The problem with the wedges, Hawken replied, is that their solutions tend to be technology-driven and some “are not practiced, affordable or running,” like capturing carbon from coal plants, which is expensive, or extracting hydrogen gas from coal.” At Greenbuild, which attracts 23,000 people, he’ll interview billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, key allies in the climate debate.īut as I asked Hawken: Don’t we know what to do about climate change? The climate wedges are, after all, alive and well at what is now the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton, where they’ve even been made into a board game. He has advised CEOs at Ford, Walmart and Interface, the carpet company. His books, The Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism, the latter written with Amory Lovins and L Hunter Lovins, were among the first to point the way towards a sustainable global economy. Ordinarily, the announcement of a new book would not by itself be newsworthy, but Hawken has had so much influence over corporate sustainability in the US that his work merits attention. “This is a path to opportunity and wellbeing, as opposed to a tax or a loss.”

“Drawdown is about technologies and solutions that are in place, understood, measured, documented and growing,” Hawken told me by phone. Its purpose is to re-frame the climate debate, by showing that solving the climate crisis will bring, not sacrifice, but “more security, more prosperity, more jobs, more well-being and better health,” Hawken said. Project Drawdown will begin as a lavishly illustrated book and online database, to be released late next year. “Stabilization at 450, 500, 550 ppm is chaos,” Hawken said. Climate solutions abound, he said, and today, at the opening plenary of the big Greenbuild conference in New Orleans, he will unveil Project Drawdown – a new compendium of climate solutions that are designed not just to stabilize, but to reduce the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is not, argues pioneering environmentalist, entrepreneur and author Paul Hawken.

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