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Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken
sophiadh's review against another edition
5.0
I thought this book would be about things that individuals could do to reverse global warming, but it is far more than that. It examines 100 solutions, 80 that are already in use and can be expanded and 20 that are still in development. The solutions range from on and offshore wind turbines, to various kinds of farming that eliminate the use of pesticides and other chemicals, to the education and empowerment of women. Some of them are things that individuals can take action on, but many of them are solutions that need to be implemented on a larger scale. I found it thought provoking about the world I live in and the built in assumptions. The solution with the largest potential impact is refrigerant management – the chemicals in refrigerators and air conditioners. It’s not so much the use of these things that cause damage to the environment, but leaks and disposal. Air conditioning has become very common in parts of the world. It was a big thing on my list of desires when I was looking for an apartment. Now I think about Drawdown every time I turn it on. Same with using my car or going to the grocery store. Awareness is a big part of driving change and this book does that very well.
hazelisoffline's review against another edition
5.0
Haven't read it all because it's more of a reference book than a book-book but god what a fantastic idea. Not only do we have the answers, they're /in front of us/, a neatly ranked laundry list of viable solutions.
brinnet's review against another edition
5.0
This book contains one to two page summaries of solutions to climate change (from "eating a plant based diet" to "windmills" to "educating women") with carefully researched statistics and data. It also estimates how much CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere if these changes were adopted by a specific, reasonable number of people and ranks the solutions by the amount of CO2 they would remove. Among the statistics are the estimated costs of implementing the solutions.
I mean, wow, right?
The solutions go from the small scale, affordable (LED lights or reducing food waste) to the county-wide, super expensive (nuclear power), and with each discussion the feasibility and sometimes controversial nature, is discussed. Some solutions are meant to be transitional (landfill gasses) and some are for the long haul (solar).
I felt inspired, excited, and hopeful, which is a delightful change from so much other climate change information focused on fear and failure.
The end section of the book touches on new, upcoming technologies to look forward to, and concludes with a reminder that people take action when presented with possibility and opportunity. Humans thrive on community, collaboration, and cooperation, so if we work together to help one another, we will do our best.
Bottom line: Anyone with any environmental leanings should check this book out. It's great for skimming, and I would also want to try to incorporate it into my classroom somehow!
👩🏻🏫🌲🌏💡
I mean, wow, right?
The solutions go from the small scale, affordable (LED lights or reducing food waste) to the county-wide, super expensive (nuclear power), and with each discussion the feasibility and sometimes controversial nature, is discussed. Some solutions are meant to be transitional (landfill gasses) and some are for the long haul (solar).
I felt inspired, excited, and hopeful, which is a delightful change from so much other climate change information focused on fear and failure.
The end section of the book touches on new, upcoming technologies to look forward to, and concludes with a reminder that people take action when presented with possibility and opportunity. Humans thrive on community, collaboration, and cooperation, so if we work together to help one another, we will do our best.
Bottom line: Anyone with any environmental leanings should check this book out. It's great for skimming, and I would also want to try to incorporate it into my classroom somehow!
👩🏻🏫🌲🌏💡
portcitykt's review against another edition
4.0
I read this following the discussion of climate change at our library’s Great Discussion group. Listing the changes in order of how impactful they could be in reducing CO2 emissions was very impressive. I found the food and women sections especially worthwhile and issues were discussed that I never thought of such as clean cookstoves. Many experts and much research went into this insightful read.
larson49's review against another edition
4.0
//read via recommendation from the patagonia catalog/magazine//
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 = yep I'm sold
Action Items:
-Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy from solar, wind, and water (see Liverpool and Denmark)
-Eat less meat: adopting a begetarian diet can cut our carob emissions from food consumption by 63%
-Change how we grow plants: degraded soil releases carbon content into the air
-Lower traffic congestion, energy-efficient buildings, improve the flow of electricity, water, and heating
-More fuel efficient transportation
-Protect forests, peats, and wetlands while also restoring degraded land (see Brazil)
-Get a better fridge
-Educate
Nothing in here is ground breaking or something that hasn't been put in another global warming book, but I enjoyed the science behind it.
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 = yep I'm sold
Action Items:
-Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy from solar, wind, and water (see Liverpool and Denmark)
-Eat less meat: adopting a begetarian diet can cut our carob emissions from food consumption by 63%
-Change how we grow plants: degraded soil releases carbon content into the air
-Lower traffic congestion, energy-efficient buildings, improve the flow of electricity, water, and heating
-More fuel efficient transportation
-Protect forests, peats, and wetlands while also restoring degraded land (see Brazil)
-Get a better fridge
-Educate
Nothing in here is ground breaking or something that hasn't been put in another global warming book, but I enjoyed the science behind it.
nghia's review against another edition
2.0
This is an encyclopedia of 100 technologies to reverse climate change. And just as paper encyclopedias are obsolete and completely replaced by online ones, this is a not very good book. When I say that, I'm talking more about the artifact, the book itself, rather than the content per se. Because the research is actually very good! It is a fascinating springboard into countless hours of research. You've heard about solar power and electric cars and smart thermostats. But you've probably heard less, if anything, about grid flexibility, silvopasture, multistrata agroforestry, tree intercropping, and improved ship designs. Like other encyclopedias this isn't really a book designed to be read cover to cover, it is meant to be dipped into leisurely from time to time. Like other encyclopedias the individual chapters vary somewhat in quality, having been written by different authors.
The problem is just that all of this works much better online. So don't buy this book and instead just look at their website. (Disclaimer: I said that before looking at their website and seeing how amazingly terrible it is. Still, I stand by "this works better as a website than a book", even if they seem to be incompetent at building a website.)
Why don't I like this as a book? Let's start with the small quibbles. I read the e-book and there are several charts that are impossible to read due to small size and low quality. That's pretty common on e-books. But they include links to bigger versions! Awesome! Except four of the six links no longer work -- just three years after the book came out.
The organization is haphazard to the point of incoherence. Are the entries in alphabetical order? Nope, "Wind Turbines" comes before "Microgrids". Are they in order of ranking? Nope, "Wave and Tidal" at #29 is listed before "Concentrated Solar" at #25. Are they in some sort of thematic grouping? Not really. "Silvopasture", "Tree Intercropping", and "Multistrata Agroforestry" aren't next to one another and are instead separated by completely unrelated strategies like "Improved Rice Cultivation". The #1 strategy, "Refrigeration", comes 67% of the way into the book.
There is zero "signposting" on individual entries to help you put them into context. Open it at random to a given strategy: LED Lighting (Household). Rank: #33. Reduced CO2: 7.81 gigatons. Net cost: $323.5 billion. Net savings: $1.73 trillion. Is...that a lot? Or not much? Is that one of the more expensive strategies? Or is it really cheap? It is very easy to get lost in the details and the book's design does nothing really to help you out.
While I understand the marketing appeal of the book -- this certainly got a lot more notice than just a website would have! -- I just think it doesn't work especially well as a book and that's my single biggest complaint.
I have a few other smaller complaints. The title promises a "comprehensive plan" but there's actually no plan in the book. It is just a bunch of building blocks for a plan. This really comes out at the end of each section where they briefly explain their reasoning for the numbers they provide. It is often very unclear to me whether their model is based on "the status quo just keeps on keeping on" or massive global advocacy or something else. For instance in the section on "Tropical Forests" it states:
So....no extra work is necessary here? We're done? Good job everyone!
Or when they talk about reducing food waste they write
But...what's their actual plan to get reducing food waste by 50%? A suspiciously round number that sounds made up, by the way. More like a hope or a goal than a plan.
Finally, it was somewhat disappointing to read in the Methdology appendix at the end of the book that adopting all of the strategies in the book doesn't actually result in a drawdown.
This isn't (just) a minor complaint. The entire ordering of solutions changes if you switch from the Plausible Scenario to the Drawdown Scenario. "Regenerative Agriculture" becomes less important, going from #11 to #14. "Tropical Forests" leap frogs over "Plant-Rich Diet" becoming more important. "Refrigeration" is no longer the #1 ranked strategy.
I understand that advocacy, especially in a contentious topic like climate change, walks a fine line between inspiring and achievable. About not wanting to be easily dismissed as out of touch, impossible, dreaming. It is still somewhat disappointing to feel a bit mislead by the title, though.
And this is something where a dynamic website is vastly more useful than a static book, if you could click on different models and see the changes update in real time and then explore.
The problem is just that all of this works much better online. So don't buy this book and instead just look at their website. (Disclaimer: I said that before looking at their website and seeing how amazingly terrible it is. Still, I stand by "this works better as a website than a book", even if they seem to be incompetent at building a website.)
Why don't I like this as a book? Let's start with the small quibbles. I read the e-book and there are several charts that are impossible to read due to small size and low quality. That's pretty common on e-books. But they include links to bigger versions! Awesome! Except four of the six links no longer work -- just three years after the book came out.
The organization is haphazard to the point of incoherence. Are the entries in alphabetical order? Nope, "Wind Turbines" comes before "Microgrids". Are they in order of ranking? Nope, "Wave and Tidal" at #29 is listed before "Concentrated Solar" at #25. Are they in some sort of thematic grouping? Not really. "Silvopasture", "Tree Intercropping", and "Multistrata Agroforestry" aren't next to one another and are instead separated by completely unrelated strategies like "Improved Rice Cultivation". The #1 strategy, "Refrigeration", comes 67% of the way into the book.
There is zero "signposting" on individual entries to help you put them into context. Open it at random to a given strategy: LED Lighting (Household). Rank: #33. Reduced CO2: 7.81 gigatons. Net cost: $323.5 billion. Net savings: $1.73 trillion. Is...that a lot? Or not much? Is that one of the more expensive strategies? Or is it really cheap? It is very easy to get lost in the details and the book's design does nothing really to help you out.
While I understand the marketing appeal of the book -- this certainly got a lot more notice than just a website would have! -- I just think it doesn't work especially well as a book and that's my single biggest complaint.
I have a few other smaller complaints. The title promises a "comprehensive plan" but there's actually no plan in the book. It is just a bunch of building blocks for a plan. This really comes out at the end of each section where they briefly explain their reasoning for the numbers they provide. It is often very unclear to me whether their model is based on "the status quo just keeps on keeping on" or massive global advocacy or something else. For instance in the section on "Tropical Forests" it states:
Using current and estimated commitments from the Bonn Challenge and New York Declaration on Forests, our model assumes that restoration could occur on 435 million acres.
So....no extra work is necessary here? We're done? Good job everyone!
Or when they talk about reducing food waste they write
After taking into account the adoption of plant-rich diets, if 50 percent of food waste is reduced by 2050, avoided emissions could be equal to 26.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide.
But...what's their actual plan to get reducing food waste by 50%? A suspiciously round number that sounds made up, by the way. More like a hope or a goal than a plan.
Finally, it was somewhat disappointing to read in the Methdology appendix at the end of the book that adopting all of the strategies in the book doesn't actually result in a drawdown.
The data shown throughout Drawdown represents the incremental impact, cost, and/or savings of an ambitious but plausible adoption of the respective solutions when compared to a thirty-year period in which growth is fixed at current levels relative to market size. [...] We call this the Plausible Scenario—an optimistic, feasible framework and forecast that models the incremental impacts of increased adoption.
[...]
Could any of these scenarios actually achieve drawdown? The Plausible Scenario would not.
This isn't (just) a minor complaint. The entire ordering of solutions changes if you switch from the Plausible Scenario to the Drawdown Scenario. "Regenerative Agriculture" becomes less important, going from #11 to #14. "Tropical Forests" leap frogs over "Plant-Rich Diet" becoming more important. "Refrigeration" is no longer the #1 ranked strategy.
I understand that advocacy, especially in a contentious topic like climate change, walks a fine line between inspiring and achievable. About not wanting to be easily dismissed as out of touch, impossible, dreaming. It is still somewhat disappointing to feel a bit mislead by the title, though.
And this is something where a dynamic website is vastly more useful than a static book, if you could click on different models and see the changes update in real time and then explore.
lorendia's review against another edition
3.0
Great topics and information; could have been presented more clearly
rachel17's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
4.0
I didn’t particularly enjoy reading this book, but I’m still planning to buy it (at a used bookstore).
I really had to bribe myself to get through it all — it’s rather dry, and it feels like any non Anglo-European perspectives were added as afterthoughts.
That said! This book sure lives up to its subtitle. It’s an incredibly comprehensive conglomeration of ideas, and I want it on my shelf so I can refer back to it as needed. It’s a better reference book than a cover-to-cover read, but I needed to know what was in it in order to reference properly. Anyway, glad I finished it!
I really had to bribe myself to get through it all — it’s rather dry, and it feels like any non Anglo-European perspectives were added as afterthoughts.
That said! This book sure lives up to its subtitle. It’s an incredibly comprehensive conglomeration of ideas, and I want it on my shelf so I can refer back to it as needed. It’s a better reference book than a cover-to-cover read, but I needed to know what was in it in order to reference properly. Anyway, glad I finished it!
lukescalone's review against another edition
3.0
Great if used as a reference work, mind-numbingly dull if you read it like a typical book. Might be better suited for an interactive website.