Drawdown^® Insights

Last week’s release of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis report distills almost a decade of the latest climate science into an urgent, systemic call to action — imploring us to mobilize resources to tackle climate change and poverty at the same time if we are to ensure a just and sustainable future.

On March 9, Project Drawdown’s Drawdown Lift program hosted a lively discussion with the Clean Cooking Alliance about how women are leading on climate action and climate justice and implementing solutions that strengthen adaptation, boost human well-being, and mitigate future emissions. As a continuation of International Women’s Day, we embraced equity, focusing on two of the most defining challenges of our time—climate change and poverty.

Project Drawdown has used rigorous science to identify and characterize nearly 100 practices and technologies that, if ambitiously implemented together, can achieve drawdown—the point when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere start to steadily decline, thereby stopping catastrophic climate change.  Now, how do we scale them?

This article is the second in a series introducing the members of Project Drawdown’s new science team.

These are exciting times for those of us working to put the brakes on climate change. We have been saying it for years—it’s both possible and necessary to stem the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—and climate solutions are finally starting to get the attention they deserve.

We are reaching an important juncture within the corporate climate landscape.

Did you know that climate mitigation solutions that contribute to increasing human well-being, alleviating extreme poverty, addressing inequities, and advancing adaptation are at hand?

Today’s definition of business climate leadership centers on companies doing less harm, gradually reducing their emissions—and the damage they cause—over time. But this version of leadership neglects the many other levers companies have at their disposal to help or hinder our future on a livable planet.

High-income countries can hardly expect African countries to forgo the use of their own natural resources without investment of US$70 billion a year to meet their renewable energy needs.

There’s a hard truth about climate change: Meeting the Paris Accords – and limiting global warming to 1.5 ˚C or “well below” 2 ˚C – requires we stabilize emissions and then cut them nearly in half by the end of the decade.