Paul Hawken’s book, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (amazon.com), inspired Cecilie Stuart, founder of Move the World, a youth activist dance troupe, to hold free Drawdown Solutions Workshops. To see all 100: drawdown.org/solutions. For information on Cecilie Stuart’s free Drawdown Workshop for adults and youth: e-mail Cecilie.Stuart@outlook.com.
As we begin to work with the Drawdown Solutions, it’s easy to see how the solutions are related to one another. When you view Drawdown Solution #5: Tropical Forests, the problem to overcome is “Burning continues to be the preferred means of clearing land in the Amazon to make way for cattle.” Drawdown.org.
Tropical forests are one of our most valuable natural wonders and profoundly impact global climate, the world’s clean water, animal diversity, human sustainability, and medicine. They had once covered 12 percent of our earth’s surface and now only five percent remains.
Even so, they contain more than half of our land animals. Plants add water to the atmosphere through the process of transpiration, by which plants release water from their leaves during photosynthesis. Deforestation reduces the moisture released into the atmosphere, causing rainfall to decrease everywhere.
Solution #3 is Plant Rich Diets and if we begin to limit our demand for beef, eventually cattle land will be less valuable than tropical forests, the lungs of our planet.
More than 60 percent of anticancer drugs originate from natural sources, including rainforest plants, according to research published in the International Journal of Oncology.
Rainforests also give the remaining indigenous people places to live and sustain their timeless culture. We must all do our part by making personal changes. What we do here in Los Angeles begins to ripple toward the Amazon’s farmers who are trying to make a living for their families, as well. Have a veggie burger today instead of meat and consider donating to Amazon Watch or Rainforest Alliance for your holiday giving.
Stop by Manzanita School’s small library to see Drawdown students, Theo O’Gara, Owen, Mason Geller, and their permanent Biotope display of the Amazon Rainforest, which represents a closed-loop rainforest system, complete with Dart Frogs and Jumping Spiders!
Project Drawdown is a global research organization that identifies, reviews, and analyzes the most viable solutions to climate change, and shares these findings with the world. We partner with communities, policy makers, universities, non-profits, businesses, investors, and philanthropists to deploy climate solutions as quickly, safely, and as equitably as possible.
For information about free Drawdown Workshops: Contact: Cecilie Stuart: info@movetheworldnow.com.