Accelerating climate solutions
When politicians set a lofty goal like zero emissions, engineers scramble. Platitudes may win elections, but it takes timber and nails to build bridges. Or willows and biochar to deal with our sh*t.
When politicians set a lofty goal like zero emissions, engineers scramble. Platitudes may win elections, but it takes timber and nails to build bridges. Or willows and biochar to deal with our sh*t.
This is definitely not a case of, “Problem solved!” At this stage, the pathways outlined in the book represent a theoretically possible set of strategies that could help us escape the climate trap—if we can summon the courage to change not just policies, but significant and deeply engrained aspects of our industrial ways of life.
Drawdown was a major collaborative effort involving 70 research fellows from 40 countries. It’s not so much a cohesive plan as a list of partial solutions: 80 that are tested and in use at least somewhere in the world, and another 20 that are speculative.
The task of Project Drawdown was not to create new data but to look at the hundred most promising solutions to climate change and rank them, based on cost, readiness, impact and scalability. The results were just published April 18 by Penguin as Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. It is already the number one bestseller and at this writing is sold out on Amazon.
High in the mountains of Veracruz, Mexico, a small cooperative is “farming carbon” — practicing agriculture in a way that fights climate change while simultaneously meeting human needs.
COP21, like the United Nations climate conferences before it, appears to be floundering over international non-binding showcase “commitments” to reduce carbon emissions — and is emitting effusive illusions of progress.
It is easy to forget that once upon a time all agriculture was organic, grassfed, and regenerative.
I’ve completed my book and thus my journey through Carbon Country for the time being, and I thought I’d revisit here some of the things I’ve learned along the way, especially as they relate to our nation’s ongoing political crisis.