Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. Jurriaan Kamp spoke with the editor of the book, environmentalist, entrepreneur and activist Paul Hawken who is also the author of Blessed Unrest, Natural Capitalism and The Ecology of Commerce.
Jurriaan Kamp: The “Plausible Scenario” in the book doesn’t achieve drawdown by 2050. The more optimistic Drawdown scenario does. How likely is it that we will indeed succeed in reversing global warming?
Paul Hawken: “We modeled each solution using the growth statistics and curves of the leading energy institutions in the world, the International Energy Agency (IEA), The International Renewable Energy (Irena), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and others. We didn’t model to achieve drawdown. We looked at each solution and then we hit the total button. Our Plausible Scenario doesn’t achieve drawdown and I’m kind of glad it didn’t. We modelled always with a bias towards the conservative. As we sent the book to our advisors, the consistent criticism we got was that we were too conservative. That’s exactly where we want to be. Our model is based on what exists today. We optimized only a few of the scenarios and that brought us to drawdown in 2045. Moreover: What we will be able to achieve in the next 30 years is not part of the plan. But we did include 20 ‘coming attractions’ in the book. These are scientifically validated, potential game-changers that show the potential of human ingenuity and imagination. But they are not part of the model because they are still too new.”
So what is the message of Drawdown?
“The very first message is: Name the goal! If you don’t name the goal, you have a fat chance you are going to hit it. Our goal was to see whether we can achieve a reversal of global warming—drawdown. Climate mitigation, CO2 reduction, stabilization or zero emissions are not goals for me. You don’t stabilize the climate by limiting the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm) of CO2. There’s probably no stabilization at the moment around 400 ppm. So we want to name the goal.
Our second message is that we have the means at hand to achieve the goal within a reasonable amount of time. And finally: We didn’t make this plan. It’s a map of what’s happening. It’s here and it’s scaling. We are used to hear that we are failing and falling short and that we have stupid, rightwing leaders. The reality is that underneath all that, humanity is mobilizing to seriously address climate change and global warming.”
The subtitle of Drawdown reads: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. That’s quite a claim.
“While we were finishing the book I spoke with three of the best-known international climate change experts—professors and authors who have been leading this field for the past 25-30 years. I asked them to write down their top-5 solutions for global warming. It took them a long time. Moreover: They were all wrong. Their top solutions are not the top solutions according to the data of the leading institutions as we have researched those. Here’s my point: We are 40 years into global warming. It is the most serious problem humanity has ever faced. We have created it and the authorities in the field cannot name the top-5 solutions. That’s an astonishing anthropological fact. There is no plan. The situation looks like the time before we had a map of the world. People went sailing not knowing where they were going. Some of them thought they might reach the edge of the world. There was no map. And slowly that map emerged and that changed everything. The same applies now: Drawdown presents a map of where we are. Now we can discuss priorities, investments, education, awareness et cetera.”
One of the 100 solutions presented in Drawdown stands out: Nuclear energy. Reversing global warming with nuclear energy seems like solving one problem while creating the next?
“We are not advocates. We are measuring what exists. The fact is that today nuclear energy generates 11 percent of electricity worldwide and that share is growing. Our job is to model the impact when we use certain technologies or when we make certain choices. We are not a pressure group. We are not putting our beliefs into the world. Then our objectivity is gone. If you ask my personal opinion? Well, I think that nuclear energy is absolutely the most idiotic way ever developed in the world to boil water. It’s absurd.”
Solar energy only comes in at the eight place in the Drawdown list while most people see solar as the ultimate response to global warming?
“We know that the combustion of fossil fuels has been the biggest cause of CO2 in the atmosphere. So the usual response is: We need to replace oil, gas and coal with renewable, low-carbon sources of energy. The mantra has been that we could solve the problem if we implement solar and wind, replace combustion engine cars with electric vehicles, eat less meat and don’t cut trees. Our data don’t support that perspective. There are many other—and better—solutions to reduce the amount of energy we need. That said: It is also a fact that everybody has been wrong about solar for 20 years. The most optimistic projections for solar have always been too low.”
CO2 is not our only problem. As the world gets warmer the permafrost in places like Siberia melts and that releases methane, an even worse greenhouse gas. What does Drawdown say about methane?
“If the permafrost melts, it is like a Permian extinction (the period known, some 250 million years ago, known as the “Great Dying”—jjk). However, if drawdown succeeds—and it can—global temperatures won’t rise further, or even come down, and the permafrost will not melt. Moreover: There is a scientifically proven approach to repopulate the ‘mammoth steppe’ with animals who protect the permafrost and help to reverse the warming trend. It’s like a huge ‘reforestation’ project and the first ‘coming attraction’ in our book. So there are no projections for this solution in our model, but this could be the single largest solution of the 100 we present.”
Can politics create obstacles for the promising message of Drawdown?
“Governments can accelerate, be neutral or they can delay. The current U.S. administration delays. But we were always dealing with a Congress that was dragging its feet. Let’s assume that Trump approves the Keystone Pipeline. So the pipeline is there and the tar sand oil from Canada can now go to the Gulf of Mexico to be refined. But that tar sand oil was going to be combusted somewhere regardless. If not through the pipeline, it would have gone in a truck or by train… unless market forces leave that oil in the ground. We spent two and a half years with our nose in the numbers. We looked at money, not just carbon, and we saw that fossil fuels are economically dead. That has nothing to do with ideology or with ‘green’ commitments. I don’t know how many more years it will take but there will be a collapse in the market value of energy companies as it will become clear that they have stranded assets. These assets will never come out of the ground, or be sold or combusted. They will simply be too expensive. Renewable energy will be cheaper, more efficient and better for human health. In the Trump administration you see a sunset effect of the old guard of the fossil fuel industry.”
Has the Drawdown project made you an optimist about the future?
“I don’t think that way. I’m not interested in hope. Hope is the mask of fear. And fear has been the methodology of the communication about climate change. You mix fear with doom and gloom and stir well with shame and guilt and you have apathy. That has not worked! That’s why we created a book with solutions that are surprising, interesting, accessible, and delightful; and a goal that is aspirational but also meaningful and possible. We are saying: This is a gift, not a curse. We caused global warming and we can undo it. And when we undo it, we will create a world that is so much more interesting and kinder to each other and to all living things than the world we live in right now. If you think that global warning is happening to you, to your family and your country, then you become a victim and you are disempowered. If you think it’s happening for you, you take 100 percent responsibility. You are not blaming anyone. You are devoting yourself to solving the problem. And our book shows that we know how to solve the problem.”
Paul Hawken (editor: Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. More information: http://www.drawdown.org/
