• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta June 29, 2022
London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty June 29, 2022
G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance June 29, 2022
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ for Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate & Society Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics

‘Comprehensive Plan’ to Reverse Global Warming Saves $74 Trillion Over 30 Years

April 18, 2017
Reading time: 2 minutes

Kenuoene/pixabay

Kenuoene/pixabay

 

Practical steps to stabilize the planetary climate are all around us, and author/entrepreneur Paul Hawken highlights 80 of them in a new book that GreenBiz reviewer Joel Makower calls “likely the most hopeful thing you’ll ever read about our ability to take on global warming.”

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, which Hawken edited, outlines 60 practices that are ready to implement now, and another 20 it describes as “coming attractions.” Together, Makower writes, they could “collectively draw down atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in order to solve, not just slow, climate change, by avoiding emissions or sequestering carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.”

The 80 solutions “are grouped into seven buckets,” Makower writes: “energy; food; women and girls; building and cities; land use; transport; and materials.” To make the cut, each solution had to either reduce energy use, replace fossil energy with renewables, or sequester carbon in soils or plants through regenerative farming, grazing, ocean, and forest practices. “Many, if not most, can be undertaken with little or no new laws or policy, and can be financed profitably by companies and capital markets.”

Solutions are “ranked by cost-effectiveness, speed to implementation, and societal benefit,” Makower writers, alongside information about their greenhouse gas emissions and net financial cost or benefit. The book’s top suggested solution is to proceed aggressively with the destruction of hydrofluorocarbons from refrigeration systems.

Number two is expanding wind power: “an increase in onshore wind from 2% of world electricity use to 21.6%,” the review reports, “could reduce emissions by 84.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide and create a net savings of $7.4 trillion from business as usual by 2050.”

Other conclusions surprised Hawken, whose previous, counterintuitively optimistic titles include Blessed Unrest—an account of non-governmental organized civil society—and his influential Natural Capitalism, co-authored with Amory and Hunter Lovins, which argued for an economy that better acknowledges the economic value of natural systems.

Starting out, Hawken told Makower, “we probably had pretty much the same list that most people come up with: solar, wind, don’t cut trees, don’t eat so much meat, and electric cars.” But after two years of research, “the only one of those that made it to the top seven solutions was wind. We had [electric vehicles] much higher than they turned out to be,” and biofuels didn’t make the list at all. “They don’t actually have any net contribution whatsoever, and that surprised us.”

Still, Makower concludes, “Drawdown’s aggregate bottom line is shockingly affordable: When you total up the net costs for all 80 solutions, the savings add up to US$74 trillion over 30 years.”

Or, as Hawken put it, reflecting on developments in the recent half-decade, “we might have crossed some threshold, where the profit that could be made from the solutions now is greater than the profit being made from the problems.”



in Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

David/flickr
United States

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1.2k
Graco/Facebook
Food Security

Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ for Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use

July 2, 2022
215
willenhallwench / Pixabay
Clean Electricity Grid

PG&E Risks Greenwashing with Definition of ‘Scope 4’ Emissions

June 24, 2022
99

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Geocryologist/wikimedia commons

Lack of Consent Drives Indigenous Opposition to Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mining Plan

May 17, 2022
460
François GOGLINS/wikimedia commons

Corrosion Problem Shutters Half of France’s Nuclear Reactors

June 29, 2022
243
AJEL / Pixabay

Windfall Tax on Food, Fossil, Pharma Giants Would Raise $490B to Solve ‘Catastrophic’ Food Crisis: Oxfam

June 29, 2022
65
Province of B.C./flickr

Comox Joins Municipalities Seeking Ban on New Gas Stations

June 29, 2022
89
London Eye UK England

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
149
Keith Hirsche

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
430

Recent Posts

Number 10/flickr

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
155
futureatlas.com/flickr

Ottawa Demands Deeper Fuel Emissions Cuts, Offers Fossils a Double-Dip on Tax Breaks

June 29, 2022
80
Danielle Scott/flickr

Advocate Urges Ottawa to Intervene Before Ontario Builds Highway 413

June 29, 2022
138
/Piqsels

Refocus Agriculture Spending to Cut Emissions, Boost Productivity, OECD Urges Governments

July 2, 2022
34
Jimmy Emerson, DVM/flickr

Public Vigilance Key to Protecting Greenbelts for Climate Resilience, Report Finds

June 29, 2022
41
Miguel V/Wikimedia Commons

Forests Fall Short of Full Carbon Storage Potential, Study Finds

June 29, 2022
73
Next Post
IEA/World Energy Outlook

‘Golden Age’ of Gas May Not Materialize, ex-IEA Analyst Concedes

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}