What is the main message of Drawdown?

The main message of Drawdown is that we have the solutions to reverse global warming.

How long does it take to read Drawdown?

The estimated reading time for Drawdown is several hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of Drawdown?

The author of Drawdown is Paul Hawken.

Nature & the Environment

Drawdown Book Summary - Drawdown Book explained in key points

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Drawdown summary

Name: Drawdown
Rating: 4.3 (138 reviews)
Author: Paul Hawken (ed.)

Paul Hawken (ed.)

The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

4.3 (138 ratings)

28 mins

Brief summary

Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken, is a comprehensive plan to reverse global warming. It outlines 100 solutions that can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by the world's leading experts. This book provides a comprehensive perspective on how humanity can combat climate change.

Topics

Climate Change Sustainability

Table of Contents

Drawdown
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Learn how we can solve the climate crisis.

If you care about your home planet at all, there’s good reason to be depressed and frightened right now. From record heat waves to acidified oceans, from wildfires to melting ice caps, the effects of global warming are materializing even faster than scientists anticipated. Despite these alarming warning signs, the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere as a consequence of human activity is steadily increasing.

Project Drawdown is a coalition of scientists and researchers dedicated to changing this equation. Using peer-reviewed science and mathematical models, their goal is to illuminate simple and economically viable solutions that drastically reduce, and even reverse, humanity’s CO2 emissions.

These blinks list some of the most promising solutions to global warming, encouraging individuals, communities, businesses and governments to overcome apathy and take action. From tried-and-tested technologies like renewable energy to less intuitive approaches such as strengthening the rights of indigenous people, these strategies will play a significant role in saving the planet – while benefiting human health, communities and wallets along the way.

In these blinks, you’ll also learn

how a vegetarian diet can help save the planet;
which common household appliance is a major cause of global warming; and
why cows and trees belong together.

Global warming caused by human carbon emissions is real but reversible.

When Prussian polymath Alexander von Humboldt crossed the Baraba Steppe of Russia in 1829, he was shocked. In his diary, he noted how the intense agriculture of the region had depleted the land, desiccating its beautiful lakes and swamps.

Humboldt was one of the first scientists to acknowledge the negative effects humans could have on their environment. He prophetically identified deforestation and the “great masses of steam and gas” released during industrial processes as two major environmental threats.

One and a half centuries later, in 1975, geochemist Wallace Broecker first used the term “global warming” to describe the continuous rise of the earth’s surface temperature. Today, there’s no doubt this warming is real. Scientists now predict that temperatures will rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The consequences of climate change include wildfires, droughts and sea level rise, which in turn will lead to violent conflicts and mass migration.

Much like Humboldt predicted, global warming is essentially caused by the “great masses of steam and gas” produced by human activity such as burning fossil fuels, making cement and farming land. These all release carbon dioxide, or CO2, into the earth’s atmosphere, thereby generating a “greenhouse effect” that leads to the warming of the planet.

Despite a clear connection between carbon emissions and global warming, humanity’s carbon footprint is steadily increasing. In 2016, 36 gigatons of CO2 were emitted. Imagine the contents of an Olympic-size pool, and then multiply that by 400,000 – that’s one gigaton.

At this rate, simply slowing or cutting carbon emissions will not be enough to stop global warming. We need to reach drawdown – the point in time at which greenhouse gases peak and then start steadily decreasing.

If we’re to achieve this, we obviously need to radically reduce our CO2 emissions. But we must also promote processes, such as the natural photosynthesis of plants, that decrease the CO2 already in the atmosphere.

Luckily, we already possess the tools we need to reverse global warming. Renewable energy, forest protection and sustainable agriculture are some of these technologies. Newer strategies include e-cars, ocean farming and carbon air capture. Almost all of these technologies have additional benefits: they save money, create jobs, prevent pollution and improve people’s health.

In the following blinks, we’ll explore in depth how these “no regrets” solutions can cut carbon emissions and help us achieve drawdown.

Renewable energy from solar, wind and water needs to replace energy from fossil fuels.

If you turn on the lights in your home, where does the electricity come from? Most likely, it was generated by burning fossil fuels. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s electricity comes from fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil, all of which contain massive amounts of carbon.

But if we’re serious about reversing global warming, we need to radically change this. Luckily, energy is all around us, stored in the rays of the sun and the motions of wind and water. The technology to harvest these renewable energies is becoming increasingly efficient, making them competitive with fossil fuels.

We need to eat less meat, make farming more diverse and reduce our food waste.

What do Buddha, Confucius and Leonardo da Vinci have in common? They were all proponents of a plant-based diet.

Their ancient wisdom is lost on current generations: the world is eating more meat than ever. And the meat industry accounts for 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which come from both the animals themselves and the agriculture needed to feed them.

Cities need to improve their building standards, infrastructure and power supply to save energy.

Smog, traffic congestion and a lack of greenery can make cities seem like the antithesis to living at one with nature. But the density of urban centers could actually allow them to become frontline innovators of climate-friendly solutions for water, energy and lighting.

The first step to making a city more climate-friendly is making its buildings more energy-efficient. There are many ways to reduce energy use in buildings. Wall and ceiling insulation made from fiberglass or even old newspapers can prevent heat loss in winter and overheating in summer, reducing the need for heating and air conditioning. Greening roofs with plants keeps buildings cool while sequestering carbon. “Smart” electrochromic glass changes its color according to the time of the day, saving on heating and lighting. Not only do these technologies cut electricity costs, but their widespread adoption will have a net positive effect on the environment. For instance, if energy-friendly LED light bulbs became ubiquitous in buildings worldwide by 2050, we would save a total of 12.8 gigatons in carbon emissions.

Traditional modes of transportation must become more fuel-efficient, and should be supplanted by climate-friendly alternatives.

Mobility is an important part of our sense of freedom. We want to be able to move around in the world, visit loved ones and travel to exotic places. Unfortunately, the cars, buses and planes we rely on to do so all use traditional combustion engines that burn fossil fuels – lots of them. The ships and trucks that transport our food and products aren’t much greener. To decrease CO2 emissions, these vehicles need to become more fuel-efficient. New designs, technology upgrades, better maintenance and monitoring can contribute to reducing their fuel use, thereby cutting emissions.

Currently, planes account for 2.5% of global carbon emissions, a number that’s bound to grow as air travel becomes increasingly popular around the world. To counter this increase in flights, Boeing and NASA are already collaborating on an aircraft designed to be 50 percent more fuel-efficient than a regular plane. This new aircraft has its engine in the rear and finer wings, rendering it lighter and more aerodynamic.

We need to protect forests, peats and wetlands, and restore degraded land.

So far, we’ve mainly addressed the first part of the formula to solve climate change: cutting carbon emissions. But to reverse global warming, we also need to protect and restore the ecosystems that naturally take up carbon in the atmosphere and put it back in the soil where it belongs.

Forests, especially rainforests, are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. Plants, insects, animals and trees live in close proximity, forming complex communities of mutual benefit. Only recently, scientists discovered that individual trees communicate with each other via a hidden network of fungi in the soil. Over this “wood wide web,” they share nutrients and vital information about insects, droughts and other dangers. Taken all together, forests store 300 billion tons of carbon, yet 15 billion trees are cut down each year. When forests are destroyed, soil health plummets, and the degraded land releases its carbon content into the air. More than 10 percent of annual carbon emissions are caused this way.

Conventional materials need to be recycled after use and replaced by sustainable alternatives.

There’s a single household item that has contributed more to global warming than cows and planes combined, and you’re using it daily: your fridge. Most refrigerators, supermarket cases and air conditioners use cooling chemicals that are extremely harmful to the climate. In fact, a unit of the chemical used in fridges releases 9,000 times more heat into the atmosphere than a single CO2 molecule.

The dominant chemical used for refrigeration nowadays is called hydrofluorocarbon, or HFC. And at an international conference in 2016, 170 countries agreed that HFCs are so adversely affecting our climate that they need to be phased out completely by 2024. However, since the danger of refrigerants is greatest at disposal, their removal from circulation will need to be carefully monitored. But if done correctly, phasing out HCFs and other harmful refrigerants by 2050 could reduce carbon emissions by 90 gigatons, making it the number one solution to climate change. Scientists estimate that this measure alone will reduce global warming by a full degree Fahrenheit.

Targeted education programs can empower individuals around the world to lower their carbon footprints.

Devising policies, putting in place regulations and providing subsidies that cut carbon emissions and protect ecosystems are all jobs for governments, businesses and organizations. But reversing global warming equally relies on individuals changing their behavior. Public campaigns, peer-to-peer training and grassroots information sharing will be essential tools in effecting such change.

Farmers are an especially important audience for such education efforts, as sustainable farming stands to save tons of carbon emissions. NGOs are now teaching sustainable farming techniques around the world. For example, the System of Rice Intensification, or SRI, is a climate-friendly approach to improving the production of rice, a staple food across the globe. Its key components involve transplanting rice seedlings earlier, draining the fields mid-season instead of continuously flooding them, and reducing the use of synthetic fertilizers in favor of organic compost.

Technologies such as self-driving cars, ocean farming and carbon capture hold further potential to reverse emissions.

By now we have gotten to know plenty of well-established technologies that, if combined and spread, can reverse climate change. In addition to these tried-and-tested solutions, start-ups and NGOs around the world constantly come up with new ideas to reduce emissions and sequester carbon. Let’s take a look at three of the technologies currently in development.

While self-driving cars might not seem inherently climate-friendly, many of the companies developing them are pairing them with low-emission technologies such as electric motors, ride-sharing and smart traffic routing. These initiatives may ultimately reduce fuel and individual car use, thus also cutting carbon emissions.

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What is Drawdown about?

There’s no doubt: global warming is real and its main driver is carbon emissions from human activity. Drawdown (2017) argues that despite the depth of the climate crisis humans have manufactured, it’s not too late for us to turn back the clock. From solar power to agroforestry to electric cars, Drawdown compiles countless proven ways that radically reduce human carbon emissions. This essential guide contains all the knowledge and technology that we need to reverse global warming and save the world.

Drawdown Review

Drawdown (2017) is a comprehensive guide that explores the top 100 solutions to reverse global warming. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It presents pragmatic solutions that can be implemented on an individual and global level, empowering readers to take action.
Through its real-life examples and comprehensive research, the book provides a thorough understanding of the impact each solution can have.
With its optimistic tone and focus on opportunities, the book not only educates but also inspires readers to actively participate in addressing climate change.

Who should read Drawdown?

Individuals who care about the future of humanity
Business owners, policy makers, activists and homeowners who want to make a measurable difference
Science nerds, tech enthusiasts and nature lovers

About the Author

Project Drawdown is a community of scientists, activists and politicians dedicated to researching and spreading ways to solve global warming. Its champions and advisors include environmentalist Bill McKibben, forester Peter Wohlleben, and activists Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen. Paul Hawken, an environmentalist, journalist and entrepreneur, is the co-founder of Project Drawdown and the book’s editor.

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