As environmental concerns drive power companies away from using coal, natural gas has emerged as the nation’s No. 1 power source. Plentiful and relatively inexpensive as a result of the nation’s fracking boom, it has been portrayed as a bridge to an era in which alternative energy would take primacy.

But technology and economics have carved a different, shorter pathway that has bypassed the broad need for some fossil-fuel plants. And that has put proponents of natural gas on the defensive.

環保顧慮驅使美國電力公司放棄燃煤，天然氣已成為美國頭號發電能源。由於美國湧現開採頁岩油氣的熱潮，天然氣變得產量豐富且相對便宜，被描繪成一座橋梁，能通往替代能源主導的新時代。

不過，科技進步和經濟效益考量已另闢捷徑，繞過對一些化石燃料電廠的廣大需求，使天然氣擁護者處於守勢。

Some utility companies have scrapped plans for new natural-gas plants in favor of wind and solar sources that have become cheaper and easier to install. Existing gas plants are being shut because their economics are no longer attractive. And regulators are increasingly challenging the plans of companies determined to move forward with new natural-gas plants.

“It’s a very different world that we’re arriving at very quickly,” said Robert McCullough, an energy consultant in Portland, Oregon. “That wind farm can literally be put on a train and brought online within a year. It is moving so fast that even critics of the old path like myself have been taken by surprise.”

一些電力公司已撤銷新建天然氣電廠的計畫，轉而發展成本已降低，設置也更容易的風力和太陽能。現存天然氣電廠因為經濟效益不再具有吸引力，正逐一關閉。此外，政府管理當局也日益質疑電力公司新建天然氣電廠的決定。

俄勒岡州波特蘭市能源顧問麥卡洛說：「我們即將面對一個大不相同的世界。風力發電場真的可以放在列車上，並在一年內上線運轉。科技發展得這麼快，就連我這種批評老式發電方式的人都嚇了一跳。」

The shifting dynamics are being seen in the Western states in particular — driven not only by economics, but by regulation and climate as well.

The Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates the state’s investor-owned utilities, recently refused to endorse plans by three power companies that included more natural-gas facilities. Commissioners directed them to make greater use of energy storage and plants that produce zero emissions.

這種轉變的勢頭在美國西部各州尤其明顯，原因不只是經濟效益，還有政策規範和氣候。

亞利桑納州民營公用事業委員會主管該州投資者擁有的公用事業，最近拒核准三家電力公司包括增設天然氣發電設施在內的計畫。委員指示這些公司多利用儲能技術和零排碳電廠。

Nationwide, utility executives, power producers and federal regulators have also argued that a healthy power grid requires consistent power, even when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind ceases to blow. The more solar and wind power that is added to the electric grid, they say, the greater the need for reliable backup sources like natural gas.

“Gas has got to be part of that equation,” Robert F. Powelson, a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, recently told an energy conference. “The gas system has gotten extremely reliable.”

Natural gas isn’t likely to be unseated as the country’s primary source of electricity generation anytime soon. In fact, utility companies plan to add more natural-gas plants than any other source, including all alternative energy sources, like solar, wind and hydropower, combined.

在美國全國層面，電力事業負責人、電廠和聯邦管理單位也都主張，健全的電網需要持續不斷的電力，甚至在太陽沒露臉或風停時亦然。他們表示，輸入供電網的太陽能和風能電力越多，就越需要像天然氣一樣可靠的備用能源。

聯邦能源管理委員會委員鮑爾森最近在一場能源會議上說：「天然氣必須是發電等式的一部分，天然氣系統已經變得極為可靠。」

天然氣不太可能在近期內失去美國最重要發電能源的地位。事實上，電力公司打算增建的天然氣電廠，比其他任何一種能源電廠（包括所有替代能源如太陽能、風力、水力電廠的總和）都多。

In a plain brown building sits an office run by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, a place for people who have been held accountable for their crimes and duly expressed remorse.

Just a few yards up the street lies a different kind of rehabilitation center, for a country that has not been held to nearly the same standard.

在一棟樸素的棕色建築裡有間辦公室，由美國阿拉巴馬州赦免與假釋委員會營運，專門處理那些業經認定須為所犯刑事罪行負責、並已充分表達悔意的人。

沿著這條街只消再走上幾碼，就坐落著一間不同類型的矯治中心，矯治對象卻是從未被以近乎同樣的標準課責的一個國家。

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened on the 26th of April on a 6-acre site overlooking the Alabama state capital, is dedicated to the victims of American white supremacy. And it demands a reckoning with one of the nation’s least recognized atrocities: the lynching of thousands of black people in a decadeslong campaign of racist terror.

At the center is a grim cloister, a walkway with 800 weathered steel columns, all hanging from a roof. Etched on each column is the name of a U.S. county and the people who were lynched there, most listed by name, many simply as “unknown.” The columns meet you first at eye level, like the headstones that lynching victims were rarely given. But as you walk, the floor steadily descends; by the end, the columns are all dangling above, leaving you in the position of the callous spectators in old photographs of public lynchings.

美國和平與正義紀念館4月26日開幕，坐落在俯瞰阿拉巴馬州首府蒙哥馬利的一塊6英畝的土地上，旨在紀念美國白人至上心態的受害者，而且紀念館還要求對美國鮮少獲得承認的一種暴行做個總清算，那就是在種族歧視恐怖行為肆行的數十年間，用私刑將數千黑人處死。

紀念館中央是肅穆的迴廊，那是一條走道，800個飽經風霜的鋼柱懸垂於屋頂下。每個鋼柱上蝕刻著美國一個縣的名字和當地遭私刑處死的人，多半列出姓名，但也有不少只標以「姓名不詳」。這些鋼柱剛開始時與你的視線同高，就像被私刑處死的人絕少享有的墓碑，而隨著你繼續往前走，地板的高度也持續下降，到了最後，鋼柱全都懸在你上方，讓你處在一種位置，宛如老照片裡公開舉行私刑時無情的旁觀者。

The magnitude of the killing is harrowing, all the more so when paired with the circumstances of individual lynchings, some described in brief summaries along the walk: Parks Banks, lynched in Mississippi in 1922 for carrying a photograph of a white woman; Caleb Gadly, hanged in Kentucky in 1894 for “walking behind the wife of his white employer”; Mary Turner, who after denouncing her husband’s lynching by a rampaging white mob, was hung upside down, burned and then sliced open so that her unborn child fell to the ground.

There is nothing like it in the country. Which is the point.

私刑殺戮的規模令人心痛，若與私刑個案的原委合而觀之，更令人肝腸寸斷。沿著走道設有簡短摘要說明牌，描述一些私刑案件的原因：帕克斯．班克斯，1922年在密西西比州遭私刑處死，因為他帶著一張白人女人的照片；迦勒．蓋德利，1894年在肯塔基州遭絞刑處死，因為他「走在他白人主人的妻子後面」；瑪麗．透納，在譴責狂怒的白人暴民動用私刑處死她丈夫後，被倒吊起來用火焚燒，而後身體被切開，以致她那尚未出世的孩子掉落到地上。

在美國從沒聽說過有像這樣子的事。這就是重點。

“Just seeing the names of all these people,” said Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, the nonprofit organization behind the memorial. Many of them, he said, “have never been named in public.”

Stevenson and a small group of lawyers spent years immersing themselves in archives and county libraries to document the thousands of racial terror lynchings across the South. They have cataloged nearly 4,400 in total.

布萊恩．史蒂芬森是建立這座紀念館的非營利組織「公平正義組織」的創辦人，他說，「光是看看所有這些人的名字就夠了」，許多人的名字「從沒有被公開提過」。

史蒂芬森與一小群律師花了幾年時間埋身於史料和縣立圖書館裡，記錄美國南方各地數千個種族恐怖私刑案例。他們總共記下了近4400個案例。

※說文解字看新聞

新開幕的美國私刑紀念館展示鮮為人知的美國私刑史。私刑（lynching）是一群暴民（mob）在未經法院審判的情況下伸張正義，處決自行認定的犯罪者，通常在處決前還施以折磨，使受害者殘廢（corporal mutilation）。lynching一詞源自查爾斯．林奇（Charles Lynch），他是美國獨立戰爭時期維吉尼亞的保安官，為了壓制親英國分子而動用私刑。

美國大多數有紀錄的私刑案件發生在南方，主因是南北戰爭結束後，非裔獲得自由，開始能做生意、獲得投票權並競選公職，許多白人覺得受到威脅，並且非常擔心非裔男性與白人女性發生性關係。

美國人動用私刑往往事先在報上宣傳，吸引大批白人家庭到場觀看。1901年，美國作家馬克吐溫撰文批評這個現象，題為「私刑合眾國」（The United States of Lyncherdom），但最後決定不發表，他告訴出版社，此文「要是透過報紙發表，我在南方將連半個朋友都不剩」。（I shouldn't have even half a friend left down there [in the South], after it issued from the press.）直到死後13年即1923年，他的遺囑執行人才悄悄把它塞進一本文集裡出版。