Last week, BioScience published the “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.”  It’s actually a nice piece of work – short, readable, to the point.  In barely 4 pages, it concisely summarizes the fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.  It also provides suggestions for actions to take to “lessen the worst effects.”  The suggestions also pull no punches:

• quickly implement massive energy efficiency and conservation practices and replace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables and other cleaner sources of energy…. We should leave remaining stocks of fossil fuels in the ground.
• promptly reduce the emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, including methane, black carbon, and hydrofluorocarbons.
• Protect and restore Earth’s ecosystems.
• Eat mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products.
• Curtail excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere.
• Stabilize the world population within a framework that ensures social integrity.

Since the general populace always listens to the scientists, we should be able to accomplish all of this somewhere before the 2020 election.