人类正变得更加强大

飞雪寒冰

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake made two-thirds of a prosperous city uninhabitable. Among European intellectuals, the disaster inspired widespread doubts about the beneficence of the deity and a fear that human effort was vain against the powers of nature. The former issue remains open, but Friday’s earthquake in Japan and tsunami will show that people can indeed limit the damage from what insurers call acts of God.
1755年里斯本地震摧毁了这座繁荣的城市，三分之二的地区不再适宜居住。经过这起天灾，欧洲知识分子对神祇的仁爱产生了广泛的怀疑，也因为人类的努力在大自然面前的苍白无力而充满恐惧。神祇是否仁爱或许尚无结论，但周五日本发生的地震和海啸却显示出，人类的确能够控制保险公司所说的“不可抗力”所造成的损失。

It is too soon to estimate the loss of life or the cost of reconstruction, but the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, provides a reasonable template. That quake killed about 0.4 per cent of the population. Risk Management Solutions, experts in catastrophe risk, estimates that it took 3 per cent of Japan’s gross domestic product to get Kobe back into shape. Those are sizable numbers, but small fractions of the 15-20 per cent loss of population and the 30-50 per cent of Portuguese GDP needed to rebuild Lisbon two centuries earlier, according to Alvaro Pereira, a professor at Simon Fraser University.
现在估测生命损失或重建的成本恐怕为时尚早，不过1995年阪神大地震的情况倒可以提供一个合理的样本。那次地震中，日本0.4%的人口殒命，擅长灾害风险研究的Risk Management Solutions估计，重建神户所需的成本达日本国内生产总值(GDP)的3%。这些数字虽然巨大，但与里斯本地震相比，也只是小数字。西蒙菲沙大学(Simon Fraser University)教授阿尔瓦罗•佩雷拉(Alvaro Pereira)称，两个世纪前的里斯本地震，葡萄牙15%到20%人口殒命，重建里斯本花费了葡萄牙30%到50%的GDP。

飞雪寒冰

The proportionally lesser damage is a result of two basic resources abundantly available in modern industrial economies. The first is knowledge. Engineers keep learning more about how to make structures earthquake-resistant. The Kobe experience inspired revisions in building and planning practices, so the latest quake will do less damage than it would have done two decades ago.
地震造成的损失比例更低，原因在于现代工业经济使得两种基本资源十分充裕。其一是知识。工程师不断钻研如何使建筑物更加抗震。阪神大地震的经验让工程师们改进了建筑及规划，所以这次地震比二十年前造成的损失小了很多。

The second is capital, in the broadest sense of the word. There is now more physical infrastructure to be destroyed than ever before, but there is also a greater reserve of wealth – skilled labour, building materials, financial resources – to be thrown into rebuilding. Money is secondary. While some kinds of drain on capital can be valued (reinsurer Munich Re’s shares were down 5 per cent), the social capital of a well organised government and solidarity among the people is priceless.
其二是资本，请从最广泛的意义上理解这一点。现在受到地震冲击的实体建筑物比以往要多很多，不过也储备了更多的财富（如技能熟练的劳动力、建筑材料、金融资源等）可以投入重建。钱其实是次要的。虽然一些资本损失是可以估量的（再保险公司慕尼黑再保险(Munich Re)股价下跌5%），但是组织有素的政府，以及民众之间的团结所蕴含的社会资本是无价的。