Drawdown’s Neighborhood, presented by Project Drawdown, is a series of short documentaries featuring the stories of climate solutions heroes, city by city. We are extremely excited to share with you that following the 2022 release of episodes profiling Pittsburgh and Atlanta, the series’ third edition—“Drawdown’s Neighborhood: Twin Cities”—is now available online!

Join host and Project Drawdown director of storytelling and engagement Matt Scott as he passes the mic to nine climate heroes whose stories often go unheard, and elevates climate action—and stories about careers, race, gender, sexuality, mental health, personal and community resilience, family, and more—in the process.

The series’ third round of documentary shorts showcases Minnesota’s Twin Cities, located on the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Native lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe People. While Minneapolis and St. Paul are renowned for their vibrant arts scene, rich cultural diversity, and natural beauty, they are also home to a robust ecosystem of people and organizations deeply committed to working on climate solutions. In the targets outlined in its current climate action plan, the City of Minneapolis is aiming by 2025 to cut down greenhouse gas emissions by nearly one-third, generate 10 percent of electricity from renewable sources, and increase rates of recycling, composting, and bicycle commuting. Meanwhile, St. Paul's current climate action and resilience plan aims to have all city operations be carbon neutral by 2030 with further plans for the entire city to go carbon neutral by 2050 through greater use of natural infrastructure and implementation of a wide range of green-friendly initiatives.

“Drawdown’s Neighborhood: Twin Cities” profiles local climate superheroes who are helping fuel progress in pursuit of these goals to help lay the foundation for a healthy, just, and vibrant future for all. Day in and day out, each of the interviewees are doing their part to help the world reach drawdown—the future point when levels of greenhouse gases start to steadily decline. And each story serves as a bridge between climate solutions and people like you looking to tap into their own superpowers to stop climate change.   

The Drawdown’s Neighborhood short documentaries touch on a range of themes used to inspire action. Themes include pathways to climate careers; collaboration across silos, including geographies, sectors, and ideologies; diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice; hope and opportunity; individual action paired with systems change; and personal and community resilience. The nine stories from the Twin Cities center the voices of women, Black people, people of color, immigrants, and others who are often not represented in the climate dialogue and yet are commonly most immediately and severely vulnerable to the impacts of climate catastrophe.

You will be inspired to discover your own climate superpower with Bob Blake, a member of Minnesota’s Red Lake Tribal Band of Ojibwe Indians whose vision and leadership is advancing the region’s renewable energy transition while empowering tribal nations to lead the way toward a clean energy future. 

Put yourself in the driver’s seat on the road to a greener future with Yesenia Robles Pelayo, who manages fleet logistics for a non-profit all-electric community car share program while working directly with community members who might otherwise not have access to affordable, climate-friendly transportation. 

Turbocharge your pursuit of climate justice with Emily Mauter, whose work with Repowered—one of the most prominent collectors of e-waste in Minnesota—is not only creating new opportunities for electronics through increased recycling, but also providing workforce development and reintegration opportunities for people who have experienced incarceration.

The series also includes:

• Jose Alvillar Hinojosa, Statewide Director of Youth Programs with Unidos MN
• Whitney Terrill, Former Environmental Justice Program Manager with Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light
• Alboury Ndiaye, Sustainability Specialist with the Waste Wise Foundation
• Crispin (Cris) Phillips, Urban Agriculture Manager for Appetite for Change
• Jan Hagerman, Manager of New Brighton ReStore at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity
• Jothsna Harris, Founder and Principal at Change Narrative

Feeling inspired? To unleash your inner climate superhero, visit Drawdown’s Neighborhood to discover solutions and take action today. 

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

James Gerber is a data scientist with expertise in agriculture, impacts of land use on the environment, modeling of crop yields, and ocean wave energy. He uses various analytic techniques to assess the effect of climate mitigation solutions in the land use sector.

As a researcher with the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, James studied connections among agriculture, ecosystems, climate, and food security. He was a lead author for the Sixth Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has consulted on a wide variety of projects for nongovernmental organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, The Packard Foundation, and The World Bank.

Before he started researching land use, James worked on optimizing conversion of wave energy to electricity. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Here, James explains how he got from wave physics to climate change mitigation, trash talks American drivers, avoids sharing his favorite drawdown solution, and nails the answer to the most important question ever asked. 

Q: When people ask what you do with Project Drawdown, what do you tell them? 

A: I haven't been here very long, so my answer is based on what I think I’ll be doing and why I was so excited to get this job. Project Drawdown is really focused on making solutions happen. For the last 13 years I’ve been in a somewhat academic world defining what problems are in the land use sector, particularly with agriculture, and showing how big the impact is and looking at what some solutions could look like and what sectors and regions they could be most effective in, but those were not necessarily actionable. What I’m excited about at Project Drawdown is taking the next step and helping to formulate those solutions in a way they can really easily be implemented to achieve climate and other goals at the same time. 

Q: What do you see as the biggest obstacles to solving climate change? 

A: In some ways people don’t realize how doable it is. There are so many things out there that are win-wins and will pay for themselves and have all sorts of good co-benefits, and people aren’t aware of that. So a lack of knowledge, and maybe a little bit of pessimism that goes along with that. Also, there are often vested interests in keeping things the way they are. There’s no lobby for industries that don't yet exist, but there are lobbies for things that society might want to sunset. So there’s this knowledge problem and there’s this momentum problem as well.

Q: What’s your superpower?

A: I feel like I'm a pretty good programmer, in that I think I come up with clever algorithms to solve data analysis issues. 

Q: What is the best (or worst) experience you’ve had that involved a bicycle? 

A: I did my junior year in southern France. I was super poor, so I took a bicycle out of the trash and started biking around. I was pulling on the handlebars and peddling, and all of a sudden one handlebar fell off. I turned into traffic next to me and fell over—I thought I was going to be squashed. In America I might have been, but French drivers are really good. This guy slammed on his brakes and did not hit me. 

Q: What was the subject of your Ph.D. dissertation? 

A: Acoustic propagation through internal waves in the ocean.

Q: And how did you get from there to here? 

A: I did my postdoctoral work on wave theory in Paris, then we moved for my wife’s job to Princeton. I was offered a postdoctoral position at Princeton in Environmental Science, and I was offered a job at a small startup doing ocean wave energy. I felt the world did not need another postdoc but I could make a difference with wave energy so I took the job in renewable energy. Later, when we moved to Minnesota, I wanted to stay in an environmental field so I took a position at the Institute on the Environment at the intersection of environment and agriculture. Moving to Project Drawdown is a logical next step in the trajectory of my career from siloed technical work to impact-focused and policy-relevant. I really think I can have an impact here.

Q: What’s your favorite Drawdown Solution and why? 

A: It’s hard to choose a favorite. It’s like asking which is my favorite child. Can I get back to you on that one? 

Q: Speaking of favorite children, any advice for parenting young adults? 

A: Find a balance between having the current and future versions of your child angry at you. 

Q: What gives you hope? 

A: The fact that even though there is pessimism out there, we’re really making progress as a society and I think the word is getting out there. There are all sorts of examples of entities that have decreased their carbon footprint while improving quality of life. There are so many technologies that are coming online right now. Miracles are not needed; we just need to implement what we have. Together, these give me hope.

Q: What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

A: 42. Come on.

The private sector has a big role to play in implementing climate action.

The solutions we need are not the flashy fixes we often see portrayed as panaceas: While things like offsets and carbon removal technologies play a role, they can be scientifically unsound and untimely. Instead, the private sector must focus on real, strategic, and systemic impact that goes beyond reducing their own emissions.

The Drawdown-Aligned Business Framework provides valuable guidance for doing just that, bringing to light the political, social, and human capital businesses have to help the world achieve zero emissions. And now a good thing has gotten even better: With the help of business partner Unity, a real-time gaming development platform, and a working group of key industry experts, we’re proud to release Project Drawdown’s first industry-specific resource for climate action: A Drawdown-Aligned Framework for the Gaming Industry.

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

Kate Marvel is a climate scientist who focuses on modeling how our planet is changing and understanding what could happen in the future. Before joining Project Drawdown, Kate worked at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, Stanford University, the Carnegie Institution, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A former cosmologist, she received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cambridge University. Her book Human Nature will be published by Ecco Press in 2023.

Here, Kate shares what brought a cosmologist down to Earth, how going on way too long of a hike can help catalyze a career in climate science, and more. 

Q: What is your role with the Project Drawdown Science team? 

A: As the senior scientist for climate, I’m helping to understand the climate impacts of solutions and the climate impact if we don't deploy those solutions. My role is one that I can’t accomplish alone—I really need to be working with an interdisciplinary team. This is why I’m so excited to be here. I love learning new things, I love talking to people smarter than me. And to be able to do that in the service of climate solutions is a dream come true.  

Q: What superpower do you bring to the job?

A: Not being afraid of asking dumb questions. I have an awareness of what I don't know and a respect for what other people know and the ability to talk across disciplines and to listen across disciplines. It takes a lot of effort and energy to be an expert in any field. But that’s not enough. We need experts in everything, but we need translators, too.

Q: What’s a childhood toy or experience that relates to the work you’re doing today?

A: My dad used to take me on very poorly planned outdoor adventures—ones I was much too young for, like a 15-mile hike—and forget to do very basic things like bring water. That gave me both a love of the natural world and also a healthy respect for it. And that contributes to how I feel about climate change. Nature is always throwing things at us. You sometimes hear, “Don’t worry, we’ll just adapt.” I agree there are many things we need to do to increase resilience, but there is no “just” about it. Nature is a very powerful force, and we’re changing it in a big way.

Q: What was the subject of your Ph.D. dissertation, and why? 

A: On the spontaneous generation by quantum tunneling of a bubble of alternative universes within our universe. I chose that because I was interested in trying to solve what is probably one of the most outstanding problems in physics, which is (awkwardly) that we have no idea what 95 percent of the universe is. I’m not sure it worked, but it was interesting, and it taught me quantitative skills I still use today. 

Q: How did you get from there to here? 

A: I realized in the process that the most interesting things to me were made out of normal matter and in fact are here on Earth. This is where everything I care about is, and it’s changing, and maybe I can use some of my physics skills to understand how and why this place I love is changing and maybe be able to do something about that. I got a science fellowship at Stanford that was flexible as long as it had a science component and policy component. I used that to explore different areas and landed on climate modeling.

Q: What’s a favorite Drawdown Solution? 

A: I’ll go with seaweed farming. My 7-year-old wants to be a kelp farmer, mostly because he thinks that he’ll get his own sea otter that way. We talk a lot about climate change—not in a doom and gloom framework, but about how we know this is a problem and we know there are many different solutions. And this is one way he wants to help solve it. 

Q: When you’re not working, what’s your ideal way to spend a weekend?

A: I love water—swimming, surfing, going to the beach with my family. I grew up in Ohio. Not growing up in a coastal city is a great way to learn to love the coast.

Q: You have a book, Human Nature, coming out later this year. Care to provide a sneak preview? 

A: It’s the story of climate science in nine different emotions. In each chapter I present an aspect of the science and how it makes me feel—the physics of the Earth and wonder; attribution and shame; the history of global warming science and anger at how it was ignored, and so on. The second-to-last pair is solutions and hope, and the final chapter pairs the fundamental interconnectedness of everything with the emotion of love. That’s why I got into his line of work. I love the Earth, and I love the people on it. 

Q: You seem both a right-brain and a left-brain person. How do you get your two selves to play well together?

A: I don’t really see them in opposition. Science can really learn from the arts. When we look at climate projections, it helps to be able to use the tools that an artist would use, that a writer would use. We talked about communicating across disciplines. That’s what literature is for; that’s what poetry is for. 

Q: Who is your climate hero? 

A: Whoever is reading this—you are my climate hero if you are doing climate solution work.

Like to learn more about Kate? Check out her TED talk, “Can Clouds Buy Us More Time to Solve Climate Change?” and her Story Collider presentation, “Becoming a Genius.”

“We did it! We reached ‘drawdown’!” Imagine the day we will be able to say that. At Project Drawdown, we’re doing more than imagining. We’re making it happen.

Our latest publication, “Accelerate: Annual Outcomes and Outlook Report,” provides a snapshot of accomplishments during 2022 and a look at how we’re building on those successes in 2023. Check it out to learn how, with our supporters’ help, our work is accelerating the adoption of science-based climate solutions that help individuals and organizations reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We know the “why” and the “what” of working to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. But the “when,” “where” and “how” have been largely a matter of guesswork – until now.

With the launch today of the Drawdown Roadmap, Project Drawdown – the world’s leading source of climate solutions – is outlining a specific, actionable strategy for implementing solutions on a global scale in time to avoid the worst adverse effects of climate change.

“We live in the most incredible moment in human history,” said Project Drawdown executive director Jonathan Foley in announcing the release. “We now have both the means and opportunity to accelerate climate solutions. Let’s do it.”

Drawdown’s Neighborhood, presented by Project Drawdown, is a series of short documentaries featuring the stories of climate solutions heroes, city by city across America. The fourth edition—Drawdown’s Neighborhood: New Orleans – is now available online!

The Big Easy. Crescent City. The Birthplace of Jazz. The Paris of the South. N’awlins. Or simply NOLA. The latest installment of Drawdown’s Neighborhood takes us to one of the most vibrant and resilient cities in the United States: New Orleans, Louisiana.

New Orleans is more than a city rich in culture; it is a place of resilience, where people live, work and play on the frontlines of climate change with hurricanes, oil drilling disasters, and shrinking coastlines due to sea level rise lingering as not-too-distant concerns.

It is also home to a diverse network of people and organizations working on climate solutions. Often, the communities most immediately and severely affected by climate change—including Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color—are excluded from dialogues about solutions. Drawdown's Neighborhood: New Orleans features the stories of eight change-makers working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create a healthier, more just future for all.

Voices of New Orleans

Join host and Project Drawdown storyteller Matt Scott as he introduces us to:

Melody Arcia, Communications Coordinator, SOUL (Sustaining Our Urban Landscape)

Joshua Benitez, Co-Director, Common Ground Relief

Travis Charles Banks, Project Manager and Principal, Gravel Road Builders & Construction Services

Jonshell Johnson, Education Coordinator, Grow Dat Youth Farm

Willie Jones III, Green Infrastructure Technician, Groundwork New Orleans

Shelley Stiaes, Wildlife Refuge Manager, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Ashley Thompson, Resident Services Coordinator, SBP (St. Bernard Project), St. Peter Apartments

Tinice Willams, Executive Director, Feed the Second Line

Much of New Orleans’ history is shared orally and not necessarily documented; powerful and culturally significant stories of resistance, repair, strength, healing, and solidarity can serve as a solution blueprint for future generations.

Share These Stories

Help us amplify the work of climate heroes across New Orleans by sharing their stories with others in your network and across social media. Please feel free to copy and past the posts below:

Sample post 1:

Discover your inner climate superhero! Check out #DrawdownsNeighborhood: #NewOrleans, presented by @ProjectDrawdown – a short doc series that tells the stories of 8 climate heroes enacting meaningful change & strengthening their communities’ climate resilience. www.drawdown.org/neighborhood

Sample post 2:

Join @ProjectDrawdown on a journey to #PassTheMic to climate heroes whose stories often go unheard. This month let us take you to #NewOrleans to show you how 8 residents are working day in & day out to help create a healthier & more livable future for all. www.drawdown.org/neighborhood

Sample post 3:

Want to help stop climate change… but not sure where to start? #DrawdownsNeighborhood: #NewOrleans features 8 stories from a city where people are mobilizing to fuel a green future by turning #ClimateSolutions into #ClimateAction. www.drawdown.org/neighborhood

Additional, shareable assets include:

The Drawdown’s Neighborhood landing page

Drawdown’s Neighborhood: New Orleans trailer

Drawdown’s Neighborhood: New Orleans promotional graphic

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

Tina Swanson joined the Drawdown Science team as a visiting scholar in June 2023. An environmental scientist with a background in cross-disciplinary research and engagement at the science/policy interface, she is passionate about applying science to benefit society. 

Tina comes to Project Drawdown with more than two decades of experience in the environmental nonprofit arena, including with The Bay Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). 

Here, Tina explains why Project Drawdown is the perfect next step in her long and illustrious career, describes how she once found herself clinging to a ship’s mast high above the ocean, vouches for the therapeutic value of punching clay, and more.

Q: What is your role with the Project Drawdown Science team?

A: I bring to Project Drawdown a very broad expertise and knowledge base, and I hope one of the values I offer is to help periodically identify some of the cross-connections and synergies that my teammates may not have yet considered. I want to complement their expertise, which is very deep and very impressive, with some of my experience with how the policy arena works in its intersection with science.

Q: Why Project Drawdown? 

A: I have been a scientist working at the intersection of science and policy for more than 20 years. I went into it as a very deliberate professional decision after a number of years in academia because I wanted to be in a position to say, “This is what the science says, and based on what the science says this is what you should do.” 

When I left NRDC, I was not quite ready to retire. Climate change is such an urgent and existential problem that I felt an obligation to stay engaged. I was drawn to Project Drawdown because it’s a science-based organization devoted to the solutions rather than just defining the problem. I think we need to apply more science to the solutions—not just what they should be, but how to get them into the world.

Q: Do you have pets? 

A: I do! A dog, Griffin, half German shepherd and half Dutch shepherd. A cat, Tess, and a splendid horse, Shiloh. I have a fish tank, too. I’m a fisheries biologist, so I always have a fish tank. I can’t imagine life without them.

Q: What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done on purpose? 

A: When I was in college I did a semester-long program at Woods Hole and spent six weeks on a 100-foot-long topsail schooner in the Caribbean and Atlantic. I’m afraid of heights, and one of the things I made myself do is climb up the shrouds to the working platform on the mainmast. It was really high above the ocean and swayed sickeningly as the ship sailed. Once was enough!

Q: What superpower(s) do you bring to this job? 

A: I think what I bring is a result of decades of experience working in this arena—an interest and ability to see the big picture and an understanding of where the various knobs and levers are for being able to effect change. Another really important thing is a sense of both humility and humor.

Q: What gives you hope? 

A: What gives me hope is being able to work with people at Project Drawdown as well as other organizations that are working really, really hard to solve the problems we have and to do it in ways that work. The best solutions are the ones that will solve the problems and also provide other useful co-benefits. I have hope that we can solve this. I do not underestimate how much of a challenge it's going to be, but I have hope.

Q: What makes you crazy? 

A: The thing that makes me the craziest is the increasing ability of people to ignore and resist factual information. As a scientist, that maddens me because all of my training and personality are like, “Figure out how something works based on the facts, and respond in kind.” I’m maddened when people instead rely on magical thinking designed to support their preconceived notions. 

Q: Do you have a happy place? 

A: Out in the California countryside riding a horse.

Q: Tell me about your artwork. 

A: I started taking classes in ceramics sculpture when I was at UC Davis, partly to counterbalance the intense research, analysis, and number crunching part of my life. I use a technique called handbuilding to sculpt human and animal figures, vessels, and tiles. I’ve sculpted a lot of fish.

I find working with clay very therapeutic, both physically and mentally. To push and mold and smack and craft it into shape is very satisfying. It’s an exercise in three-dimensional thinking. I would recommend it to anybody.

“Passing the mic” in the context of the climate crisis is all about recognizing that the communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – Black communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color – are often the least represented in the conversations we have and the stories we tell. Thankfully, a number of platforms are stepping up to amplify the voices that have long been excluded. One of them is Pattrn, a digital platform in partnership with The Weather Channel, “for those who love the earth, fight for its future, and want to learn more about how to protect it.”

Recently, Pattrn added Drawdown’s Neighborhood, the climate solutions short documentary series presented by Project Drawdown centering the underrepresented climate heroes that have often gone unheard, to its lineup.

Project Drawdown’s Director of Storytelling & Engagement Matt Scott, who created and hosts Drawdown’s Neighborhood, recently spoke with Stephanie Abrams and Jordan Steele on The Weather Channel’s Pattrn Show about Drawdown’s Neighborhood and the significance of telling stories like those featured in the series.

“For so long, as [climate] storytellers, we’ve thought that what we need to do is scare people,” Scott says during the interview. “[But] while we need to bring in the story of the problem and the crisis and those realities so people know it’s there, we also need to bring in the other half of the story of the solutions and what people can do.” 

To date, the series has interviewed 48 climate heroes across seven locations with 11 of those stories set to premiere this fall. “There are so many voices and stories, and I’m just so thankful that some of them can be out there through Pattrn and The Weather Channel,” Scott says.

Pattrn's mission is to explore, inform, engage, and revel in the patterns of our amazing planet. Since Pattrn's launch, the brand has evolved from a social media community to a free ad-supported streaming TV channel whose content is dedicated to climate and sustainability news and programming.

In a report published today, Project Drawdown scientists provide the most comprehensive look yet at how addressing black carbon – more commonly known as soot – would reduce global warming while preventing millions of premature deaths and saving trillions of dollars annually worldwide. 

Key Report Takeaways: 

• Black carbon is a powerful climate pollutant that stems from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass.
• Black carbon has unparalleled impacts on human well-being, the environment, and climate change.  
• Black carbon has a short-term warming potential up to 1,500 times greater than carbon dioxide and is responsible for millions of premature deaths annually worldwide.
• Black carbon emissions are highest in low- and middle-income countries with half of all emissions coming from just five countries.
• Around 48% of all black carbon emissions are attributable to the residential sector, particularly from the use of dirty cooking fuels.
• Targeted solutions across the residential, transportation, and industrial sectors in high-emitting regions would dramatically reduce black carbon emissions while preventing millions of premature deaths and saving trillions of dollars per year. 

Black carbon, which largely results from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and organic matter used for cooking, transportation, industrial production, and more, is a major pollutant and greenhouse gas with a short-term warming potential up to 1,500 times greater than carbon dioxide. 

Worldwide, black carbon is responsible for millions of premature deaths annually, increasing the risk of cardiovascular, respiratory, and other diseases. This results in the loss of trillions of US dollars globally in economic productivity each year. These impacts are felt most acutely in low- and middle-income countries, which still rely heavily on unclean fuels, such as wood, for heating, cooking, and energy production. 

In the groundbreaking report, Project Drawdown researchers highlight global hotspots and sources of black carbon across geographies providing policymakers and funders with the best insight yet into what solutions, deployed where, will result in the greatest emissions reductions.