The house made of wood
木头房子
Why more buildings should be made of wood
为何越来越多的建筑都应该使用木材建造
It is better for the planet, and safer than you think
因为这样做对地球更有益，也更安全
The second little pig was unlucky. He built his house from sticks. It was blown away by a huffing, puffing wolf, which promptly gobbled him up. His brother, by contrast, built a wolfproof house from bricks. The fairy tale could have been written by a flack for the construction industry, which strongly favours brick, concrete and steel. However, in the real world it would help reduce pollution and slow global warming if more builders copied the wood-loving second pig.
第二只小猪运气不好，他用一根根木棍搭了一座木头房子。木头房子被怒气冲冲地老狼吹散了，第二只小猪迅速地被老狼一口吞下肚。相比之下，他的弟弟，盖了砖头房子防老狼。这则童话故事似乎出自建造业宣传员之手，这个行业极力鼓吹砖头，混凝土及钢材。然而，现实世界中，如果更多建筑者效仿喜欢木头房子的第二只小猪，那将有助于减少污染，减缓全球变暖。
In 2015 world leaders meeting in Paris agreed to move towards zero net greenhouse-gas emissions in the second half of this century. That is a tall order, and the building industry makes it even taller. Cement-making alone produces 6% of the world’s carbon emissions. Steel, half of which goes into buildings, accounts for another 8%. If you factor in all of the energy that goes into lighting, heating and cooling homes and offices, the world’s buildings start to look like a giant environmental problem.
2015年，世界各国领导人齐聚巴黎，一致同意争取到下半个世纪实现温室气体零排放。这绝非易事，而建筑业使其难上加难。仅仅制造水泥这一项，产生的二氧化碳气体占世界总排量的6%。制造钢材，其中一半钢材用于建筑，其排放量占8%。如果将家庭办公用的照明，取暖，空调所需能源考虑在内，全世界的建筑物似乎更像一个巨大的环境问题。
Governments in the rich world are now trying to promote greener behaviour by obliging developers to build new projects to “zero carbon”standards (see International section). From January 1st 2019 all new public-sector buildings in the European Union must be built to “nearly zero-energy” standards. All other types of buildings will follow in January 2021. Governments in eight further countries are being lobbied to introduce a similar policy.
当前，发达国家政府强制要求开发者的工程建造符合零碳标准（参考国际部门），力图以此推动更环保的行为方式。从2019年1月1日开始，欧盟所有新建的公共部门的建筑必须符合近零能耗标准。2021年1月，其他类型的建筑最迟2021年1月也要遵从这一标准。欧盟正在游说另外8个（非欧盟?）国家也实施采用类似的政策。
These standards are less green than they seem. Wind turbines and solar panels on top of buildings look good but are much less productive than wind and solar farms. And the standards only count the emissions from running a building, not those belched out when it was made. Those are thought to account for between 30% and 60% of the total over a structure’s lifetime.
这些标准在环保程度上言过其实（实际上不如看起来那样环保)。建筑物顶部安装的风力涡轮和太阳电池板看起来不错，但是能量转化效率远不如风能发电站和太阳能发电站。而且这些标准只考虑了建筑物使用过程中的碳排放，并未考虑建造时的碳排放，而据称后者的碳排放占整个建筑物生命周期中总碳排放量的30%-60%。
Buildings can become greener. They can use more recycled steel and can be prefabricated in off-site factories, greatly reducing lorry journeys. But no other building material has environmental credentials as exciting and overlooked as wood.
建筑物可以变得更环保（原译：建筑可以更环保）。可以使用更多的可循环利用的钢材，建筑材料在异地预制，可以极大地减少运输量（最终减少运输带来的碳排放）。但是，就环保特性而言，最令人兴奋，也最令人忽略的建筑材料就是木材(没有哪种建筑材料能像木头那样环保，同时也没有哪种建筑材料能像木头那样也被忽略)。
The energy required to produce a laminated wooden beam is one-sixth of that required for a steel one of comparable strength. As trees take carbon out of the atmosphere when growing, wooden buildings contribute to negative emissions by storing the stuff. When a mature tree is cut down, a new one can be planted to replace it, capturing more carbon. After buildings are demolished, old beams and panels are easy to recycle into new structures. And for retrofitting older buildings to be more energy efficient, wood is a good insulator. A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.
对于强度相同的层压梁和钢材，生产层压梁所需能量是钢材的1/6。由于树木生长过程中吸收大气中的碳，木质建筑通过存储碳的形式促进碳的负排放(木制建筑所需储存的材料不但不会排放碳，而且还会吸收碳)。成年的树砍伐后，会补种上新的树苗，以此吸收更多碳。木制建筑被拆后，旧的梁和板材很容易回收再利用。翻新旧建筑更高效节能，木材还是良好的隔音材料。软木窗框隔热效果是相同厚度钢材的400倍，是铝制材料的上千倍。
A race is on to build the world’s tallest fully wooden skyscraper. But such edifices are still uncommon. Industry fragmentation, vicious competition for contracts and low profit margins mean that most building firms have little money to invest in greener construction methods beyond what regulation dictates.
一场建造世界最高的全木制摩天大楼的竞赛正在进行中。但是这种大厦仍然非同寻常。木质建筑缺少完整的产业链，面临着传统建筑业的残酷竞争和微薄利润(行业分裂，合同压力以及低利润带来的残酷竞争)这些都意味着，大多数建筑公司没钱投资更环保、执行要求更严格的建造工艺（方法）。
Governments can help nudge the industry to use more wood, particularly in the public sector— the construction industry’s biggest client. That would help wood-building specialists achieve greater scale and lower costs. Zero-carbon building regulations should be altered to take account of the emissions that are embodied in materials. This would favour wood as well as innovative ways of producing other materials.
各国政府能够帮助引导(助推)建筑行业更多地使用木材，尤其是公共部门，这一建筑业最大的客户。政府这一举措会有助于木制建筑专家在实现更低成本的同时，将建筑规模做得更大。零碳建筑规章应该稍作修改，将材料本身生产过程中的碳排放也考虑在内,，这也有助于木材的使用，鼓励生产不同其他建材的创新性研究。Construction codes could be tweaked to make building with wood easier. Here the direction of travel is wrong. Britain, for instance, is banning the use of timber on the outside of tall buildings after 72 people died in a tower fire in London in 2017. That is a nonsense. Grenfell Tower was covered in aluminium and plastic, not wood. Modern cross-laminated timber panels perform better in fire tests than steel ones do.
对建筑法规稍作调整有利于推广木制建筑。但当前的调整方向却背道而驰，例如，2017年伦敦的格伦菲尔塔火灾事故导致72人死亡，英国因此禁止在高层建筑物外部使用木材。这种做法毫无道理，格伦菲儿塔的外表面是铝和塑料，并非木材。防火测试表明，交叉层压木板比钢板的防火性能好。
Carpentry alone will not bring the environmental cost of the world’s buildings into line. But using wood can do much more than is appreciated. The second little pig was not wrong, just before his time.
单单依靠木工工艺不会使全球建筑物在环保成本上符合规定。但是，使用木材的好处远超出人们预期。第二只小猪没做错，只是它的做法过于超前。