![]() The chapters include solutions within Energy, Food, Women and girls, Buildings and cities, Land use, Transport, Materials, and Coming Attractions. An example of this would be ‘Educating Girls’: not only do women with more education have fewer and healthier children, but a 2013 study also concluded that educating girls is “the single most important social and economic factor associated with a reduction in vulnerability to natural disasters.” The rest – the “no-regrets” solutions – are initiatives that we would want to implement regardless of their footprint reduction abilities, as they carry multiple benefits for society and the environment. The former – and thankfully there are only a handful of those in the book – are solutions with spillover effects that are detrimental to human and planetary health – yet necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for a period of transition. The book differentiates between “regrettable” solutions and “no-regrets” solutions. These “interruptions” serve as delightful pauses from the rigorous scientific and engineering analyses that, while the backbone of the book and highly recommendable, may not be readable in one sitting to the majority of readers. Clements and forest management (by Janine Benyus) and more. Those chapters are interspersed with essays and book excerpts on topics such as Alexander von Humboldt identifying climate change in 1800 (by Andrea Wulf), what we eat (mostly “food-like substances” and how it affects our bodies and soil (by Michael Pollan), Yacouba Sawadogo – “the man who stopped the desert” (by Mark Hertsgaard), a call for caring for our common home (by Pope Francis), Gleason vs. It is the prevalent weather conditions over time … The goal is to come into alignment with the impact we are having on climate by addressing the human causes of global warming and bringing carbon back home.”ĭrawdown presents more than science-backed, global warming reversing solutions. Hawken reasons that climate is not an enemy, it’s a “function of biological activity on earth, and physics and chemistry in the sky. The absence of something is nothing.” In addition, Hawken notes their choice to avoid military language such as the war on carbon and slashing emissions, which I think most of us who have ever written anything climate-related are guilty of. “Imagine a negative house, or a negative tree. Taking the example of “negative emissions,” the team explains that unless you already know what this means, the term holds no meaning in itself. Clarifying exactly which terms are utilized and what they mean is an incredible help to the reader, especially as the intention of Drawdown is to make it accessible to all readers – not just people with extensive prior knowledge within the field. As someone trained in language and literature, I’m happy to admit that this was a very welcome surprise. A note on language and the power of storytellingįirst a brief linguistic detour, as the book boasts a section dedicated to the language of climate science. The result of their work is a comprehensive list across the categories of energy, food, women and girls, buildings and cities, land use, transport, materials, and ‘coming attractions’. Add to that a 120-person Advisory Board, featuring a diverse community of geologists, engineers, agronomists, politicians, writers, climatologists, biologists, botanists, financial analysts – and the lists goes on. However, in reality, the team consisted of 70 individuals across 22 countries – 40% of which were women. When I write ‘team’, this might incur the mental image of a small team in a war room type of setup. With ‘drawdown’ as the guiding star, the team behind the book set out to identify and model the solutions most apt to achieve a steady decline in greenhouse gases. “In atmospheric terms drawdown is the point in time at which greenhouse gases peak and begin to decline on a year-to-year basis.” Rather, it presents solutions that put the global community on the path towards continuously decreasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. Reverse is of key importance here, as the book does not intend to show how to merely halt or slow down global warming. Quite the title, and while perhaps a bit brash (Paul Hawken’s own admission) this is exactly what the book sets out to do: present the reader with a list of the 100 most substantive ways to reverse global warming. Today, we’ll discuss Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. As part of our Nordic Sustainability book club, The Overbooked Consultants Club, our plan is to read everything from social justice, economics, and climate change to corporate culture, change management, and self-help books.
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