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

by Paul Hawken

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 is the human agenda.

Critics in Congress disparage wind power because it is subsidized, implying that the federal government is pouring money down a hole. Coal is a freeloader when it comes to the costs borne by society for environmental impacts. Putting aside the difference in emissions costs—none for wind, high for fossil fuels—the subsidy arguments do not include the difference in water usage between wind and fossil fuels. Wind power uses 98 to 99 percent less water than fossil fuel–generated electricity. Coal, gas, and nuclear power require massive amounts of water for cooling, withdrawing more water than agriculture—22 trillion to 62 trillion gallons per year. Water for many fossil fuel and nuclear plants is “free,” bestowed by the federal government or the states, but it is hardly free and instead represents another unacknowledged subsidy. Who else besides the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries can take trillions of gallons of water in the United States and not pay for it?

During John Muir’s first summer exploring the Sierra Nevada, he wrote in his journal, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

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

A groundbreaking 2016 study from the University of Oxford modeled the climate, health, and economic benefits of a worldwide transition to plant-based diets between now and 2050. 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). The model also calculates a reduction in global mortality of 6 to 10 percent. The potential health impact on millions of lives translates into trillions of dollars in savings: $1 trillion in annual health-care costs and lost productivity, and upwards of $30 trillion when accounting for the value of lives lost. In other words, dietary shifts could be worth as much as 13 percent of worldwide gross domestic product in 2050. And that does not begin to include avoided impacts of global warming.

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.

For more than a third of the world’s labor force, the production of food is the source of their livelihoods, and all people are sustained by consuming it. 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. Ranked with countries, food would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases globally, just behind the United States and China. 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.

Currently, “sell by,” “best before,” and the like are largely unregulated designations, indicating when food should taste best. Though not focused on safety, these markers confuse consumers about expiration.

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.

I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in An Inconvenient Truth came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.

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.

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. Educated girls and women have a better capacity to cope with shocks from natural disasters and extreme weather events and are therefore less likely to be injured, displaced, or killed when one strikes.

According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), 30 percent of the world’s forestland has been cleared completely. Another 20 percent has been degraded. “More than 2 billion hectares [4.9 billion acres] worldwide offer opportunities for restoration—an area larger than South America,” a team of WRI researchers reports.

The bulk of restoration opportunities lies primarily within low-income countries in tropical regions. Those countries cannot manage the level of investment required, nor should they, since the benefits of restoration provide value and a service to all. The relevant stakeholders are the entire human race, and some bear greater responsibility for the problem of climate change than others.

In the West, there has been a long-standing premise that it had to help Africa “develop.” The Western aid and development model for addressing poverty has been dismantled by both Africans and many studies, yet it persists. In Mark’s work, people are growing three things: trees, crops, and wisdom. Foreign aid, sacks of genetically modified corn, and handouts come and go, but if we are to successfully address global warming, we should learn to trust the capacity of people everywhere to understand the consequences and imagine place-based solutions on a collaborative basis, and not force solutions upon them, however well intentioned. —PH

Preventing loss of forest is always better than trying to bring forest back and cure razed land. Because a restored forest never fully recovers its original biodiversity, structure, and complexity, and because it takes decades to sequester the amount of carbon lost in one fell swoop of deforestation, restoration is no replacement for protection.

But why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors? The reasons are the same as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what. If every tree were looking out only for itself, then quite a few of them would never reach old age. Regular fatalities would result in many large gaps in the tree canopy, which would make it easier for storms to get inside the forest and uproot more trees. The heat of summer would reach the forest floor and dry it out. Every tree would suffer.

Engaging local communities in afforestation projects by making them aware of the socioeconomic and environmental benefits of forests is the key to success. Because afforestation is a multidecade endeavor, what properly enables it are provisions for up-front costs, developing markets for forest products, and ensuring clear land rights in order to maintain continuity between planting and eventual harvest.

“The greenest gallon of gas, diesel, heating oil, or ton of coal is the one you don’t burn.”

But here is what I love about the scientific method. Though culture holds its finger on the scale, it cannot stop the restless search for measurable truth. Un-American or not, the math has to work. When fifty years of wall-to-wall research into competition proved inconclusive, researchers went back to the field to find out what else was at play.

We will either come together to address global warming or we will likely disappear as a civilization. To come together we must know our place, not in a hierarchical sense, but in a biological and cultural sense, and reclaim our role as agents of our continued existence. We are surfeited with metaphors of war, such that when we hear the word “defense,” we think attack, but the defense of the world can be accomplished only by unifying, listening, and working side by side.

Science knows that virtually all children exhibit altruistic behavior, even before they can talk. It turns out that concern for the well-being of others is bred in the bone, endemic and hardwired. We became human beings by working together and helping one another. That remains true today. What it takes to reverse global warming is one person after another remembering who we truly are.