Drawdown EcoChallenge

If you aren’t a sustainability geek, it’s likely the release of Drawdown didn’t hit your radar.  Drawdown was a landmark book that used immense amounts of data, (peer reviewed) research, models, and maps to determine the impact a variety of known solutions to global warming, centered around carbon reduction.

The authors predicted not only the global impact, but also the cost to implement as well as the economic savings, where applicable.  It’s probably not surprising that #2 is wind turbines and #8 is solar farms but it may surprise you to know that management of refrigerants is ranked #1.  Would it surprise you to know that #5 and #6 on the list are Education of Girls and Family Planning?  Those stats caught a lot of attention, not only because they are an atypical response to climate change, but if you combine their impact, they easily become #1 on the list.

Lots of solutions made the list: LED bulbs, silvopasturing, mass transit, land management, methane digesters, etc. and most can be accomplished or influenced by everyone…no engineering or sustainability degree required.  Some strategies are more applicable to specific areas of the world and/or can only be implemented in specific conditions, but all are capable of being implemented now…there’s no need to wait on future technology to be invented.

In the interest of starting to put these items into action, the Northwest Earth Institute has created the “Drawdown EcoChallenge”; a 21-day engagement program taking place between April 4-25, following the solutions highlighted in the book.

Ready to join our team?

You can sign up for free, track/share progress online and earn points.  Points help us to compete against other groups while you have the chance to earn prizes.  You can select as many actions as you want, ranging from replacing a bulb with a LED, to watching a video indigenous land management, using mass transit, or pledging to spend a specific amount of time learning about a topic.  You can pick whatever piques your interest as there are over 80 actions to pick from in 7 different categories:

• Materials
• Food
• Transportation
• Land Management
• Women and Girls
• Electricity generation
• Buildings and Cities

So what are you waiting for?  Join our team today to turn intention into action; all while having fun and winning prizes—oh, and having a positive impact on the planet and humanity.