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I decided that the goal of the project would be to identify, measure, and model one hundred substantive solutions to determine how much we could accomplish within three decades towards that end.
create security, produce jobs, improve health, save money, facilitate mobility, eliminate hunger, prevent pollution, restore soil, clean rivers, and more.
That these are substantive solutions does not mean that they are all the best ones.
If we change the preposition, and consider that global warming is happening for us—an atmospheric transformation that inspires us to change and reimagine everything we make and do—we begin to live in a different world.
We see global warming not as an inevitability but as an invitation to build, innovate, and effect change, a pathway that awakens creativity, compassion, and genius.
This is not a liberal agenda, nor is it a conservative one. This ...
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Yet, terms such as “combat,” “battle,” and “crusade” imply that climate change is the enemy and it needs to be slain.
drawdown names a goal that has been hitherto absent in most conversations about climate. Addressing, slowing, or arresting emissions is necessary, but insufficient.
Global warming refers to the surface temperature of the earth. Climate change refers to the many changes that will occur with increases in temperature and greenhouse gases.
Denmark now supplies more than 40 percent of its electricity needs with wind power,
Ongoing cost reduction will soon make wind energy the least expensive source of installed electricity capacity, perhaps within a decade.
Current costs are 2.9 cents per kilowatt-hour for wind, 3.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for natural gas combined-cycle plants, and 5.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for utility-scale solar.
A Morgan Stanley analysis shows that new wind energy production in the Midwest is one-third of the cost of natural gas combined-cycle plants.
China’s rise as the world’s wind leader demonstrates that consistent government commitment to scaling wind energy can accelerate a declining cost curve, especially if government support remains constant regardless of shifting political winds.
distributed energy storage systems will not keep up with demand.
This is the Solar Settlement in Freiburg, Germany. A 59-home community, it is the first in the world to have a positive energy balance, with each home producing $5,600 per year in solar energy profits.
Solar PV has benefited from a virtuous cycle of falling costs, driven by incentives to accelerate its development and implementation, economies of scale in manufacturing, advances in panel technology, and innovative approaches for end-user financing—such as the third-party ownership arrangements that have helped mainstream solar in the United States.
That is because CSP has the very advantage photovoltaics struggle with and need: energy storage.
Unlike PV panels and wind turbines, CSP makes heat before it makes electricity, and the former is much easier and more efficient to store.
Compared to wind and PV generation, the major downside of CSP, to date, is that it is less efficient, in terms of both energy and economics.
Biomass energy is a viable solution if it uses appropriate feedstock, such as waste products or sustainably grown, appropriate energy crops. Optimally, it also uses a low-emission conversion technology such as gasification or digestion.
When organic matter decomposes, it often releases methane and when it is burned in piles, it releases black carbon (soot). Both methane and soot increase global warming faster than carbon dioxide; simply preventing them from being emitted can yield a significant benefit, beyond putting the embodied energy of biomass to productive use.
Biomass is a “bridge” solution, phased out over time in favor of cleaner energy sources.
Licensing, permitting, and financing have brought nuclear plants to a near standstill in the United States,
The Chinese nuclear power industry is self-sufficient, in a position to export, and able to complete new plants within two to three years. Yet even where nuclear seems to be “working,” there is a dramatic shift to renewables. China currently leads the world in installed renewable energy capacity, has canceled plans for dozens of coal-fired plants, and is committing to a combined wind and solar capacity of 400 gigawatts by 2020.
Regrets include tritium releases, abandoned uranium mines, mine-tailings pollution, spent nuclear waste disposal, illicit plutonium trafficking, thefts of fissile material, destruction of aquatic organisms sucked into cooling systems, and the need to heavily guard nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
All told, the U.S. power-generation sector throws away an amount of heat equivalent to the entire energy budget of Japan.
Cogeneration makes it possible for users that do not have access to renewable energy to produce more energy with the same amount, and cost, of fuel.
This is a VisionAIR5 vertical axis wind turbine that is quieter than a human whisper at low speeds. The turbine is 10.5 feet high and is rated at 3.2 kilowatts of power. The minimum wind speed required is 9 miles per hour and it can withstand speeds up to 110 miles per hour.
Their design enables them to utilize wind coming from any direction, producing electricity to power the tower’s restaurants, shop, and exhibits.
Humboldt was searching for the “connections which linked all phenomena and all forces of nature.”
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.
in-stream turbines can capture hydrokinetic energy without creating a reservoir and its repercussions.
The waste incineration industry in the United States arose from the collapse of the nuclear industry in the 1970s and 1980s.
This solution does not eliminate waste: It releases the energy contained in plastic, paper, foodstuffs, and junk, and leaves a residual ash. In other words, it changes the form of the waste.
Today, the United States burns 29 million tons of garbage annually—12 percent of its total generated waste.
Waste-to-energy can impede emergence of something better: zero-waste practices that eliminate the need for landfills and incinerators altogether.
The front-runners of renewable energy integration, such as California, Denmark, Germany, and South Australia, are showing that grid flexibility stems from a variety of measures—on both the supply and demand sides, as well as utility operations—and looks different in different places.
The most conservative estimates suggest that raising livestock accounts for nearly 15 percent of global greenhouse gases emitted each year; the most comprehensive assessments of direct and indirect emissions say more than 50 percent.
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).
Some experts are proposing a more pointed intervention: levying a tax on meat—similar to taxes on cigarettes—to reflect its social and environmental externalities and dissuade purchases.
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. •
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.
France passed a law forbidding supermarkets from trashing unsold food and requiring that they pass it on to charities or animal feed or composting companies instead. Italy followed suit.
But what good is that when virtue itself is quickly becoming a term of derision?
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.
The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
