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

Edited by Paul Hawken

Hennepin County Library paperback 221 pages plus methodology, charts, contributors' bios, acknowledgements, and index

Published: 2017

Genre: non-fiction, science, environment

 

This book is amazing, but it's overdue and someone's waiting for it! I got it after reading Inconspicuous Consumption. That book was discouraging, but this one offers hope via solutions! 

 

It is broken into sections: Energy, Food, Women and Girls, Buildings and Cities, Land Use, Transport, Materials, and Coming Attractions. Within each of those sections are possible things we could do to reduce carbon dioxide, what it would cost, and how much money and energy could be saved. 

 

The solutions are well-researched and well-thought out. Each solution is given a ranking for its efficacy and the back of the book has lists with the rankings by overall ranking ( #1 is refrigeration within Materials and #80 is retrofitting within Buildings and Cities.) The lists in back also include solution rankings within each sector.

 

I have only read through biomass, but I love this book! It makes me think of possibilities and choices (individual and on a policy level). I would gladly buy this book . . . but I need to return it now and put it on my TBR list for when I have more time to read and fewer books.

 

I have three post-it notes on page xiii! This page is titled "Language" and it makes some excellent points.

 

...terms such as "combat," "battle," and "crusade" imply that climate change is the enemy and it needs to be slain. Climate is a function of biological activity on earth, and physics and chemistry in the sky.

 

Addressing, slowing, or arresting emissions is necessary, but insufficient. If you are traveling down the wrong road, you are still on the wrong road if you slow down.

 

What we measure and model in Drawdown is how to begin the reduction of greenhouse gases in order to reverse global warming.

 

The whole entire foreword is really fantastic! These three snippets give just a taste of the thoughtfulness that went into making this book.

 

This is from the "Wind Turbines" section:

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.

 

Ugh. Big money and power. 

 

The ways and means for the United States to be fossil fuel and energy independent are here. What is often missing is political will and leadership.

 

I feel as though we are going backwards . . . The Kyoto Treaty, the Paris Agreement . . . and now a president who wants to take us back to the 1950s with more coal mining and drilling for oil. Sigh. We are not being wise stewards, America.

 

I tried to get my husband to read the sections on Solar Farms and Rooftop Solar, but he wasn't interested. "We already know we want to do solar at the lake." 

 

This book is fascinating. I might need to put it on my books to buy list . . .