Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

by Paul Hawken

We are, in writer Jeremy Leggett’s words, squarely in the middle of the greatest energy transition in history. The era of fossil fuels is over, and the only question now is when the new era will be fully upon us. Economics make its arrival inevitable: Clean energy is less expensive.

In the United States, the wind energy potential of just three states—Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas—would be sufficient to meet electricity demand from coast to coast.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that the fossil fuel industry received more than $5.3 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies in 2015; that is $10 million a minute, or about 6.5 percent of global GDP.

When coal is burned to boil water to turn a turbine to generate electricity, two-thirds of the energy is dispersed as waste heat and in-line losses.

The two oldest Sanskrit epic poems, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, contain illustrations of a precursor to the home garden called Ashok Vatika.

“The difference between a woman with no years of schooling and with 12 years of schooling is almost four to five children per woman. And it is precisely in those areas of the world where girls are having the hardest time getting educated that population growth is the fastest.”

A 2013 study found that educating girls “is the single most important social and economic factor associated with a reduction in vulnerability to natural disasters.” The single most important. It is a conclusion drawn from examining the experiences of 125 countries since 1980 and echoes other analyses.

As suffragist Susan B. Anthony said in 1896, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”

The United States leads the world in the production of liquid biofuels. Forty percent of the corn grown nationally becomes ethanol. Huge subsidies go into this annual crop, often for little or no benefit to the climate because energy inputs are so high.

Today, though these unique ecosystems cover just 3 percent of the earth’s land area, they are second only to oceans in the amount of carbon they store—twice that held by the world’s forests, at an estimated five hundred to six hundred gigatons.