Ch. 36 Project Drawdown

"We haven't looked at climate change in a holistic, systemic way.

It's the system that causes it, and it's the system that cures it." 

- Paul Hawken

Author's Note: If you haven't watched the Primer Video for this chapter, please do so. 

The following information is drawn from the years of research and hard work provided by Project Drawdown (drawdown.org). 

Project Drawdown is currently the most comprehensive plan in existence for reversing global warming. It should be a household name, recognized by every adult and child in this country. They are a nonprofit organization whose only stated goal is to combat climate change.

Project Drawdown has a three tier strategy for dealing with the climate crisis...

1. Advance Effective, Science-based Climate Solutions and Strategies. Project Drawdown puts science first rather than economics. They try to find “whole system” solutions and strategies for combating climate change.
2. Foster Bold, New Climate Leadership. Project Drawdown’s second strategy is to inform, inspire, and empower business leaders, investors, and philanthropists to take bold positions, act with better strategy, and rapidly bring climate change solutions to scale.
3. Promote New Narratives and New Voices. Project Drawdown works to shift the conversation about climate change. Instead of promoting doom and gloom, they promote possibility and opportunity. They also seek to elevate new and/or underrepresented voices through storytelling and passing the mic (Kosmos, 2023).

Project Drawdown has identified 100 solutions to the climate crisis, ranked in order of efficacy. This list is a product of years of research and computations by a team of experts. 

If you listen to politicians and the media, the solutions to global warming are almost exclusively centered around electric vehicles and the energy sector. If you do some quick research on keywords, and trending internet searches, you'll find this same focus. When it comes to climate change, the only thing most people are talking about is energy and electric vehicles.

But look carefully at the list below.

Of the Top 20 solutions, only 5 have to do with energy. Electric vehicles doesn't even make the Top 20 (it comes in at #26). 

Most of this Top 20 list focuses on Food (8 solutions) and Land use (4 solutions). There are a lot of opportunities for action here that are barely being discussed. 

Let's talk about a few of them that are of particular interest.

#1. Refrigerant management: Think about how many climate control devices you see every day. Perhaps you have an air conditioner unit in your window, not to mention one in your car. You probably have a fridge in your kitchen, and when you go to the supermarket there are dozens of cold cases and cooled storage units.

Managing our refrigerants is crucial to combating climate change. In fact, refrigerant control is a good example of how we’ve already taken action on climate change. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) were once used extensively in refrigerants, but thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, these substances have been phased out of use (Bussiwitz, 2023). 

It only took two years from the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer for the global community to adopt new standards. The hole in the ozone layer has begun to heal, proving that decisive, quick action can achieve the results required.

However, this doesn’t mean we don’t need more refrigerant control. While HCFCs are no longer used, their replacement came in the form of HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons). HFCs have a minimal effect on the ozone layer, but remember, they have the capacity to warm the atmosphere 1 to 9 thousand times more than carbon dioxide (Lindsey, 2023).

One solution is to phase out HFCs, which is just what happened in Kilgari, Rwanda, in 2016. The Montreal Protocol was amended to phase out HFCs as well. HFCs can be replaced by natural refrigerants that already exist, though they can be problematic and additional development may be needed before they will be widely adopted. 

The point here, is that this is the single most impactful solution for reversing global warming, and virtually no one is talking about it. 


#3. Reduced Food Waste: More than a third of the food raised or prepared does not make it from the farm or factory to our forks (Kosmos, 2023). This is a startling number, especially when you take into account that nearly 800 million people worldwide suffer from hunger.

The food wasted by our society contributes 4.4 gigatons of CO2-equivalent into the atmosphere each year — roughly 8% of total anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions (Kosmos, 2023).

Food loss is usually unintended and structural in nature when it occurs in places with low income and an weak infrastructure. Bad roads, lack of storage or refrigeration faculties, poor equipment or lackluster packaging, and environmental conditions like heat and humidity can all contribute to food waste.

In places with higher income, however, unintentional losses are minimal compared to willful food waste. Retailers can reject food based on bumps, bruises, coloration, and other aesthetic objections. Other times, they order too much because they don’t want to risk shortages and angering their customer base.

Consumers are also to blame. They tend to spurn imperfect spuds in the produce section, overestimate how many meals they’ll cook in a given week, toss milk that hasn’t gone bad, or forget their leftovers to spoil in the fridge.

Then there are the basic laws of supply and demand to consider. If a crop isn’t profitable to harvest, it will be left in the field. If a product is too expensive for consumers to buy, then it will languish in the storeroom until it goes bad.

No matter the cause, the outcome is always the same: bad. Producing food that goes uneaten squanders seeds, water, energy, land, fertilizer, labor, and money. It also generates greenhouse gasses at every step of the process, all the way to the end when methane is produced by organic matter in the landfill.


#4. Adoption of a Plant-Rich Diet: Western diets come with a steep climate price tag (Kosmos, 2023). Livestock raising accounts for 15% of greenhouse gasses emitted each year. The production of meat and dairy contributes many more emissions than growing vegetables, fruits, grains, or legumes.

Cows and other ruminants are the most prolific offenders, since they produce methane as they digest their food. Agricultural land use and the associated energy consumption to grow livestock feed produces harmful carbon dioxide emissions. Manure and fertilizers emit nitrous oxide (Kosmos, 2023).

If cattle were a nation, they would be the world’s third largest contributor of greenhouse gasses!

To be clear, a "plant-rich diet" does not mean becoming a vegetarian. It simply means increasing fruit and vegetable intake and decreasing meat consumption. In fact, Managed Grazing, which imitates the migratory patterns of animal herds in the wild, is the #19 solution to global warming. 


#6. Educating Girls: The fact that guaranteeing education to young girls is somehow controversial is  unfortunate as it's a very real problem. It’s estimated that more than 130 million girls are denied the fundamental right to attend school and lay a foundation for their lives (Kosmos, 2023). It’s even worse in secondary education classrooms.

In many parts of the world, girls are utilized as labor. Whether they are fetching water from the river, gathering firewood, or working a stall at the family vegetable stand, girls are often prevented from getting an education by mere circumstances.

There are also cultural barriers, such as patriarchal systems and institutions that believe girls should be home learning to take care of husbands and children rather than trying to get an education or prepare for a career.

How does this relate to global warming? A girl with no schooling tends to have four to five more children on average than those with an education. This contributes to overpopulation and an increase in greenhouse gasses.

Education also provides resilience to climate change, and its impacts. The single most important factor to reducing vulnerability to natural disasters is education (Kosmos, 2023).

#7. Family Planning: Right now, family planning centers are considered a privilege instead of a right. This needs to change, so women can have children by choice rather than by chance, and plan their family’s size and spacing.

It’s estimated that 225 million women in lower-income countries want to have control over whether or not they become pregnant. However, they lack the necessary access to contraceptives, whether by financial reasons or religious decree. This results in more than 74 million unwanted pregnancies each year. Even in the US, more than 45% of pregnancies are unintended (Kosmos, 2023).

Some things obviously need to change. Besides making family planning and contraceptives available cheaply or even free to any women who need them, we have to overhaul our basic understanding of these processes. Often, pregnancy is seen as ‘God’s will’ rather than the consequence of natural and societal factors. Birth control access needs to be safe, cheap, and easily available. Societal pressures on women not to use it need to evaporate.

Unwanted pregnancies result in families that are too large to easily feed and take care of. This increases the production of greenhouse gasses and exacerbates the economic inequality that began them in the first place.

Let's be clear. Overpopulation is a big contributing factor for global warming. The fact is that we haven't had a sustainable population on this planet since 1970. 

Important Note: When we combine #6. Educating girls and #7. Family planning, this becomes the
#1 solution for reversing global warming. These two are not only important for the future of humanity, they are the right thing to do, ethically and morally. This is about guaranteeing human rights and gender equality for all. 

And this is something that most every solution on this list has in common. Yes, they reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses that we collectively emit, but they also make the world a better place. 

#9. Silvopasture reduces atmospheric CO2, but it also creates a more comfortable, natural and protected environment for raising livestock. 

#11. Regenerative Agriculture methods which have been practiced for centuries by indigenous peoples worldwide, protect topsoil, increase biodiversity and improve water cycles. 

Every one of these strategies makes our natural world a little cleaner, healthier, safer and more resilient. 

A 30 Year Plan

This is a long term, multi-faceted plan that gives each of us many ways to take action and make a difference. 

Which of these solutions surprised you?

Which one moves you to action and motivates you to make a difference?

Can you imagine a worker-cooperative business or a non-profit cooperative that could address the solution that inspired you?

There are so many opportunities for action here. Imagine the new markets that will open up once we begin a collective movement towards this better world.

Progress Tends to Pay for Itself

Yes, this plan is expensive. It will cost about  $1 Trillion per year, to implement worldwide. That's a total of $29 Trillion over the next 30 years. 

But remember when we talked about how much global warming is going to cost? Billions of dollars in the short term, and Trillions in the long term. Not to mention the cost in human lives and species extinction. 

Calculations show that Project Drawdown will actually save us $74 Trillion over the next 30 years. This is more than twice what it will cost to implement, making it cheaper to do the right thing. 

But how do we begin to implement these solutions?

In the following chapter we'll talk about how to strategically, and most effectively implement Project Drawdown in your own backyard.