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Newly Released: The Drawdown Review

by Elizabeth Bagley, May 22 2020

Reprinted with permission from The Drawdown Review by Project Drawdown © 2020 Project Drawdown.

All rights reserved.

In the spring of 2017, Project Drawdown released its inaugural body of work on climate solutions with the publication of the best-selling book Drawdown and open-source digital resources on Drawdown.org.                    

That material has influenced university curricula, city climate plans, commitments by businesses, community action, philanthropic strategy, and more. The newly released Drawdown Review represents the organization’s second seminal publication and the first major update to our assessment of solutions to move the world toward “Drawdown”—the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline. 

Science has made clear the wholesale transformation needed to address the challenges of climate disruption. In its 2018 special report Global Warming of 1.5oC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for “rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems.” At present, global efforts come nowhere near the scale, speed, or scope required. Yet many of the means to achieve the necessary transformation already exist. Almost daily, there is promising evolution and acceleration of climate solutions, alongside growing efforts to sunset fossil fuel infrastructure and prevent expansion of these antiquated and dangerous energy sources. 

Project Drawdown conducts an ongoing review and analysis of climate solutions—the practices and technologies that can stem and begin to reduce the excess of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere—to provide the world with a current and robust resource. The Drawdown Review is core to our efforts to respond nimbly to the rapidly evolving landscape of solutions and the urgency of the challenge humanity faces. We anticipate regular publication going forward, including updates as well as new solutions, scenarios, and insights.         

Drawdown is a critical turning point for life on Earth, and we must strive to reach it quickly, safely, and equitably. The Review is an overview of climate solutions in hand—now, today—to reach Drawdown and begin to come back into balance with the planet’s living systems. These solutions are tools of possibility in the face of a seemingly impossible challenge. They must not remain the domain of specialists or select groups. Widespread awareness and understanding of climate solutions is vital to kindle agency and effect change worldwide, across individual, community, organizational, regional, national, and global scales. People and institutions of all kinds, in all places, have roles to play in this great transformation, and the solutions in the pages of The Review are a synthesis of collective wisdom and collective action unfolding around the globe. 

We invite you to download a free copy of The Drawdown Review at Drawdown.org.

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