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

by Paul Hawken

75 to 80 percent of the energy generated by an internal combustion engine is wasted heat.

When the electric grid was still sparse in many rural U.S. states, on-site wind energy was often used to fill the gap.

Depending on its speed, wind contains a certain amount of kinetic energy. The efficiency with which a turbine extracts power from the wind is called its capacity factor.

When he returned, he described precisely and prophetically what could happen to a civilization if it did not recognize how sensitive our atmosphere is to changes on the ground.

When he listed the three ways in which the human species was affecting the climate, he named deforestation, ruthless irrigation, and, perhaps most prophetically, the “great masses of steam and gas” produced in the industrial centers.

Even with best efforts to reduce, there is no way around waste.

Because in-stream hydro can function in smaller waterways, where currents’ powerful, concentrated energy is often untapped, it is a strong candidate for providing electrification in remote areas.

the grid: the dynamic web of electricity production, transmission, storage, and consumption that 85 percent of the world relies on.

At any given moment, then, the total output of renewables is less variable.

Both systems share a key advantage: how quickly they can respond to demand. The ramp-up time to full power is seconds, whereas fossil fuel plants take minutes or hours.

Taken on its own, the production of energy storage does not reduce emissions; instead, energy storage enables adoption of wind and solar energy.

Just as every prediction of cost and growth in solar was underestimated for the past two decades, the predictions around battery prices keep missing the mark.

Not so long ago, solar photovoltaics had high carbon costs. So much coal-fired energy was required for the glass, aluminum, gases, installation, and 3,600-degree Fahrenheit sintering ovens, it would have been fair to call solar panels coal extenders. Today, the energy costs of making solar have dropped significantly.

Our passion for meat involves over 60 billion land animals that require nearly half of all agricultural land for food and pasture. Livestock emissions, including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, are responsible for an estimated 18 to 20 percent of greenhouse gases annually, a source second only to fossil fuels. If you add to livestock all other food-related emissions—from farming to deforestation to food waste—what we eat turns out to be the number one cause of global warming.

If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Business-as-usual emissions could be reduced by as much as 70 percent through adopting a vegan diet and 63 percent for a vegetarian diet (which includes cheese, milk, and eggs).

Beyond promoting “reducetarianism,” if not vegetarianism, it is also necessary to reframe meat as a delicacy, rather than a staple.

In 2013, $53 billion went to livestock subsidies in the thirty-five countries affiliated with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development alone.

As Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has said, making the transition to a plant-based diet may well be the most effective way an individual can stop climate change. Recent research suggests he is right: Few climate solutions of this magnitude lie in the hands of individuals or are as close as the dinner plate.

A comprehensive study out of Stanford University estimates that there are 950 million to 1.1 billion acres of deserted farmland around the world—acreage once used for crops or pasture that has not been restored as forest or converted to development. Ninety-nine percent of that abandonment occurred in the past century.

Yet a third of the food raised or prepared does not make it from farm or factory to fork. That number is startling, especially when paired with this one: Hunger is a condition of life for nearly 800 million people worldwide. And this one: The food we waste contributes 4.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere each year—roughly 8 percent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

A fundamental equation is off-kilter: People who need food are not getting it, and food that is not getting consumed is heating up the planet.

Feeding the 5000—large public feasts made entirely from nearly wasted food.

Globally, household air pollution is the leading environmental cause of death and disability, ahead of unsafe water and lack of sanitation, and it is responsible for more premature deaths than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

The world’s constellation of efforts to make clean stoves is where the future of cooking matters most. •

Thanks to the many layers of vegetation supporting sequestration in both soil and biomass, an acre of multistrata agroforestry can achieve rates of carbon sequestration that are comparable to those of afforestation and forest restoration—2.8 tons per acre per year, on average—with the added benefit of producing food.

Rice provides a full one-fifth of calories consumed worldwide, more than wheat or corn, and is the essential staple in the daily diet of 3 billion people, many of them poor and food insecure.

Thus, the world faces a multifaceted challenge: to find and adopt ways to produce rice that are efficient, dependable, and sustainable, meeting the growing demand for this staple food without causing warming.

SRI disrupts the mechanistic, chemically intensive approach to food production upon which so many companies depend for their income.

There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late.

no other mechanism known to humankind is as effective in addressing global warming as capturing carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis.

Bare land, save for deserts and sand dunes, will naturally revegetate.

Evidence points to a new wisdom: The world cannot be fed unless the soil is fed. Feeding the soil reduces carbon in the atmosphere. Soil erosion and water depletion cost $37 billion in the United States annually and $400 billion globally. Ninety-six percent of that comes from food production.

Worse still, if you place cattle in feedlots and measure their impact upon the environment and climate, they rank with coal as being one of the greatest detriments to the planet.

When grasses are continuously grazed, nutrient reserves in the roots trail off until they reach a point of exhaustion. As plants go, so goes the soil. This is known as overgrazing;

The damage done by overgrazing obscured what happens when grasslands are undergrazed—soil health declines and carbon is lost.

And despite the fact that the methodology is more intense, interviews recount how farmers have more time though they have more animals on the same amount of land.

After half a century of chemical-intensive techniques, out of a “growing sense of heritage and responsibility,” Harris began transforming his family’s farm into a holistic and humane system. He gave up corn feed, hormone injections, and antibiotics, then pesticides and fertilizers. Now, he says, “What I think about—all day, every day—is how can I make this land better?”

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), if all women smallholders receive equal access to productive resources, their farm yields will rise by 20 to 30 percent, total agricultural output in low-income countries will increase by 2.5 to 4 percent, and the number of undernourished people in the world will drop by 12 to 17 percent.

A few studies demonstrate that if women have access to the same resources as men—all else being equal—their outputs actually surpass parity: They exceed men’s by 7 to 23 percent.

“It will be difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate global poverty and end hunger without building resilience to climate change in smallholder agriculture through the widespread adoption of sustainable . . . practices.”

When women earn more, they reinvest 90 percent of the money they make into education, health, and nutrition for their families and communities, compared to 30 to 40 percent for men.

In the early 1970s, Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren developed the now-famous equation known as “IPAT”: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology. In simplified fashion, it argues that the impact human beings have on the environment is a function of number, level of consumption, and the kind of technology used.

Currently, the world faces a $5.3 billion funding shortfall for providing the access to reproductive healthcare that women say they want to have.

Family planning requires social reinforcement, for example the radio and television soap operas now used in many places to shift perceptions of what is “normal” or “right.”

Still, this topic continues to be taboo in many countries and institutions, hemmed in by the persistent belief that raising the issue of population, or approaches that reduce it, is inherently draconian and an affront to the worth of human life. It may be the other way around on a warming, crowded planet: To revere human life it is necessary to ensure a viable, vibrant home for all.

Poverty is the main cause of low overall enrollment, and given socioeconomic norms, boys receive priority for higher education when there are financial constraints. Girls’ education, it turns out, has a dramatic bearing on global warming. Women with more years of education have fewer, healthier children and actively manage their reproductive health.

If all nations adopted a similar rate and achieved 100 percent enrollment of girls in primary and secondary school, by 2050 there would be 843 million fewer people worldwide than if current enrollment rates sustain.

“One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen, can change the world.”

A 2010 economic study shows that investment in educating girls is “highly cost-competitive with almost all of the existing options for carbon emissions abatement”—perhaps just $10 per ton of carbon dioxide.