Scan barcode
A review by mabersold
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken
5.0
This book isn't about convincing people that climate change is real. If you need more convincing, read a different book. I'm sure there are dozens. What this book is, is the playbook for how we solve the problem. It presents 100 different solutions, some well-known, some more obscure, and some very speculative. It also assigns a value for how much carbon use it will reduce (or remove from the atmosphere) and how much it will cost (many of the solutions will actually save us money, it turns out).
The big surprise is some of these solutions are things one wouldn't normally consider. When I think of reducing emissions, the first things I think of are driving cars and burning coal for electricity. But this book rates the #1 most effective solution as refrigerant management, which we are already on the way to fixing. It does, of course, make the case for other things that are well-known such as wind, solar, and geothermal energy, and a few others you may not have heard of such as concentrated solar. Being a transit junkie, I loved the sections about public transportation, bike infrastructure, and making walkable communities (which included references to Jeff Speck's excellent book Walkable City).
The "coming attractions" section contains most of the speculative proposals, including some that may never really pan out such as Hyperloop. The most interesting to me was using more wood for construction instead of steel, a surprisingly simple but effective idea (since trees are the most effective carbon capture machines we have, coupled with the advent of cross-laminated timber).
Not all of the solutions presented in this book are necessarily going to pan out, but with a problem of this magnitude, everything needs to be considered. Ultimately, the most valuable takeaway I got from reading this book is that, while we have an enormous problem to solve ahead of us, and it's going to be incredibly challenging, things aren't hopeless yet.
The big surprise is some of these solutions are things one wouldn't normally consider. When I think of reducing emissions, the first things I think of are driving cars and burning coal for electricity. But this book rates the #1 most effective solution as refrigerant management, which we are already on the way to fixing. It does, of course, make the case for other things that are well-known such as wind, solar, and geothermal energy, and a few others you may not have heard of such as concentrated solar. Being a transit junkie, I loved the sections about public transportation, bike infrastructure, and making walkable communities (which included references to Jeff Speck's excellent book Walkable City).
The "coming attractions" section contains most of the speculative proposals, including some that may never really pan out such as Hyperloop. The most interesting to me was using more wood for construction instead of steel, a surprisingly simple but effective idea (since trees are the most effective carbon capture machines we have, coupled with the advent of cross-laminated timber).
Not all of the solutions presented in this book are necessarily going to pan out, but with a problem of this magnitude, everything needs to be considered. Ultimately, the most valuable takeaway I got from reading this book is that, while we have an enormous problem to solve ahead of us, and it's going to be incredibly challenging, things aren't hopeless yet.