![]() So they’re not going to have lunch time to work. You have to discount those solutions severely because they are at least 20 years away. When we start to do the math correctly, it shows you the futility of investing in faraway kinds of science-fiction solutions like fusion, modular nuclear, carbon removal, things like this, which we keep on talking about, but never seem to arrive. The longer we wait, the more we have to discount the effectiveness of the solution. And that’s why there’s a time-value of solutions. We can start accumulating the impact of these solutions right now. And that’s why early low-tech solutions, things we have right now, are the best ones, because we can start them today. Climate change is a cumulative problem, it builds up over decades. It’s the integral of all of our pollution over time, the area under the curve. Climate solutions are also an integral, the area under the curve of the cumulative impact of what we do in the future. ![]() Time is the most important factor, and engineers will love this because it’s a math problem. I need to know the ‘how.’ The roadmap is the science of ‘how.’ How do we deploy climate solutions? How do we use scientific principles to know what to do, when to do it, where to do it, and how to get the biggest benefits of the process. I can take photographs of food all day long and it doesn’t make me a cook. So that’s the first part of the work, listing the viable climate solutions based on real science, on good economics on good data and empiricism, and presented very transparently.īut a list of solutions isn’t enough to make them real. These are the real climate solutions that work. So we created what we call now a solutions library that are effective, viable technologically, economically and otherwise. So that’s what project drawdown aims to solve.Ī few years ago we published a book and then a subsequent library of resources that are saying, ‘here are the viable, real solutions to climate change.’ It’s kind of like a Consumer Reports for climate solutions. We’ve had a lot of politicians and activists and business leaders, all with their own agendas, all without much evidence shouting from the rooftops about their personal answers to climate change. Tens of thousands of people spent years working on the scientific evidence for climate change, that it’s real, that it’s happening, it’s serious and we know what causes it.īut when it comes to solutions, the science community’s been kind of in the backseat. The world assembled probably the biggest collection of scientists in history for the last 30 years called the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. JF: Climate change has been a focus of the science and engineering community for a long time. ![]() Learn more at E4C’s recorded webinar with Drawdown and Autodesk Foundation: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming E4C: Why a roadmap? The following is a lightly edited version of the conversation. Foley spoke with Engineering for Change about the roadmap, the solutions that will make a difference, and the role that engineering plays in solving the climate crisis. ![]() John Foley, Executive Director of Project Drawdown, is an award-winning environmental science researcher and professor. It then maps the solutions we should implement in the future.ĭr. The plan has prioritized the actions that matter that we can take right now. Now Project Drawdown has released a roadmap showing the path forward to end climate change. Since carbon dioxide is not the only facet of the problem Project Drawdown’s solutions library also estimates costs and earning potential, and reviews each solution based in scientific research. The 501(c)(3) non-profit organization built a Solutions Library that ranks technologies and policies against the metric of gigatons of carbon dioxide reduced or sequestered. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the principal cause of a changing climate, so each solution should demonstrate the ability to avoid or remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Īt the moment, 100 solutions meet Project Drawdown’s criteria. Well, carbon and the time it takes to reduce it. To simplify, Project Drawdown have reduced the proposals to one criterion: carbon. It’s difficult to know what matters amid the barrage of voices pitching plans to fight climate change.
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