Drawdown revisted
quick summary: Hawken has launched Project Drawdown, which he calls the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. Hawken gathered a diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify, research and model the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change, something never done before, even though climate change has been in the public and academic sphere for over 40 years. What was uncovered is a path forward that might begin to reverse global emissions within 30 years. Gone were the attributes for specific solutions. Front and center was the beseeching us to adapt a new language, a new behavior, a new thinking.
Just in time for earth day, Paul was also profiled in the NYTimes article about global warming solutions.
When Paul talked about the Carbon mitigation project and Princeton’s 15 wedges – I almost let out a sigh of ‘oh i’ve been there’! What a joke those wedges were. I still have mine and was only able to get a couple groups together, and we all found it extremely shallow and unrealistic. As Paul said during his speech, the Princeton project basically was asking all the major corporations to volunteer bankruptcy to save the earth. Not gonna happen anytime soon! 
For starters, Paul asked the audience to stop calling it climate change and stop declaring war on it. It’s global 
warming, it’s a condition of life with some consequences that we could mitigate.
warming, it’s a condition of life with some consequences that we could mitigate.
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draft – under construction
Paul traced the history back about how we got into climate change… for a long time – like 20 minutes! The only solution that ever came out he said was the Princenton Wedges. I still have my demos on that. It was about 15 solutions to climate change that one was supposed to arrange in priority. BUT – if any of these solutions were to be implemented they would bankrupt the corporations responsible (like getting off fossil fuels).
Paul said that he’s not into small, little solutions with little possibilities. Think big, come up with grandiose very big Goals, and there are multitudes of solutions. In recalling how Drawdown got started in 2013 when he was looking for funding, Norman Lear (hollywood producer) was the first investor. They quickly ran out of money… they put a call out for university researchers (PHD candidates) and paid them $1,000 each to join the project (that broke out to $2.80/hour).
System Dynamics !! (SD) was used in Drawdown’s modeling.
Paul had changed a LOT of his language from a year ago. Gone were the negative, pessimistic views of the world and how we’re in for it…. He peppered his speech with wonderful new hopeful soundbites and walked his talk about changing our language of ‘climate change’. He said we need to call it global warming. Climate is supposed to change – climate change is a nonsense phrase. The sound bit that appealed to me was ‘we need to bring carbon back home’… wow! One can envision that… we released carbon from under the ground and other places, and now we gotta take it back out of the oceans and air – somehow… and that’s what Drawdown is all about.
Paul’s first powerpoint slide – it took 30 minutes to get to it… was a simple long term graph showing CO2 levels over 100,000 years. A couple peaks under 400ppm were explained… and then the standard IPCC driven 410ppm peak in the last 50 years. BUT Paul clicked one more time to point out the reality of our real ppm including methane and nitrous oxides CO2 equivalent – and that came out at 490ppm – so we are WAY WAY over… the 350, 400ppm targets we set…
And then he spend some time talking about all the ‘violent’ words being used. He said 90% of all global climate change scientists and government policy makers are male – and they use languages of war and sports. Women use other language – we need more women. Words like ‘war on climate, … and then he showed a slide of all the better words to start using… He ended spending a lot of time talking about 2C… what the heck is that?? and how the IPCC UN targets are 2C by 2050. Paul said – ‘who knows what this means – anyone?’ what a crazy way to communicate – no one outside the IPCC knows what this means…
Lotsa talk about our big corporate, consumerism based world… him walking down main street in Melbourne… and saying to himself ‘f it, we’re doomed’ seeing everyone shopping hi end stores…
lotsa time spent on food… mike pollan… ‘all our food has been denatured’ he picked on a 1910, 1914 apple comparing it to today’s apples. Yuk!
Notable Soundbites
Big Ag enables Big Food which enables Big pharma… wow again!
Carbon architecture. (next to skyscrapers made of wood – glulams don’t burn)
Food goes into the fridge to die.
He put up several slides, some about future drawdowns… the one that stuck for me was ‘marine permaculture’. 93% of the rising temps is absorbed in the Oceans – not the land.
Paul spent a lot of time talking about domestic animals… omnivores?? His slide on ‘eat a plant based diet’ he said meat was ok as long as the meat was grassfed… AND the surprise for me was he touted the return of herds of reindeer to prevent the permafrost from melting – wow. Having thousands of animals in the Artic and permafrost areas roaming around like they used to would open up the snowcover to vegetation (so they can eat) and with the ground exposed it would freeze more easily than if covered by melting snow.
The picture of cattle roaming on the beach was also poignant. A cow eating kelp produces 90% less methane than a range fed cow. Recent research (Siberia) has shown that only 3-5% mix of kelp for cattlefeed results in a 70-90% reduction in their methane production.
The audience Around 150 people were there. I’d say over half were millenials age range 20-35. The next largest demographic was elders, but not your ‘normal elders. These were leaders of NGOs, industry (environmental) stewards, longtime groupies of Paul Hawken (like me)… and then a few very hi end sociolites… About 10 people lined up to ask questions. 8 males, 2 females, and the moderator tried to get an equal ratio of gender questions… ?? Many of the questions were self-serving comments, and Paul at once point even said ‘i don’t understand’ is there a question here?’… I left around 7:30pm… questions were going to continue, and I had a meet and greet waiting for me.
My takeaway Exactly a year ago, at Paul’s pre-release and launch event at the Oakland Impact Hub – I learned about and changed my relationship with my compost pile. Paul talked about his own habit change to eat ALL, 100% of his food and not throw ANY of it away – no matter what. He recalled eating some leftover rice that had started to form blue mold on it… he reheated it and ate it and was fine. There was a groan out of the audience 
On the ‘plant based diet’ ( # ) Paul said that we should eat no more than 50-55 grams of protein each day – MAX. That’s a plant based diet.
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