Paul Hawken and Project Drawdown

The Mission:

Project Drawdown is facilitating a broad coalition of researchers, scientists, graduate students, PhDs, post-docs, policy makers, business leaders and activists to assemble and present the best available information on climate solutions in order to describe their beneficial financial, social and environmental impact over the next thirty years.


The Vision:

Drawdown creates a realistic, optimistic and empowering view of our climate future. There are three paths to drawdown: reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere through efficiency and resource productivity; replace existing energy sources with low carbon renewable energy; and bio-sequester carbon dioxide through innovative farming, grazing and reforestation practices.

Scientists have done an extraordinary job determining the impacts of what will happen if we don’t act to mitigate climate change. Now is the time to measure and calculate how we are responding so that we can amplify that response.

The climate “debate” today is similar to a decade ago. On one hand, the science is robust and unequivocal. Those who grasp the science are increasingly concerned by forecasts. The alarm bells have activated a dedicated core of organizations and activists. On the other hand, because of disinformation, polls show that fewer people are interested in climate science than ten years ago. The majority of Americans are confused or unsure of what to do. Thoughts about climate change understandably provoke feelings of fear, loss and threat. In order to mobilize larger portions of the population into constructive action and voting, this needs to change. Showing the diverse and beneficial implications of climate-focused solutions is key to reversing apathy.

To date, the full range and impact of climate solutions have not been explained in a way that bridges the divide between urgency and agency. Thus the aspirations of people who want to enact meaningful solutions remain largely untapped. Dr. Leon Clark, one of the lead authors of the IPCC 5th Assessment on solutions, wrote, "We have the technologies, but we really have no sense of what it would take to deploy them at scale." Together, let’s figure it out.