Dipping into Paul Hawken’s new compilation/book, DRAWDOWN, I (still) find hope for a healthy planet. “Confucious wrote that calling things by their proper name is the beginning of wisdom,” Drawdown chapter on Language begins. We must first know that decarbonization is a tool that describes the problem, “climate changes and it always has and always will.” So we come to the book’s premise: DRAWDOWN, “the only goal that makes sense for humanity is to reverse global warming, and if parents, scientists, young people, leaders and we citizens do not name the goal there is little chance it will be achieved,” says Hawken.
The U.N. climate agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) studies the comprehensive impacts of climate change on all living systems. “Drawdown is how to begin the reduction of greenhouse gases in order to reverse global warming,” Hawken says.
Hundreds of pages of research stand behind every page of this compendium – “THe Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.” Solutions are ranked by cost effectiveness, how quickly they can be implimented and how benificial they are. Approximately 160 scientists and analysts are represented in these pages. I am so looking forward to the promised sensible and empowering solutions! (in the midst of being unempowered and made ditzy by the DT regime!!!)
Energy is the first platform for change in the book. Focus: to create non-fossil fuel energy sustainably. “We are squarely in the greatest energy transition in history. The era of fossil fuels is over…Clean energy is less expensive,” says Jeremy Leggett.
Explanations for how this works include interconnected grids that can shuttle energy to where it is needed. Currently, however, subsidies to fossil fuel industry is more than $5.3 TRILLION while subsidies to wind power are 10 times less at
$12.3 billion. Wind energy, at 2.9 center per kilowatt hour is rapidly surpassing natural gas combined cycle energy, now over 3 cents per kilowatt hour.
IMPACT: An increase in onshore wind from 2.9 percent of world elecrtricity use to 21.6 percent by 2050 could reduce emssion by 84.6 gigatonsof carbon dioxide…wind turbines can deliver a net savings of $7.7 triillion over three decades of operation.”
OK – so GO WIND POWER…and what’s next?