The UN has a new UN-speak report on what we need to do to fix the global environment. The simplest take-home message is an economic one – the benefits greatly exceed the costs, but it requires up-front investment blah blah blah. UN-speak is off-putting to many, so talented politicians and other leaders need to translate it to platforms and policies that speak to us, and then do it. There’s a full report, an executive summary, and key messages from the executive summary. I’ll highlight just a few actions here in my own words:

• Eliminate environmentally harmful subsidies in the energy, food, and mining industries.
• Internalize external costs – the good old “Pigouvian taxes” that raise revenue and/or encourage behavior, and we win either way.
• Alternative/supplemental measures of progress besides GDP
• Circular economy – recycling and reducing waste
• Renewable energy phase-in and fossil fuel phase-out
• Electrify everything – transportation, manufacturing, housing/buildings, and agriculture

Nature-based solutions and conservation of natural ecosystems seem to be important things missing from from this list, but those are in other reports of course. Still, I find it strange to make a distinction between “ecosystems” and the “environment”.