Nestled in the category of Women and Girls is the number seven way to draw carbon back to earth, Family Planning! ❤

Ranking and Results by 2050

• 59.6 gigatons of reduced CO2
• Inappropriate to monetize a human right

For women to have children by choice rather than chance and to plan their family size and spacing is a matter of autonomy and dignity. The ability to choose contraception is not available to everyone, and results in 74 million unintended pregnancies each year. In the US, 45 % of all pregnancies are unintended. We need to secure the right to voluntary, high quality family planning services around the world. This would have powerful impacts on the health, welfare, and life expectancy of women and their children. Family planning can also have a huge impact on drawing down greenhouse gas emissions.

Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren developed the now famous equation known as “IPAT” in the early 1970’s. Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology. It argues that the impact humans have on the environment is a function of number, level of consumption, and the kind of technology used.

The world currently falls short $ 5.3 billion dollars for providing the access to reproductive healthcare that women want to have. This is about freedom and opportunity for women and the recognition of basic human rights. Currently, family planning programs receive just about 1 % of all overseas development assistance. That number could easily double, with low income countries aiming to match it – a moral move that happens to have meaning for the planet.

— from Paul Hawken and his book “Drawdown”

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Nestled under the Women and Girls category, ranking and results by 2050:

• 5.6 gigatons reduced CO2
• See impact below

Girl’s education has a dramatic bearing on global warming. Women with more years of education have fewer, healthier children and actively manage their reproductive health. If all nations adopted a similar rate of 100 percent enrollment of girls in primary and secondary schools, by 2050 there would be 843 million fewer people worldwide than if stats remained as they are today. The difference between a woman with no years of schooling and one with 12 years of schooling is almost 4 to 5 children per woman! It is precisely those areas of the world where population growth is the highest that are hardest for women to get educated.

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen, can change the world.” — Malala Yousafzai, Nobel laureate and girl’s education advocate

Education also shores up resilience in terms of climate change impacts, since there is a strong link between women and natural systems at the heart of family and community life. Women are stewards and managers of food, soil, trees, and water. Educated women can bring into play new disease control and altered seed sowing times, and whatever ways of evaluating changing environmental factors required to sustain themselves and those who depend on them.

A 2013 study found that educating girls is “the single most important social factor associated with a reduction in vulnerability to natural disasters.”

Today, 62 million girls are denied the right to attend school. We need to make schools more affordable, closer to home, more girl friendly, better in quality, and more helpful with overcoming health barriers.

Nurture the promise of each girl!

— from Paul Hawkens book “Drawdown”

Ranking and Results by 2050

• 61.23 gigatons reduced CO2
• Global cost and savings too variable to be determined

Labeled under the section LAND USE, is the fifth most effective means of drawing down carbon to our earth. Tropical forests are those located within 23.5 ° north or south of the equator. They have suffered extensive clearing, burning, and degradation in recent decades, especially this year. Once covering 12% of the world’s landmass, they now cover just 5 %. Even tho destruction still continues, restoration, both passive and intentional, is now a growing trend.

With tropical flora and fauna returned, interactions between organisms and species revive, and the tropical forest regains it’s multidimensional roles. A wonderful discovery is that our forests are more resiliant than we originally thought! In a median time of 66 years, tropical forests can recover 90 % of the biomass that old growth landscapes contain. Regrowth can be passive or active. We can either stop cutting down and just let what’s there regrow, or we can actively plant and cultivate native seedlings.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has a forest landscape restoration (FLR) framework, making restoration a collaborative process that starts and ends on the ground. Active forest restoration can cost $400 to $1,200 per acre. Restoring 865 million acres of forest between now and 2030 could cost $350 billion and as much as $1 trillion. Because forest restoration is such a potent solution, commitments and funding need to be a global priority. We need to respect land rights and tenure, especially those of indigenous people. We need to ensure effective enforcement of strong policies and be well equipped and technically adept.

— from Paul Hawken’s book “Drawdown”

Ranking and Results by 2050

• 66.11 gigatons reduced CO2
• Global savings and cost too variable to be determined

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. ” –Michael Pollan

The production of meat and dairy contributes many more CO2 emissions than producing vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes. 15% more in direct emissions and 50% more with a direct and indirect emission combination.

Only 15% of our daily caloric intake needs to come from protein. A diet primarily of plants can meet that threshold. A groundbreaking study at the Universuty of Oxford in 2016 found that emissions could be cut by 70% per year by adopting a vegan diet and by 63% through adopting a vegetarian diet (includes cheese, milk, and eggs).

The study also found that global mortality would drop by 6% to 10% with the adoption of a vegan or vegetarian diet. As well, $1 trillion in health care costs would be saved and $ 30 trillion saved in relation to accounting for value of lives improved. Companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are creating plant based products to assist our meat-centric taste buds and palate. Omnivorous chefs are making the case for eating widely and with pleasure without meat. These chefs include ; Mark Bittman , journalist and author of “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian ” and Yotam Ottolenghi , restauranteur and author of “Plenty”.

We are as a culture reframing meat. Eating with a lighter footprint is a win-win, both reducing emissions and improving health. It will also do less damage to our freshwater resources and ecosystems by eliminating bulldozed forests. This solution is most powerful, as it is as close to us as our dinner plate.

— from the book “Drawdown” by Paul Hawken

Ranking and Results by 2050

• 70.53 gigatons reduced CO2
• Global cost and savings too variable to be determined

More than one third of the world’s labor force is responsible for growing and producing our food. Creating food is a miraculous alchemical process, from the seed, sun, and soil to the human beings carrying out the whole process.

Still, one third of the food produced on our planet does not make it to the table. Hunger is a condition for nearly 800 million people worldwide. Wasted food also produces 4.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide yearly, nearly 8% of total green house gas emissions.

Both high and low income countries contribute, from rejecting food based on bumps and shape and color to lack of refrigeration and storage. Kitchen efficiency has become a lost art.

— from Paul Hawken’s book “Drawdown”

Ranking and results by 2050

Reduced CO2 84.6 Gigatons, Net cost $1.23 trillion, Net savings $7.4 trillion

A very interesting fact is by the uneven heating of the earth’s surface and the planet’s rotation , air is drawn from areas of higher pressure to lower pressure creating tides of air or wind.

In essence, the wind energy of just three states — Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas — would meet all our electrical needs cost to coast. However, weather is inconsistent and wind does not always move the turbines . Interconnected wind and solar grids could overcome the fluctuations of each other.

Wind generated power also does not have adequate government subsidies, and this detracts from it’s cost competitiveness. Currently the International Monetary Fund estimates that the fossil fuel industry received more than $5.3 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies in 2015, and the U. S. wind energy industry has received $12.3 billion in direct subsidies TOTAL since the year 2000. As this changes, wind will be the least expensive source of installed electrical power over the course of the next decade.

– From Paul Hawken’s book “Drawdown”

Ranking and results by 2050

• 89.74 gigatons reduced CO2
• Cost? Too variable to be determined
• – $902.8 billion net savings

Located under the “Materials ” section in the book ” Drawdown” by Paul Hawken, is the number one issue and most important or effective for drawing CO2 levels down , REFRGERATION. All air conditioners, supermarket cases, and refrigerators contain chemical refrigerants that absorb and release heat, giving us the ability to keep ourselves and our food cool. Refrigerants were composed of CFC’s (chloroflourocarbons) and HFC’s (hydfrflorochlourocarbons), which have been phased out but are still in high circulation. These chemicals cause alot of the depletion of our stratospheric ozone layer. Even their replacement, HFC (hyfrofluorocarbons) , while not affecting the ozone layer, still warm the earth’s atmosphere 1 to 9 thousand times greater than carbon dioxide.

In 2016, officials made an amendment called the Kigali Deal to the Montreal Protocol to phase out HFC’s. Natural refrigerants, propane and ammonium, are now phasing in to our use. This Kagali deal, unlike the Paris climate agreement, is mandatory. It has set in place specific time tables and targets of action. Scientists estimate this action will reduce global warming by close to 1 degree Fahrenheit!

Refrigerant recovery , removal, and transformation and purification to other chemicals that do not cause global warming is becoming standard practice.

• From the book “Drawdown” by Paul Hawken

Top 10 Ranked Solutions to Drawdown Carbon from the Atmosphere back to the Earth according to Paul Hawken in his book Operation Drawdown

1. Refrigerant Management
2. Wind Turbines ( onshore)
3. Reduced Food Waste
4. Plant Rich Diet
5. Tropical Forests
6. Educating Girls
7. Family Planning
8. Solar Farms
9. Silvopasture
10. Rooftop Solar