Research Guides: CLIMATE CON: Climate Change/Global Warming Issues and Solutions: What Can You Do?

Drawdown Solutions Library

Table of Solutions
Here, we present the individual solutions reviewed and assessed by Project Drawdown, including their relevant sector(s) and their impact on reducing heat-trapping gases. This list is extensive but not exhaustive, and we continue to add to it as a living project.
Sectors
Science has made clear that we need wholesale transformations in technology, policy, business models, and behavior to address the climate crisis. We need to transform the world in many different ways, in many different sectors and areas of human activity.

Sectors include:

Reduce Sources Electricity
- How can we generate electricity for the whole world without burning fossil fuels? How do the means of transmitting, storing, and using electricity need to evolve?
Reduce Sources Food, Agriculture, and Land Use
- How can we reduce the pressures on ecosystems and land, while meeting the growing demand for food worldwide? How can we decrease emissions from agriculture and forestry?
Reduce Sources Industry
- How can we improve industrial processes and materials produced? How can industry make use of waste and move toward flows of substances that are efficient and circular?
Reduce Sources Transportation
- How can we support the social good of mobility, but end its dependence on petroleum? In what ways do vehicles, infrastructure, and operations need to change to eliminate transportation emissions?
Reduce Sources Buildings
- How can we retrofit existing buildings and create new buildings to minimize energy use? How can we stop other, on-site sources of emissions?
Support Sinks Land Sinks
- How can we help sequester more carbon in biomass and soil? What can we do to support and enhance natural processes, including the capacity of land to renew?
Support Sinks Coastal and Ocean Sinks
- What practices can be used to sequester carbon in coastal, marine, and open ocean environments? How can human activity support and enhance natural processes?
Support Sinks Engineered Sinks
- Beyond natural processes, how can we remove carbon from the atmosphere? In what ways can we use removed carbon, so that it remains stored?
Improve Society Health and Education
- What are the planetary ripple effects of efforts to advance equality and ensure fundamental human rights?

Drawdown by Paul Hawken (Editor)
Call Number: TD171.75 .D73 2017
ISBN: 9780143130444
Publication Date: 2017-04-18

The Drawdown Roadmap - videos
By showing how to strategically mobilize solutions across sectors, time, and place, engage the power of co-benefits, and recognize and remove obstacles, the Drawdown Roadmap charts a path to accelerate climate solutions before it’s too late.
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Also included is a video gallery

Be Proactive/Take Action

Energy.gov
Visit our Energy Savings Hub
Fuel Economy.gov
The official U.S. government source for fuel economy information.
Household Carbon Footprint Calculator from the EPA
"You can use the following online calculator to get a rough “ballpark” estimate of your personal or family’s greenhouse gas emissions and explore the impact of taking various actions to reduce your emissions."
How You Can Stop Global Warming
What can you do? A whole lot, as it turns out. Americans, on average, produce 21 tons of carbon a year, about four times the global average.
From National Resources Defense Council
New York Times Your Questions about Food and Climate Change Answered
Your diet affects climate change. Here’s what you need to know about eating meat, dairy, seafood and produce, and preventing food waste.
New York Times This Guide Will Help You Save Money and Fight Climate Change
Looking to make your home more energy efficient or want to buy an electric car? You may be able to save thousands of dollars on climate-friendly investments through tax credits and rebates.
What You Can Do About Climate Change
What can you -- just one concerned person -- do about global warming? From the New York Times
What You Can Do from the EPA
"Driving a car, using electricity to light and heat your home, and throwing away garbage all lead to greenhouse gas emissions. You can reduce emissions through simple actions like changing a light bulb, powering down electronics, using less water, and recycling. This site provides more than 25 easy steps you can take at Home, School, the Office, and On the Road to protect the climate, reduce air pollution, and save money. Take action today! Small steps add up, if we all do our part."
What You Can Do to Become Carbon Neutral
"We work with government, business and individuals to conserve our environment by providing science-based research, education and policy work, and acting as a catalyst for the change that today's situation demands."

Advocacy Organizations

Along with individual efforts to reduce carbon use that causes global warming and climate change , political action is also considered to be a critical part of the solution. The following are local and national organizations to contact:

Citizens' Clmate Action Lobby
Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy climate change organization focused on national policies to address the national and global climate crisis.
Climate Solutions
"Climate Solutions has been selected as one of 18 high-impact nonprofits working in the field of climate change, and the only regional organization on the list."
Ecology Center Ann Arbor
"The Ecology Center is a membership-based, nonprofit environmental organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded by community activists after the country's first Earth Day in 1970, the Ecology Center is now a regional leader that works for a safe and healthy environment where people live, work, and play."
Environmental Defense Fund
"The good news is that we can protect our health and the environment while improving our economic well-being. That's what EDF's work is all about."
Global Warming form the Union of Concerned Scientists
"We can no longer afford to ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence that our climate is changing. Urge President Obama to better prepare and protect our communities from global warming."
Greenpeace
Greenpeace USA is committed to transforming the country’s unjust social, environmental, and economic systems from the ground up to address the climate crisis, safeguard our planet for future generations, advance racial justice, and build an economy that puts people over profits.
Michigan Department of Community Health Climate and Health News
"The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) is working in partnership with local health departments, researchers, and decision-makers to address the adverse human health impacts of climate change."
NextGenClimate
This organization is helping to mobilize young voters and ensure that facts, not antiscience climate denial, have a better chance of prevailing in the political campaigns in the United States.
Rainforest Action Network
"Rainforest Action Network campaigns for the forests, their inhabitants and the natural systems that sustain life by transforming the global marketplace through education, grassroots organizing and non-violent direct action."
US Climate Action Network
USCAN We envision a powerful, inclusive, and trusting network of US organizations who worked together to meet the global goals in the Paris Climate Agreement and exceed the US targets outlined in that agreement.

Years of Living Dangerously

Years of Living Dangerously
This Showtime documentary series explores the human impact of climate change. It combines storytelling styles of movie makers with the expertise of the brightest stars and respected journalists. It weaves together episodes dealing with savage wildfires in the West, rising sea levels in Bangladesh, and competition for water in the Middle East.