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Drawdown

Local Solution Series

A way forward: Hope ￮ Action ￮ Community

Reversing global warming with community-based solutions.

draw·down: the point at which global greenhouse gas concentrations peak and begin to decline

Consider a perspective shift: global warming is not an unstoppable catastrophe, but a solvable, reversible math problem. Instead of fearfully combating a crisis, let’s center ourselves in visionary thinking.

Homer Drawdown Peatland Event
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Climate change is an opportunity for transformation, an opportunity to meet human needs in a more just, equitable, and healthy way. It is an opening to a new world, and we get to decide what that world looks like.

Drawdown Local Solutions

Why Local Solutions…

Local scientists like forester Mitch Michaud, biologist John Morton, climatologist Ed Berg and Inletkeeper’s stream ecologist Sue Mauger show the impacts of climate change in our backyard: Rampant emissions act like a heat-trapping blanket, warming our salmon streams and creating larger wildfires and drought in the Cook Inlet region. These are serious threats to our watershed. One of the most direct ways to effectively address climate change is by acting locally. It’s where we have the greatest influence and impact. Local successes ripple out, creating bigger change.

In 2019, Cook Inletkeeper decided to play a direct role in cultivating hope and empowering local climate action. Our key issues: protecting clean water and healthy salmon – depend on us reversing global warming. For real impact, our solutions need to be actionable, inclusive, and Alaskan. In response, we launched our Local SolutionSeries in Soldotna and Homer. Using the book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken, we help our communities identify meaningful and well researched solutions that don’t just stabilize levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, but that actually draw emissions back down to sustainable levels.

Our Local Solution series is centered in the belief that community-led, middle-out solutions, are the most influential solutions we can enact. The model is simple, each month we bring local experts and community members together to brainstorm solutions based on a chapter of Drawdown. After we finish the book we research, organize and implement solutions that affect our local institutions, that many people can play a role in, that are visible and scalable, and that can be implemented in a year. Enacting solutions to reverse global warming is not just hopefulness. It is hope grounded in data with achievable solutions.

CenPen Drawdown

Join us for Central Peninsula Drawdown 3.0 as we seek local solutions that improve our community, economy, and climate!

Visit Soldotna Drawdown

Homer Drawdown

Homer Drawdown’s first solution aimed to protect local carbon sinks by bringing awareness to the role our abundant local peatlands play in the carbon cycle.

Visit Homer Drawdown

Community-Led Success

Homer

Peatland Preservation

A citizen-science effort to survey local peatlands to calculate how much carbon they sequester, and to preserve them as carbon sinks. We couldn’t do this without dedicated community involvement.

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Non-Motorized Transportation

Aimed at improving local walking and biking infrastructure, policy, and culture, the Non-Motorized Transportation project generated over 600 individual comments in the City’s public process for their new 20-year master transportation plan. In the meantime, volunteers built and improved local connective trails to make walking and biking easier for everyone.
Power Smart Climate Smarty Homer Housing

Climate Smart Homer Homes

An initiative to support home energy efficiency upgrades to reduce home heating costs AND carbon emissions. Volunteers will be hosting workshops, forming strategic partnerships and creating a DIY retrofit club, to culminate and spread information about opportunities to draw down federal funding and affordably make upgrades in many Homer homes.

Central Peninsula

Community Compost

Community Compost

The first project to utilize the Actionkit process continues to be a wild success. After the pilot project was completed in 2021, we had diverted over 24,000 pounds of organic waste from decomposing into methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in our local landfill.

Solarize the Kenai

A cooperative buying campaign for home and small business solar power, Solarize the Kenai launched in 2019. By 2020, we brought 485 kilowatts of distributed renewable capacity to 82 sites in the region.

Project Re-Tree

The Central Peninsula experienced Spruce bark beetle devastation throughout the region over the past five years. In 2023 community members led Project RE-Tree, which focused on Restoring and Enhancing tree cover in the neighborhoods and public spaces on the Central Peninsula. Over 3,000 (and counting) trees were planted!
Power Smart Climate Smarty Homer Housing

PowerSmart Project

Central Peninsula’s fourth Local Solution is our PowerSmart Project – home energy efficiency for a sustainable future. The project is taking a “do-it-ourselves” approach to making home energy improvements more affordable and accessible for homeowners.