One Reason I Don’t Despair

I recently tried to start a conversation about climate change with a small group of acquaintances.  I asked, “What do you think of the situation with the climate?  I’m curious how each of you sees it.”  

Two expressed upset right away.  One shared that she had recently read that a million species are threatened with extinction.  Another was furious about the racism behind the incredibly slow and still inadequate response to hurricane damage in Puerto Rico.  Two others seemed hopeful and pleased with actions they had recently taken.  One was instituting “meatless Mondays” with her family as a way of eating a more plant-based diet, and another had recently gone to a meeting of a local climate organization for the first time.

The other three made comments that led me to write this post.  One said “It’s too late.  We’re all going to die no matter what we do.”  Another was certain that human beings will rapidly become extinct.  A college instructor said all his undergraduates thought they’d be dead before they were 35 because of climate change, and he didn’t know what to say to them.

I think the situation is dire.  I agree that we face a global climate crisis.  But I don’t share the view that doom is inevitable.

Project Drawdown
Reading about Project Drawdown¹ has persuaded me that there are a lot of things humanity can do to reduce how much carbon we add to the atmosphere and therefore limit the extent of climate destruction.  The Drawdown scientists and researchers reviewed hundreds of possible solutions to reverse global warming, and sifted though countless pages of data and analyses. They identified 80 solutions with the potential to reduce emissions and sequester carbon by 2050 sufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. ²

They only included solutions already in use somewhere in the world on a limited scale and proven to make a difference.  They calculated the gigatons of carbon each of them could prevent going into the atmosphere, if they were scaled up globally.  The top 10 solutions (in terms of the amount of carbon emissions avoided or sequestered) are surprisingly diverse.  I set myself the task of memorizing the top 10 and I’ve found that has helped my perspective, informed my thinking, and been tremendously useful in talking with others about humanity’s prospects and what we need to do.

Drawdown’s top 10 global solutions³ are:

Refrigerant Management
Proper disposal of refrigeration chemicals that are in every air conditioner, refrigerator, and commercial freezer and cooler at the end of their life, and avoiding leaks, is essential.  The hydrofluorocarbons being used today are okay for the ozone layer, but their global warming effect is 1000 times (or more) worse than carbon dioxide.

Wind Turbines (especially onshore, but offshore is also important)
Wind energy provides the lowest cost source of new capacity to generate electricity and is growing world wide.  It can provide a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and also save trillions of dollars in the long run.

Reduced Food Waste
One-third of all food raised or prepared ends up as waste, with a huge carbon footprint.  If food waste were a nation, it would rank third in the world as the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, just behind the United States and China.

Plant-Rich Diet
Raising livestock generates far more greenhouse gases than plant-based protein. Even a modest shift toward eating less meat would have a significant impact.  I’ll write more about this in a future post.

Tropical Forests
Ending deforestation and increasing reforestation, is key to reducing emissions and pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. Tropical forests are most significant, but protecting and restoring temperate forests can also have a large, positive effect.

Educating Girls and Providing Access to Family Planning
My post on Women and Girls and Climate Change provides a summary of these vital solutions.

Solar Farms
 “Any scenario for reversing global warming includes a massive ramp-up of solar power,” according to Drawdown.  Although substantial investments are required, solar farms will save trillions of dollars over time, in addition to their benefit for the environment.

Silvopasture
The ancient practice of mixing livestock grazing and trees on the same land is growing in Central America and can have a major beneficial impact on global warming, if practiced widely.

Rooftop Solar
Another vital solution to climate change that will save trillions of dollars in the long run.

Drawdown Limitations:  ex. Militaries and War Not Included
As helpful, and thoroughly researched, as Project Drawdown is, it also has its limitations.  For instance, because they only considered solutions that already have some momentum for adoption and adequate data, they didn’t include reducing the size of the military forces (around the globe, and especially in the United States) or ending war.  These would both make huge contributions to the reductions the world must make in greenhouse gas emissions.  The U.S. military is the world’s single largest emitter of greenhouse gases and also one of the world’s largest hazardous, toxic waste polluters.

The Project is focused on what can be achieved by 2050.  The IPCC says we also have to meet the  target of a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.  Project Drawdown has not addressed which solutions have the most potential to help humanity reach this 2030 goal.

Building a Mass Movement
Drawdown also doesn’t address the issue of what it would take to implement the solutions they’ve identified.  So they fail to include that building a huge, diverse, mass people’s movement to demand that governments and industries adopt all workable solutions immediately, is a key task for all of us in this moment in history.

Feelings of Powerlessness
The vast majority of us feel insignificant and powerless to make a difference in the face of a huge problem like the climate crisis.  We first felt those feelings when we were infants or small children and were powerless to change whatever was wrong around us.  The feelings of being alone, powerless and insignificant are stored in us from those early days and most of us feel them again in the face of climate change.  However, it turns out that we can act against those feelings and make a difference.  We are blessed with models such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Greta Thunberg, and the young people of the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion; and with information like that from Project Drawdown.  When we speak out as individuals and join with others, we can become powerful far beyond our previous expectations.

Let us turn away from despair, toward each other, and toward demanding the implementation of solutions that can keep this planet habitable for all living things, including our fellow human beings in every part of the world.

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1 Project Drawdown https://www.drawdown.org/  The website duplicates and updates the content of the book, Drawdown, 2017.  The Project is ongoing with new solutions and calculations being explored currently.
2 Project Drawdown offers several scenarios.  This statement is based on their “drawdown scenario”, which achieves negative emissions by 2050.  Many of these solutions will require funding for scaled-up implementation, but overall they will result in immense long-term savings and create many new jobs. Stopping climate change is vastly less expensive than not stopping it.
3  There is a readable, informative essay on each of these solutions on the Project Drawdown website https://www.drawdown.org/solutions  Clearly, no single strategy or solution will solve the problem.  We must do everything that makes a difference.

Photo: Kerala, India, taken by the author.