Plan To Mitigate Climate Change

An international panel of scientists says the world is already experiencing "significant harm" from climate change and warns that severe droughts and floods in the coming decades will cause enormous human suffering and economic losses unless governments take immediate action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. "The challenge now is to keep climate change from becoming a catastrophe," says the report by the private United Nations Foundation and Sigma Xi, a scientific research society. The study outlines a series of steps that should be taken to prevent the worst effects of climate change, such as increasing vehicle efficiency standards, expanding the use of biofuels, and banning new coal-fired power plants except those that can be retrofitted to capture and sequester CO₂. The 166-page report is available online at confrontingclimatechange.org.