Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming Paperback – Illustrated, April 18, 2017

I’ve been telling friends about this breakthrough new book, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken in close collaboration with hundreds of consulting climate scientists, mathematicians and pioneering experts from a broad range of fields. Seldom are heard such encouraging words about climate change reversal these days.In early July while on a windy walk I started to "hear" a song about Drawdown. First a single phrase came to mind, then a melody. I don't believe an audio recording would pass muster as an Amazon review but I'm posting the below lyrics to the completed song, which is my attempt to distill the book's contents in a way that will interest others in picking it up and reading it. This book is a labor of love for the Earth. It's greatly encouraging me and many other people:DRAWDOWNWe’ve created a vast vicious circle of CO2 pollution warming oceans, land and air.We’ve got to break the cycle, get some corporate divorces, and give our Mother Earth a lot more tender loving care.Now we’re trying to birth a more auspicious circle, reversing global warming is on many awesome minds.As we find new ways of living more lightly on Gaia, we will leave our sad old fossilized fuel blues behind.To cool the biosphere we can draw down CO2, adding carbon to the soil produces much more food.No need to feel helpless or listless we can cool it, there’s a growing list of grassroots ways we’re already doin’ it!A book titled Drawdown tells 100 things now being done to lessen carbon levels, here are just a few:there’s managed grazing, biochar, regenerative agriculture, clean inexpensive cookstoves and silvopastures too.Developments in geothermal, wind and solar, microgrids, wave and tidal systems to power our homes and towns;in-stream hydro, biomass from methane gas digesters…Old King Coal will be a bygone as new sources abound.There’s 100 ways in Drawdown to undo global warming, 80 absolutely proven and presently in use.Many experts did the math, estimating costs and savings and the gigatons of CO2 that each way will reduce.Top ranked include less food waste and managing refrigerants, as well as plant-rich diets, family planning you will view, temperate and tropical forest preservation, and better education for girls and women too.Yes we’re drawing a virtuous circle, reversing global warming in a grassroots turnaround.Mothered by necessity and human ingenuity, this book evokes a surge of hope, empowering drawdown.____________I highly recommend Drawdown. If you're not quite ready to purchase it, you might like to learn more at drawdown.org or by googling Paul Hawken’s excellent 4.21.17 talk at the Seattle Town Hall, posted on youtube by talkingsticktv on 4.25.17. Feel free to contact me if you'd like me to send you the audiofile of the song in mp3 form.Geoff Oelsner, Fayetteville, Arkansas

This book is a great addition to many public libraries, and for individuals and families engaged in climate activism. Both a technical and artistic accomplishment with one hundred proven ideas for stabilizing carbon dioxide, there should be a wave of parliamentarians who start applying the methods, such as, tropical forest conservation, solar thermal energy, solar photovoltaic, permaculture or perennial crops, geothermal, and electric cars. Each one of these and dozens more are described with three page detailed summaries, charts, and top quality color photos. Coordinating the strategies, like all climate campaigners know, is very difficult. A gasoline tax of twenty five cents per gallon would support electric cars, trains, buses, and local agriculture, with the carbon intensive option of distant agriculture becoming more expensive. On the other hand, any new tax on the middle class and working class means it is usually, but not necessarily, more challenging for people to improve homes with insulation, rooftop solar, and for the same people to eat more plant rich diets. Finally, the is a challenge with rogue nations. If only half or three quarters of the large nations are proactive climate, and nations like India, South Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia are slow with climate progress then short term benefits to the climate will be thwarted. Carbon drawdown is still important since the total amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere is what drives global warming, however, the short-term gains we should be seeing from projects like rooftop solar and forest conservation in temperate regions are frequently going to be outweighed by excessive coal use in the Global South and the destruction of the tropical rainforests. Many of the carbon drawdown strategies can buy time for large-scale energy transitions. Just how much time we are buying is uncertain.Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are an important strategy. Desert areas may have EGS over hundreds and thousands of square miles, in the next five years, if nuclear explosives are used by the US and other leading governments (tactical nuclear weapons used a half mile to one mile underground). The technological proposals in the 1960s for "nuclear plowshares" which were focused on canal construction and mining, can be applied to geothermal energy. The 2030 goal of 50% carbon dioxide reductions set by the IPCC is therefore more feasible than generally understood. Geothermal sources in the lower part of Earth's crust and upper mantle can be accessed far better than with ordinary geothermal wells.