Project Drawdown

People are very self-motivated when it comes to purchasing food, and so we were like, "This is just a delicious brownie that happens to be gluten-free and vegan." But I think through that experience I was becoming more aware of, you know, sustainability is not going to be what sells products on its own, and that's really true in the plant-based food space as well.

And I was also motivated by research from Project Drawdown around what can we do as individuals to reduce our climate footprint, and one of those things is reducing food waste, and the other thing is eating more plant-based diets.

So with those two combined, it was like, how do we get people to eat more plant-based? Well, it has to be by getting them motivated, and I think taste is really the main motivator, unfortunately, not sustainability.

Makes complete sense.

[upbeat music] To understand what actually happened with RCP8.5 and the state of our climate in general, I wanted to talk to an actual climate scientist, someone who day in and day out works with climate models like RCP8.5 to figure out how greenhouse gases might affect our world.

So I called up Kate Marvel, a senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown and veteran climate modeler who spent over a decade tracking planet-warming trends at NASA.

First thing I wanted to know, is climate change [chuckles] still a big deal anymore? Or, like, is it chill now? [laughs]

[laughs] I mean, I don't wanna be rude, but, like, have you gone outside ever this year? Yes, it is still a big thing.

If we look at raw maps of survival, what are the actual heavy-hitting mechanisms we need to draw down carbon? We need gigatons of reduction, not just carats.

That is the exact question Project Drawdown was formed to answer.

It's one of the most rigorous scientific evaluations of climate solutions ever conducted.

Pragmatic, data-driven hope.

But we countered that by rethinking carbon entirely through the carbon rainbow.

Realizing pollution can literally be transformed into the raw materials of a new economy.

And finally, we look at the hard maths of Project Drawdown and the massive economic dividends of climate adaptation.

What all of this research from Wayne Visser tells us is that true resilience is not blind, toxic optimism.

Through natural curiosity, we're making science more understandable, more relatable, and hopefully bringing a little more comfort in how we experience the world around us.

Dr. Jonathan Foley is the executive director of Project Drawdown, an organization that focuses on not just explaining the problem of climate change, but identifying the solutions we already have and figuring out how to put them to work.

And Jonathan's background is pretty remarkable.

He actually started out in atmospheric science.

He went on to become one of the world's most highly cited environmental scientists, publishing more than 130 peer-reviewed papers on climate change, ecosystems, food systems, and sustainability.

He spent decades in academia, leading major environmental research programs at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota, and later served as executive director of the California Academy of Sciences.

Today, he leads Project Drawdown.

The organization grew out of the best-selling book, Drawdown, which brought together roughly 100 technologies and practices that could help address climate change.