The recent United Nation’s report on climate change should be a wake-up call to humanity. But we have been warned about these challenges for decades and have done little about them. Way back in 1988, the great writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to the people of 2088 addressing these self-same issues. In the video below, everybody’s favorite Sherlock Holmes reads Vonnegut’s missive to the future to a contemporary audience.

It’s a straightforward message:

1. Reduce and stabilize your population.
2. Stop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
3. Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems.
4. Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
5. Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
6. Stop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean, and stupid.
7. And so on. Or else.

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