无聊的会议， 我对此毫无异议。 但是这些联合国会议的 冗长沉闷属于另一个级别。 在那里工作的每个人的冷静程度 都已经达到了一种 只有禅宗大师才有的境界。 对于这一点，我完全没有思想准备。 我加入的时候，期待的是 戏剧性的、紧张的工作日常，还有突破。 但我万万没有想到， 一个流程的进展堪比冰山移动的速度， 或者说冰山曾经移动的速度。

01:46

Now, in the middle of one of these long meetings, I was handed a note. And it was handed to me by my friend and colleague and coauthor, Christiana Figueres. Christiana was the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and as such, had overall responsibility for the UN reaching what would become the Paris Agreement. I was running political strategy for her. So when she handed me this note, I assumed that it would contain detailed political instructions about how we were going to get out of this nightmare quagmire that we seemed to be trapped in. I took the note and looked at it. It said, "Painful. But let's approach with love!" Now, I love this note for lots of reasons. I love the way the little tendrils are coming out from the word "painful." It was a really good visual depiction of how I felt at that moment. But I particularly love it because as I looked at it, I realized that it was a political instruction, and that if we were going to be successful, this was how we were going to do it. So let me explain that.

在其中一个冗长的会议 进行到一半的时候， 有人给我递了一张便签。 递给我这张便签的 是我的朋友、同事兼合著者， 克里斯蒂安娜 · 菲格雷斯 （Christiana Figueres）。 她曾是《联合国气候变化框架公约》的 执行秘书， 全权负责 联合国致力于达成的《巴黎协定》。 我当时在为她制定政治策略。 所以当她递给我这张纸条， 我自然而然就以为 纸条上会写着详细的政治指示， 关于我们如何能够摆脱 我们当前所处的噩梦般 进退两难的尴尬境地。 我接过纸条看了一眼， 上面写着：“很痛苦。 但让我们用大爱来应对！” 出于多种原因，我很喜欢这张纸条。 我喜欢打圈的小箭头从 “痛苦”这个词中冒出来的方式， 简直是对于我当时感受的 一种极佳的视觉描绘。 但其中一个特殊的原因是， 当我看着纸条， 我明白了，这的确是一个政治指示， 而且如果我们能成功达成目标， 这就会是我们达成目标的方式。 我来解释一下。

02:50

What I'd been feeling in those meetings was actually about control. I had moved my life from Brooklyn in New York to Bonn in Germany with the extremely reluctant support of my wife. My children were now in a school where they couldn't speak the language, and I thought the deal for all this disruption to my world was that I would have some degree of control over what was going to happen. I felt for years that the climate crisis is the defining challenge of our generation, and here I was, ready to play my part and do something for humanity. But I put my hands on the levers of control that I'd been given and pulled them, and nothing happened. I realized the things I could control were menial day-to-day things. "Do I ride my bike to work?" and "Where do I have lunch?", whereas the things that were going to determine whether we were going to be successful were issues like, "Will Russia wreck the negotiations?" "Will China take responsibility for their emissions?" "Will the US help poorer countries deal with their burden of climate change?" The differential felt so huge, I could see no way I could bridge the two. It felt futile. I began to feel that I'd made a mistake. I began to get depressed.

我对这些会议的总体感觉 其实是关于控制。 在我妻子极度不情愿的支持下， 我曾经从纽约布鲁克林 搬到德国波恩， 为此，我的孩子们也只能在 一所语言不通的学校读书。 我当时以为这种生活上的巨大改变 能帮助我更好的掌控未来。 几年来，我始终感觉 气候危机是我们这一代人面临的 决定性挑战， 因此我来到这里， 准备好为人类做出自己的贡献。 但当我把手放在 别人塞给我控制杠杆上， 用力拉时， 什么都没有发生。 于是我意识到，我实际能掌控的 只是日常的琐碎之事。 “我要骑自行车去上班吗？” “我午饭吃什么？” 然而决定我们 是否能取得成功的 是诸如此类的问题： “俄罗斯会破坏谈判吗？” “中国会为他们的排放量负责吗？” “美国会帮助相对贫穷的国家 分担他们气候变化的重担吗？” 这两者的差异巨大， 我无法在其中建立联系。 我感到十分无助， 一度觉得自己的想法错了， 不禁开始感到沮丧。

03:58

But even in that moment, I realized that what I was feeling had a lot of similarities to what I'd felt when I first found out about the climate crisis years before. I'd spent many of my most formative years as a Buddhist monk in my early 20s, but I left the monastic life, because even then, 20 years ago, I felt that the climate crisis was already a quickly unfolding emergency and I wanted to do my part. But once I'd left and I rejoined the world, I looked at what I could control. It was the few tons of my own emissions and that of my immediate family, which political party I voted for every few years, whether I went on a march or two. And then I looked at the issues that would determine the outcome, and they were big geopolitical negotiations, massive infrastructure spending plans, what everybody else did. The differential again felt so huge that I couldn't see any way that I could bridge it. I kept trying to take action, but it didn't really stick. It felt futile.

但甚至在那个时候， 我也意识到，自己当时的感觉 和几年前我首次意识到 气候危机问题时的感觉 有着许多相似之处。 在 20 岁出头的时候， 我曾以一介佛教僧侣的身份 度过了人生最重要的成长岁月， 但后来我离开了修行生活， 因为甚至在 20 年前， 我就已感觉到气候危机正在飞速恶化， 应对行动已经刻不容缓， 而我想尽自己的一份力量。 可就在我离开寺庙生活， 重新加入这个世界后， 我看了看自己的掌控能力。 不论每隔几年我给哪个政党投票， 无论我上街游行一次还是两次， 我和直系亲属出行的 碳排放量就是那么几吨。 之后我开始研究 那些能决定结果的问题， 然而这些问题无不要求 大型的地缘政治谈判， 庞大的基础设施预算， 所有那些别人在做的事。 这种差距感觉如此巨大， 我都不知道如何 将自己与之联系起来。 我不断尝试着采取行动， 但这些行动并没能维持多久， 仿佛一切都是徒劳。

04:56

Now, we know that this can be a common experience for many people, and maybe you have had this experience. When faced with an enormous challenge that we don't feel we have any agency or control over, our mind can do a little trick to protect us. We don't like to feel like we're out of control facing big forces, so our mind will tell us, "Maybe it's not that important. Maybe it's not happening in the way that people say, anyway." Or, it plays down our own role. "There's nothing that you individually can do, so why try?"

我们知道这种感受 也许是很多人的共同经历， 可能你就有这样的经历。 当面临着一个我们无法 全权代表或掌控的 巨大挑战时， 我们的大脑会本能的施展 一些保护我们的小技巧。 我们不喜欢那种 在面对强大外部势力时 自己无法掌控局面的感觉， 所以我们的大脑会告诉我们： “可能这并没有那么重要， 也许事情压根就不会 朝着人们预测的方向发展。” 或者它会淡化我们的角色： “作为一个单独的个体， 你做不了什么，何必费力尝试呢？”

05:26

But there's something odd going on here. Is it really true that humans will only take sustained and dedicated action on an issue of paramount importance when they feel they have a high degree of control? These people are caregivers and nurses who have been helping humanity face the coronavirus COVID-19 as it has swept around the world as a pandemic in the last few months. Are these people able to prevent the spread of the disease? No. Are they able to prevent their patients from dying? Some, they will have been able to prevent, but others, it will have been beyond their control. Does that make their contribution futile and meaningless? Actually, it's offensive even to suggest that. What they are doing is caring for their fellow human beings at their moment of greatest vulnerability. And that work has huge meaning, the courage and humanity those people are demonstrating makes their work some of the most meaningful things that can be done as human beings, even though they can't control the outcome.

但有一些奇怪的事情正在发生。 只有当人们感觉到 自己有着高度控制权时， 他们才会在一个至关重要的问题上 采取持续且专注的行动吗？ 他们是护工和护士。 过去几个月，当新冠病毒在全球肆虐时， 他们一直在一线帮助人类 抵御这场大流行病。 他们有能力阻止疾病传播吗？ 没有。 他们有能力阻止病人死亡吗？ 在一定程度上是的， 他们或许能够挽救某些病人， 但其他的就不在他们的掌控之中了。 然而这能说明他们的个人贡献 是徒劳无功且毫无意义的吗？ 实际上，即使只是如此暗示， 也已经足够冒犯了。 他们在做的， 是在他们的人类同伴 最脆弱的时候照顾他们。 而这项工作意义非凡，那些人展现出的勇气和人性 让他们的工作变成了 作为人类能完成的 最有意义的事情之一， 即使他们无法掌控结果。

06:46

Now, that's interesting, because it shows us that humans are capable of taking dedicated and sustained action, even when they can't control the outcome. But it leaves us with another challenge. With the climate crisis, the action that we take is separated from the impact of it, whereas these nurses are being sustained not by the lofty goal of changing the world but by the day-to-day satisfaction of caring for another human being through their moments of weakness. With the climate crisis, we have this huge separation. It used to be that we were separated by time. The impacts of the climate crisis were supposed to be way off in the future. But right now, the future has come to meet us. Continents are on fire. Cities are going underwater. Countries are going underwater. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the move as a result of climate change. But even if those impacts are no longer separated from us by time, they're still separated from us in a way that makes it difficult to feel that direct connection. They happen somewhere else to somebody else or to us in a different way than we're used to experiencing it. So even though that story of the nurse demonstrates something to us about human nature, we're going to have find a different way of dealing with the climate crisis in a sustained manner.

这很有趣。 因为这个例子体现了 人类有能力 采取持续且专注的行动， 甚至在他们无法控制结果的情况下。 但这也给我们带来了另一个挑战。 针对气候危机， 我们采取的行动 及其所带来的影响是彼此脱节。那些护士获得的支持并非源于 他们想要改变世界的崇高目标， 而是从日复一日 在另一个人类极其脆弱之际， 对他们的照顾中得来的。 针对气候危机， 也存在这样一个巨大的脱节。 过去，这种脱节是由时间造成的。 气候危机的影响 原本预计会在未来消失。 然而现在，未来就在我们面前。 大陆正被野火吞噬， 城市正在被水淹没， 国家正在沉入水中。 数十万的居民因气候变化 而不得不迁徙。 但现在，即使时间并没有造成 我们和那些气候变化影响之间的脱节， 那些影响也依旧与我们彼此孤立， 让我们很难感受到与其直接的联系。 它们仿佛出现在别的地方， 发生在别人的身上； 也可能已经出现在我们的身上， 但却是通过一种我们并不习惯的方式。 所以即使护士的故事 为我们展现了人性， 我们也需要寻找 一种不同的解决方案， 以可持续的方式应对气候危机。

08:03

There is a way that we can do this, a powerful combination of a deep and supporting attitude that when combined with consistent action can enable whole societies to take dedicated action in a sustained way towards a shared goal. It's been used to great effect throughout history. So let me give you a historical story to explain it.

有一种方法可以让我们达成目标， 深刻且支持性态度的有力结合， 再加上一致的行动， 可以让整个社会以可持续的方式 朝着共同目标 采取有针对性的行动。 纵观历史， 这种方法一直发挥着重要作用。 我会通过一个历史故事 来为大家解释。

08:26

Right now, I am standing in the woods near my home in southern England. And these particular woods are not far from London. Eighty years ago, that city was under attack. In the late 1930s, the people of Britain would do anything to avoid facing the reality that Hitler would stop at nothing to conquer Europe. Fresh with memories from the First World War, they were terrified of Nazi aggression and would do anything to avoid facing that reality. In the end, the reality broke through. Churchill is remembered for many things, and not all of them positive, but what he did in those early days of the war was he changed the story the people of Britain told themselves about what they were doing and what was to come. Where previously there had been trepidation and nervousness and fear, there came a calm resolve, an island alone, a greatest hour, a greatest generation, a country that would fight them on the beaches and in the hills and in the streets, a country that would never surrender.

现在，我正站在 南英格兰住所附近的树林里。 这些树林距离伦敦并不是很远。 80 年前，伦敦遭受了攻击。 在 20 世纪 30 年代末， 英国人会使尽浑身解数 来逃避一个现实—— 希特勒将不惜一切代价征服欧洲。 出于对第一次世界大战的深刻记忆， 他们对纳粹的侵略感到万分恐惧， 并且会采取一切措施逃避现实。 最后，现实打破了人们的恐惧。 丘吉尔因为很多事情被铭记， 而且并非所有事情都是积极的， 但在战争初期， 他改变了英国人给自己讲的， 关于他们正在做的， 和未来即将发生的故事。 在一个曾经充斥着恐惧和紧张的地方， 诞生了一种沉着的决心， 一座孤岛， 一个最光辉的时刻， 最伟大的一代人， 一个会在海滩、山丘和大街小巷 与敌人作战的国家， 一个永远不会投降的国家。

09:29

That change from fear and trepidation to facing the reality, whatever it was and however dark it was, had nothing to do with the likelihood of winning the war. There was no news from the front that battles were going better or even at that point that a powerful new ally had joined the fight and changed the odds in their favor. It was simply a choice. A deep, determined, stubborn form of optimism emerged, not avoiding or denying the darkness that was pressing in but refusing to be cowed by it. That stubborn optimism is powerful. It is not dependent on assuming that the outcome is going to be good or having a form of wishful thinking about the future. However, what it does is it animates action and infuses it with meaning. We know that from that time, despite the risk and despite the challenge, it was a meaningful time full of purpose, and multiple accounts have confirmed that actions that ranged from pilots in the Battle of Britain to the simple act of pulling potatoes from the soil became infused with meaning. They were animated towards a shared purpose and a shared outcome.

这种从恐惧到面对现实的转变—— 无论曾经是怎样的境遇， 无论那个时刻多么黑暗—— 都丝毫不会影响战争胜利的可能性。 前线并没有传来战况好转的消息， 甚至也没有一个强大的新盟友 加入到战争中， 以增加他们获胜的几率。 那只是一个简单的选择。 一种深刻、坚定、顽固的 乐观主义出现了， 并不躲避或否认黑暗的逼近， 而是拒绝向之屈服。 那种顽固乐观主义十分强大。 它并不是建立在对积极结果的假设， 或是对未来充满希望的想法之上。 但是这种精神赋予了行动以活力 和意义。 我们知道，从那时候起， 尽管危机和挑战不断出现， 那都是一个极具意义 且目标清晰的时刻， 并且很多证据都表明， 无论是不列颠战役中的飞行员， 还是从土壤中拔土豆的简单行动， 都充满了意义。 为实现共同目标和共同结果， 所有人都变得富有活力。

10:32

We have seen that throughout history. This coupling of a deep and determined stubborn optimism with action, when the optimism leads to a determined action, then they can become self-sustaining: without the stubborn optimism, the action doesn't sustain itself; without the action, the stubborn optimism is just an attitude. The two together can transform an entire issue and change the world.

这样的例子在历史上并不少见。 当这种深刻、坚定的顽固乐观主义 与行动相结合， 就会转变成一种自我支持： 没有顽固乐观主义， 行动不会自我支持； 没有行动，顽固乐观主义 只是一种态度。 只有两者的结合才能 转化整个问题并改变世界。

10:55

We saw this at multiple other times. We saw it when Rosa Parks refused to get up from the bus. We saw it in Gandhi's long salt marches to the beach. We saw it when the suffragettes said that "Courage calls to courage everywhere." And we saw it when Kennedy said that within 10 years, he would put a man on the moon. That electrified a generation and focused them on a shared goal against a dark and frightening adversary, even though they didn't know how they would achieve it. In each of these cases, a realistic and gritty but determined, stubborn optimism was not the result of success. It was the cause of it.

我们已经多次见证了这一论点： 当罗莎 · 帕克斯（Rosa Parks） 在公交车上拒绝将“黑人座位”让给白人， 当甘地（Gandhi）发起 向海滩进发的漫长盐行军， 当妇女参政论者高呼： “勇气会唤醒勇气”， 当肯尼迪总统说，在 10 年内， 他会将一个人送到月球。 我们都见证了这一点。 这些事件激励了一代人 专注于实现共同的目标—— 携手对抗黑暗、可怕的敌人， 尽管他们并不知道如何取得胜利。 在上述每一个事件中， 一个现实、坚韧，但同时又 坚定、顽固的乐观主义态度 并不是成功的结果， 而是成功的原因。

11:30

That is also how the transformation happened on the road to the Paris Agreement. Those challenging, difficult, pessimistic meetings transformed as more and more people decided that this was our moment to dig in and determine that we would not drop the ball on our watch, and we would deliver the outcome that we knew was possible. More and more people transformed themselves to that perspective and began to work, and in the end, that worked its way up into a wave of momentum that crashed over us and delivered many of those challenging issues with a better outcome than we could possibly have imagined. And even now, years later and with a climate denier in the White House, much that was put in motion in those days is still unfolding, and we have everything to play for in the coming months and years on dealing with the climate crisis.

这也是在《巴黎协定》的签订过程中， 转变是如何发生的。 随着越来越多的人认定 是时候一头扎进这项事业， 并下定决心不让这项事业 在我们的手中荒废， 承诺交付我们认为 有可能实现的结果， 于是那些充满挑战、困难 和悲观情绪的会议就发生了转变。 越来越多人转换了自己的视角， 开始行动， 最后，它发展成了一股势头， 向我们袭来， 很多具有挑战性的问题 最终也获得了意料之外的、 更加积极的结果。 甚至在若干年后的今天， 尽管白宫中存在着气候变化的否定者， 当年已经开展的工作仍旧在继续， 而且在未来的几个月甚至几年中， 我们在应对气候危机方面 依然任重道远。

12:18

So right now, we are coming through one of the most challenging periods in the lives of most of us. The global pandemic has been frightening, whether personal tragedy has been involved or not. But it has also shaken our belief that we are powerless in the face of great change. In the space of a few weeks, we mobilized to the point where half of humanity took drastic action to protect the most vulnerable. If we're capable of that, maybe we have not yet tested the limits of what humanity can do when it rises to meet a shared challenge.

现在，我们当中的大部分人 都在经历着一个 最具挑战的时刻。 不论不幸是否降临在自己身上， 全球大流行病都令所有人感到恐惧。 同时，它也撼动了我们的信仰， 在这种巨变的面前，我们无能为力。 在几周时间内， 全球近乎一半的人口 采取了严厉的措施 来保护最脆弱的群体。 如果我们有能力做到这些， 可能我们还未到达 在面对共同挑战时 人类能力的极限。

12:55

We now need to move beyond this narrative of powerlessness, because make no mistake -- the climate crisis will be orders of magnitude worse than the pandemic if we do not take the action that we can still take to avert the tragedy that we see coming towards us. We can no longer afford the luxury of feeling powerless. The truth is that future generations will look back at this precise moment with awe as we stand at the crossroads between a regenerative future and one where we have thrown it all away. And the truth is that a lot is going pretty well for us in this transition. Costs for clean energy are coming down. Cities are transforming. Land is being regenerated. People are on the streets calling for change with a verve and tenacity we have not seen for a generation. Genuine success is possible in this transition, and genuine failure is possible, too, which makes this the most exciting time to be alive. We can take a decision right now that we will approach this challenge with a stubborn form of gritty, realistic and determined optimism and do everything within our power to ensure that we shape the path as we come out of this pandemic towards a regenerative future. We can all decide that we will be hopeful beacons for humanity even if there are dark days ahead, and we can decide that we will be responsible, we will reduce our own emissions by at least 50 percent in the next 10 years, and we will take action to engage with governments and corporations to ensure they do what is necessary coming out of the pandemic to rebuild the world that we want them to. Right now, all of these things are possible.

我们现在需要超越 这种无助的消极心态， 因为，毫无疑问—— 如果我们不及时采取措施 避免我们已经预见到的悲剧的发生， 气候危机的后果将比全球大流行病 严重好几个数量级。 当前的形势已经不允许 我们继续坐以待毙。 事实上，人类的子孙后代们 将会带着敬畏回顾此时此刻—— 当前，我们正站在一个新生未来 和被我们抛弃的未来的十字路口。 而且在这个过渡中， 很多事情目前都进展得很顺利。 清洁能源的成本在降低， 城市在发生转变， 土地获得了重生。 人们走上街头， 以前所未见的热情和坚韧 呼吁改变。 在这一过渡阶段， 真正的成功是可能的， 真正的失败也同样可能发生。 因此，能够见证这一历史时刻 是非常激动人心的。 我们现在就可以做出决定—— 我们将用顽固不化的 坚韧、现实和坚定的乐观主义 迎接这项挑战， 并且尽我们所能，确保我们 从全球大流行病的阴影走出后， 能够踏上一条通往新生未来的道路。 我们所有人都能下定决心， 即使前路黑暗，我们也要 成为人类生存的希望灯塔。 我们也能下定决心承担起责任， 在未来 10 年 将个人排放量至少减半。 我们还将采取行动， 与各国政府和企业合作， 确保他们采取带领我们 走出大流行病的必要行动， 来重建我们希望他们打造的世界。 目前，所有这一切依然是可能的。