在香港氣候博物館尋找應對環境危機的靈感

It happened in the blink of an eye. The waters around Manhattan rose more than three feet. Low-lying areas along the Hudson and East Rivers were swamped. It was Hurricane Sandy all over again, but this time, the high water was here to stay, and it would only continue to rise.

眨眼間，曼哈頓周圍的河水就漲了三英尺多高，淹沒了哈德遜河和東河沿岸的低地。這彷彿又是颶風“桑迪”(Hurricane Sandy)的情景，不過這一次猛漲的河水不僅沒有退去，還只會繼續上漲。

Miranda Massie did what anyone sane person would do in this situation. She fled to New Jersey. Her hand manipulated the virtual reality device at the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change in Hong Kong, and the newly inundated New York City was left behind for the relative dryness of Paramus. Or was it Hackensack?

米蘭達·馬西(Miranda Massie)在此時做了一件任何一個理智的人都會做的事情，那就是逃往新澤西。她在香港賽馬會氣候變化博物館(Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change)，用手操作着虛擬現實儀器，剛剛紐約市洪水氾濫的場景瞬間變成了帕拉默斯(Paramus)相對乾燥的場景。還是說，那裏其實是哈肯薩克(Hackensack)？

Ms. Massie was in Hong Kong to visit what she says is the world’s only museum specifically devoted to an issue that many people, including herself, view as the most pressing one facing humankind. She’s the executive director of the Climate Museum Launch Project, a group based in New York that is seeking to build a similar, but far bigger and more ambitious, museum in Manhattan.

按照馬西的說法，她來香港參觀的這座博物館，是唯一一座專門爲氣候變化議題建立的博物館，而包括她在內的很多人都認爲，這個議題是人類所面臨的最緊迫的問題。馬西是“氣候博物館啓動項目”(Climate Museum Launch Project)的執行總監，這個總部位於紐約的團體力圖在曼哈頓建立一座類似的博物館，不過規模會更大，目標也會更大。

In Hong Kong, she sought ideas and inspiration. The museum, financed by a grant from a club that runs horse racing and other betting activities, had some to offer. One was the enormous projector screen that showed the effects of rising sea levels on cities across the globe. She found another in the photo booths at the end of the tour that offered digital pictures of the visitors in a polar setting — the Chinese research vessel Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, in the background, polar bears and penguins in the foreground. To get the photo, visitors have to make a simple carbon-reducing promise. Choices included “travel less by airplane,” “bring your own shopping bag” and “eat vegetables rather than meat.”

她到香港去尋找想法和啓發，而這座博物館給了她一些靈感。博物館由一家從事賽馬和其他博彩活動的俱樂部提供資金支持，館內有一塊用來投影的巨大銀幕，向參觀者展示海平面上升對全球城市所造成的影響。她還發現了另一個可以借鑑的東西，在參觀的末尾處有幾個自動照相棚，可以爲參觀者生成極地場景下的數字圖像——照片中遠處是中國的雪龍號極地考察船，近處則是北極熊和企鵝。如果想要得到照片，參觀者必須做出一個簡單的減碳承諾，可以選擇“出行少坐飛機”、“自帶購物袋”，或者“多吃蔬菜少吃肉”。

At the end of the tour, a screen showed the effect of the combined commitments of the more than 27,000 people who have made the pledges: 997.8 million grams of carbon removed from the atmosphere.

在參觀的末尾處，一個屏幕上顯示了超過2.7萬人的承諾會起到怎樣的影響：大氣中的減碳量達到了9.978億克。

“It’s very hard to communicate effectively with a 5-year-old and a 45-year-old,” Ms. Massie said. “So you have to build really sophisticated and interactive displays to do that.”

“要想同時與5歲的孩子和45歲的大人進行有效溝通是很難的，”馬西說道，“所以需要打造一個很先進，並且具有互動性的展覽。”

It is the focus on what people can do collectively to reduce carbon emissions that will be the main focus of the New York museum, rather than a scary look at what the future may hold — flooded coastal cities, droughts, storms. Those calamities will not be ignored, but the focus will be on ways to mitigate climate change and to adapt to it.

紐約的博物館主要是想讓人們瞭解，如何通過集體的努力來減少碳排放，而不是給他們看可怕的未來，例如洪水氾濫的沿海城市，乾旱或暴風雨。不是要無視這些災難，而是要關注如何緩解和適應氣候變化。

“There’s research currently that shows the more people learn about climate, the more they tend to emotionally shut down and disengage,” Ms. Massie said. “Not everybody, but most people. Because it’s distressing and because it’s very clear that just changing the light bulbs in your own home doesn’t matter. So you have to make it clear that you’re part of a broader set of efforts and those broader efforts can succeed.”

“當前的研究顯示，對氣候瞭解得越多，人們就越會情感崩潰並且選擇迴避，”馬西說道，“雖然不是每個人都這樣，但大多數人會這樣。因爲這會讓人憂慮，大家也很清楚只是更換自己家裏的電燈泡也是不管用的。所以講清楚，你自己是更宏大的努力中的一員，而這些更廣泛的努力可以獲得成功。”

The Hong Kong museum occupies one floor of a high-rise building on a university campus. Since it opened in December 2013, it has brought in just over 56,000 visitors, more than a third of them students. The museum’s goal, according to its program director, Cecilia Lam, is to raise awareness of climate change in Hong Kong, especially among children.

香港的氣候變化博物館在一所大學校園的一棟高層建築裏佔據了一層。自從2013年12月開放以來，它已經吸引了超過5.6萬名參觀者，其中超過三分之一是學生。據項目主管楊詩詩稱，這座博物館的目的是在香港提升民衆對氣候變化的認識，特別是在兒童中間。

“The major difference between our project and Miranda’s — it seems to me that they focus on the whole world,” Ms. Lam said. “Our main group of targets is people in Hong Kong.”

“我們的項目和米蘭達的項目之間主要區別是，在我看來他們注重於整個世界，”楊詩詩說。“我們的主要目標人羣是香港人。”

Ms. Massie, 48, who worked for years as a public-interest lawyer, is looking for donors. She hopes to set up an interim museum, bigger than the one in Hong Kong, in an office building or even on a barge in New York in the next two years, with a permanent site in Manhattan (or possibly Brooklyn) by 2020.

作爲一個多年來致力於公益訴訟的律師，48歲的馬西正在尋求捐助者。她希望在接下來的兩年裏建立一家臨時的博物館，要比香港的這座大，可以在紐約的一棟寫字樓裏甚至大型遊船上，直到2020年在曼哈頓（或者在布魯克林）找到一座永久性的場所。

And Ms. Massie’s goal is far more ambitious. The New York museum would aim to attract at least a million visitors a year and seek to influence the world, including political leaders in the United States. At the end of the tour, visitors would be encouraged to volunteer their time to help groups that are trying to address climate change: doing anything from making calls on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council to volunteering to help elect a candidate who is determined to reduce carbon emissions.

馬西的目標還遠不止於此。紐約的博物館計劃每年吸引至少一百萬的遊客並企圖影響世界，包括美國的政治領袖們。在參觀最後，會鼓勵遊客花一些時間，志願幫助那些正努力應對氣候變化的團體：比如以自然資源保護協會(Natural Resources Defense Council)的名義打電話，再比如志願幫助選舉一個有決心減少碳排放的候選人。

“We want to be a hub for the world for climate solutions,” Ms. Massie said. “We want to be a beacon for the world.”

“我們想要成爲全世界氣候問題解決方案的一箇中心，”馬西說。“我們想要成爲世界的一座燈塔。”

The goals of the Hong Kong museum are far more modest. Absent from the museum is any prominent mention of the fact that Hong Kong is part of a country, China, that is far and away the world’s leading carbon emitter, putting about twice as much carbon into the atmosphere as the No. 2 polluter, the United States.

香港的博物館目標則要謙遜得多。在這座博物館裏，看不到任何關於香港是中國一部分的醒目提示，後者向大氣中排放的碳大約是第二排放國美國的兩倍，碳排放量遙居世界首位。

The many schoolchildren coming to the Hong Kong museum on field trips get a very different message. The first part of the museum replicates a trip on the Xue Long, highlighting its polar research, displaying mock-ups of ice cores taken from the polar regions and discussing the dangers climate change poses to polar bears, penguins and seals.

很多來到香港的博物館參觀的小學生得到了一個不同尋常的信息。博物館的第一部分複製了雪龍號上的一次旅程，突出了它的極地研究，展示了從極低挖出的冰芯的模型，並討論了氣候變化對北極熊、企鵝和海豹產生的危害。

“The use of Xue Long is just one way to get the public interested in what the scientists are doing,” Ms. Lam said. “We tried to use a storytelling approach.”

“運用雪龍號的例子，只是讓公衆對科學家所做的事情感興趣的一種方法，”楊詩詩說。“我們嘗試採取了講故事的手段。”

Back in “New York,” the simulator increases the water level. One meter, two meters, three meters, four. Ms. Massie noted that one possible future for New York is for some parts to surrender to the waters, to become a sort of Venice. Charming as that might sound, rising sea levels, she says, will be especially devastating for people living in coastal regions of poor nations, such as Bangladesh. It was the enormity of the problem that led Ms. Massie to shift her focus away from school desegregation and affirmative action and toward the environment.

回到“紐約”，模擬器升高了海平面。一米，兩米，三米，四米。馬西注意到紐約可能的一個未來就是其中一部分要被水淹沒，變得有點像威尼斯。聽起來可能很迷人，但她說，不斷上漲的海平面，對於住在貧窮國家沿海地區的人們——比如孟加拉國——毀滅性尤其巨大。正是這個問題的嚴重性，使馬西把她的注意從阻止學校的種族隔離和平權措施(affirmative action)轉移到了環境問題。

“I came to see climate change specifically is going to determine our fate as a species in a way that none of these other things is capable of doing,” she said.

“我看到氣候變化將會以一種特別的，其他問題所不能的方式，決定我們作爲一個物種的命運，”她說。