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

by Paul Hawken

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.”

It could be a powerful match between education’s need for funds and the world’s need for proven climate solutions.

A net zero building is one that has zero net energy consumption, producing as much energy as it uses in a year.

the Sonnenschiff solar city in Freiburg, Germany, which produces four times the energy it consumes.

More often than not, buildings have been seen as parts and pieces designed and engineered to fulfill functions—not as the system they are.

Once the paradigm shifts, the building, the site, the weather, the arc of the sun, and the building’s occupants are all seen as one system.

Within a matter of years, cycling became widespread, widely accessible, and widely loved. Bikes allowed adolescents to mix and mingle across neighborhoods and social classes, away from moralizing eyes. They gave women freedom of movement and helped redefine norms of dress and femininity.

Given that 40 percent of urban car trips are less than two miles in length, many could be made by bike instead.

Critics argue AC is one road civilization should never have taken and must now exit.

(In the coming years, biomass will replace all coal use.)

According to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, buildings are responsible for roughly one-third of global energy use and one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Research shows that once an intact primary forest begins to be cut, even under sustainable forest-management systems, it leads to biological degradation.

Also important was the voluntary agreement from soy traders to embargo products from recently deforested land and the 2009 agreement between the three largest Amazon meat-packers and Greenpeace, which sought to ban purchases from suppliers who deforested. Compliance from suppliers hit 93 percent in 2013. Sixty-five of 95 slaughterhouses signed zero-deforestation commitments. All the while, production of cattle and soy increased.

Rainforests are being cut down at a rate that will eliminate them in forty years.

If humanity is to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable of climate change, we must pursue the best options available.

Compared to corn and other annuals, total production of plant material can be lower with perennials, and they prevent erosion, produce more stable yields, are less vulnerable to pests, and support pollinators and biodiversity.

Given the amount of energy we use and food we need to produce, there is simply not enough land to meet all of our needs with plant-based fuels. But it is not an either-or proposition: We need a host of solutions to reverse global warming.

In tandem with biking and walking—and infrastructure to enable them—mass transit can embed mobility, livability, and equity in cities. Movement is a fundamental part of being human, going from here to there for reasons of necessity, pleasure, or curiosity. Mobility brings vitality to individual lives and cities overall; the atmosphere need not be forfeited to achieve it.

However, any assessment should include the costs if a high-speed rail line is not built, as all of our transportation systems enjoy significant government subsidies, hidden or otherwise. The public, not private enterprise, pays for new highways, new lanes for old highways, bigger airports, traffic jams, wasted time, and ever more greenhouse gases.

Two-thirds of the world’s oil consumption is used to fuel cars and trucks.

e-bikes are the most environmentally sound means of motorized transport in the world today,

Making up just over 4 percent of vehicles in the United States and 9 percent of total mileage, they consume more than 25 percent of the fuel. Worldwide, road freight is responsible for about 6 percent of all emissions.

Still, when that pollution is taken into account, recycling remains an effective approach to managing waste while addressing emissions.

Manufacturing a single ton of cement requires the equivalent energy of burning four hundred pounds of coal.

To be human is to communicate, and for two millennia paper has been a prime vehicle for doing so, originating in China and gradually spreading westward.

Bringing the rest of the world up to that level of paper recycling, or beyond, presents a significant opportunity to draw down the emissions of the paper industry, which are estimated to be as high as 7 percent of the world’s annual total—higher than that of aviation.

A particular piece of paper can be reprocessed roughly five to seven times.

A study of studies, conducted by the European Environmental Paper Network, calculates that virgin-fiber paper emits an average of 10.67 tons of carbon dioxide (or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases) per ton of paper product, while recycled paper comes in at just 2.92 tons. That is more than a 70 percent difference.

On pasture-cropped land, the soil is never broken.

world. As dependent as the world has become on annual crops, and as unthinkable as it may be to agriculture schools and Big Ag, at some point, farming must change to sustainable and regenerative methods if it is to recover lost fertility and soil carbon.

The Swiss agroecologist Ernst Gotsch works with deforested and desertified lands in Brazil and restores them in a matter of years to lush forest farms bountiful with food. In a video segment in which he describes his work, Gotsch picks up dark, moist soil and proclaims, “We are growing water.”

middle of the ocean. Today, kelp forests cover nineteen million acres. Ultimately, floating kelp forests could provide food, feed, fertilizer, fiber, and biofuels to most of the world. They grow many times faster than trees or bamboo. Von Herzen wants to restore the subtropical ocean desert and its fish productivity with thousands of new kelp forests. He calls this marine permaculture.

Imagine a lightweight latticed structure made of interconnecting tubing, submerged 82 feet below sea level, to which kelp can attach. MPAs can be tethered near land, or self-guiding on the open sea. They are far enough below the surface that the largest cargo ships and oil tankers can pass right over them with no damage save some shredded kelp.

How cars are owned and utilized today could not be any less efficient. About 96 percent are privately owned; Americans spend $2 trillion per year on car ownership; and cars are used 4 percent of the time. The contemporary car is not a driving machine but a parking machine for which 700 million parking spaces have been built—an area equivalent to the state of Connecticut.

The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone. If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all. If we do not, we burden our consciences with the weight of having denied the existence of others.

When we speak of the “environment,” what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.

We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.

The loop, underneath the street, was manned by operators called Rocketeers and could shunt parcels and mail from Grand Central Terminal to the General Post Office in four minutes.

The prospect of tubing to Los Angeles without an obvious way to stop and escape in an emergency sends claustrophobic chills up some people’s spines. However, that is exactly what an airplane is: a pod moving at high speed from which you cannot exit, subject to uncontrollable forces such as wind shear, lightning, icing, and flocks of birds.

The solutions in Drawdown outlining regenerative farming and conservation agriculture, as well as those that address agroforestry, tree intercropping, and managed grazing, all feed the soil microbiome, reap the benefits thereof, and significantly reduce or eliminate the need for fossil fuel–derived fertilizers.

To be restorative, agriculture aligns with biology and nature, as opposed to warring with it.

Soil quality is declining in the world, presenting humankind with a choice: Try to correct this with yet more chemicals or rebuild a healthy soil ecosystem. By inoculating degraded and diminished soils with combinations of organisms that are symbiotic with the crops and foods people want, agriculture can create a virtuous circle, doing what life does.

Total emissions for a white cotton shirt from field to customer are 80 pounds of carbon dioxide.

It is nearly three hundred times as potent as carbon dioxide, and according

The world’s energy needs could be met by setting aside 3 percent of the world’s oceans for seaweed farming.