Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation

by Paul Hawken

Overview

A radically new understanding of and practical approach to climate change by noted environmentalist Paul Hawken, creator of the New York Times bestseller Drawdown

Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. It is the first book to describe and define the burgeoning regeneration movement spreading rapidly throughout the world.
 
Regeneration describes how an inclusive movement can engage the majority of humanity to save the world from the threat of global warming, with climate solutions that directly serve our children, the poor, and the excluded. This means we must address current human needs, not future existential threats, real as they are, with initiatives that include but go well beyond solar, electric vehicles, and tree planting to include such solutions as the fifteen-minute city, bioregions, azolla fern, food localization, fire ecology, decommodification, forests as farms, and the number one solution for the world: electrifying everything.
 
Paul Hawken and the nonprofit Regeneration Organization are launching a series of initiatives to accompany the book, including a streaming video series, curriculum, podcasts, teaching videos, and climate action software. Regeneration is the inspiring and necessary guide to inform the rapidly spreading climate movement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143136972
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/21/2021
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	87,603
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 10.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. He is one of the environmental movement’s leading voices, and a pioneering architect of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. He is the bestselling author of eight books that have been published in 30 languages in more than 50 countries and have sold more than 2 million copies, as well as dozens of articles, op-eds, and other papers concerning the environment, the ethical responsibility of business, and social justice. Hawken is a renowned lecturer who has keynoted conferences and led workshops on the impact of commerce upon the environment, and consulted with governments and corporations throughout the world.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Jane Goodall 6

Regeneration 9

Agency 10

How to Use This Book 12

Reader's Reference Guide 14

Oceans

Introduction 16

Marine Protected Areas 18

Seaforestation 22

Mangroves 26

Tidal Salt Marshes 28

Seagrasses 30

Azolla Fern 32

Forests

Introduction 34

Proforestation 36

Boreal Forests 38

Tropical Forests 42

Afforestation 44

Peatlands 46

Agroforestry 50

Fire Ecology 54

Bamboo 56

Patricia Westerford in The Overstory, Richard Powers 59

Wilding

Introduction 63

Trophic Cascades 64

Grazing Ecology 68

Wildlife Corridors 72

Wilding, Isabella Tree 76

Grasslands 80

Rewilding Pollinators 82

Wetlands 84

Beavers 86

Bioregions 88

Wild Things, Carl Safina 90

Land

Introduction 95

Regenerative Agriculture 96

Animal Integration 100

Degraded Land Restoration 102

Compost 104

Vermiculture 106

Rainmakers 108

Biochar 110

Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy 113

People

Introduction 116

Indigeneity 117

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim 120

Letter to Nine Leaders, Nemonte Nenquimo 122

The Forest as a Farm, Lyla June Johnston 124

Women and Food 128

Soul Fire Farm, Leah Penniman 130

Clean Cookstoves 134

Education of Girls 136

Acts of Restorative Kindness, Mary Reynolds 138

Who's Really Trampling Out the Vintage?, Mimi Casteel 142

Philanthropy Must Declare a Climate Emergency, Ellen Dorsey 144

The City

Introduction 149

Net Zero Cities 150

Buildings 152

Urban Farming 156

The Nature of Cities 159

Urban Mobility 162

The Fifteen-Minute City 164

Carbon Architecture 167

Food

Introduction 171

Wasting Nothing 172

Eating Everything 174

Localization 176

Decommodification 180

Insect Extinction 182

Eating Trees 186

We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer 189

Energy

Introduction 193

Wind 194

Solar 198

Electric Vehicles 202

Geothermal 204

Electrify Everything 207

Energy Storage 210

Microgrids 212

Industry

Introduction 215

Big Food 217

Healthcare Industry 220

Banking Industry 223

War Industry 226

Politics Industry 229

Clothing Industry 232

Plastics Industry 236

Poverty Industry 240

Offsets to Onsets 244

Action + Connection

What to Do 249

Where to Start 249

Create a Punch List 250

Climate Action Systems 250

Enlarging Our Focus-Nexus 251

The Goal 252

Protect 254

One More Thing 254

Afterword: Damon Gameau 255

Acknowledgments 256

Photography Credits 256

Editorial Reviews

08/02/2021

“Regeneration is not only about bringing the world back to life; it is about bringing each of us back to life,” writes environmentalist Hawken (Blessed Unrest) in this comprehensive guide to combating the climate crisis. With a strategy that puts “life at the center of every action and decision,” Hawken calls for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and for the protection of natural habitats globally. The author divides his guidance into several broad categories—“Oceans” introduces “seaforestation,” or growing marine forests “where they would not normally occur,” and makes a plea for “marine protected areas.” “Forest” looks at the versatility and sustainability of bamboo, and explains such concepts as proforestation (allowing and encouraging trees to recover and grow) and afforestation (“planting trees where none grew before”). The “Industry” section is the most engaging, and in it Hawken tackles the environmental impact of processed food, health care, fashion, war, and plastics. An “Action and Connection” chapter is filled with reasonable real-world steps: there’s a 12-point climate checklist that readers can apply to their lives, and a list of things to do to make one’s lifestyle greener. Urgent but never tipping into doom and gloom, this will be a boon to readers worried about a warming world. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Regeneration covers an impressively broad range of topics from food safety to the war industry, electric vehicles to mangroves, which serves to demonstrate how all-encompassing the challenge is… those of us who feel the weight of the crisis will find the book both clarifying and helpful as is his final exhortation: ‘It’s not your job to save the planet.’ Rather, it is all of our jobs."
—San Francisco Chronicle
 
"Regeneration is honest and informative, a rebuttal to doomsayers who believe it is too late."
—Jane Goodall

"Regeneration is brilliant! Encouraging, inspiring, with the best science and a big heart. Wow! It is a direct practical path to save and transform the earth that we can actually do!"
—Jack Kornfield, PhD, Founder of Spirit Rock Center

“This may be the single most important book for the human future.”
—Daniel Goleman

"A robustly practical book. . . . Paul Hawken’s challenge to our conventional ways of thinking is subtle, but hugely effective. . . . There is no voice more important than Paul Hawken’s."
—Sir Jonathon Porritt

"Life-empowering! Paul Hawken has once again provided us timely and visionary leadership in this earth-saving compendium of insights from a team of experts sharing the transformations we are now carrying out as well as those we need to enact across a spectrum of human activities. Filled with hope, and agency, Regeneration is an inspiring and practical guide for a healthier world, uplifting our spirits and showing us exactly how together, we can do this!"
—Dan Siegel, M.D., New York Times bestselling author

"Paul Hawken has delivered a must-read manifesto on the climate crisis. Feel both the urgency and agency as he lays out with crisp photos and equally crisp prose, the task at hand. Now is our moment. Let's seize it."
—Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Penn State University

"Paul Hawken has done it again. With immense intellectual clarity and an abundance of simple, yet brilliant ideas, Regeneration shows us how to go beyond a net zero future by restoring the vital link between human and planetary health."
—Paul Polman, Co-Founder and Co-Chair, IMAGINE and former CEO, Unilever

"Regeneration is descriptive and prescriptive. It is a candid assessment and a clear and inspiring path forward, educating and inviting all of us to participate in this incredible opportunity for change."
—Robyn O'Brien, Food Activist & Author

"Regeneration means restoring our relationship to the planet by restoring our relationships with one another."
—Rachel Gutter Hodgdon, President and CEO of the International WELL Building Institute

"Regeneration means the innate process of nature which, when unimpeded, will beeget its own splendor."
—Jeff Krasno, author of Wanderlust

"Regeneration means the essential practice of restoring balance and health to humanity and the earth."
—Dr. Mark Hyman, physician and New York Times bestselling author

"Regeneration is not just putting carbon back into the soil, it is about putting reciprocity back in our relationship with life."
—Ryland Engelhart, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Kiss the Ground

From the Publisher

2021-07-10
Along with a host of researchers, scholars, and other contributors, Hawken assesses our “dying planet—a phrase that may have sounded inflated or over the top not long ago.”

In order to mitigate the disastrous effects of climate change, we must figure out ways to contain carbon and reduce the surface temperature of a rapidly overheating globe. It also requires rethinking how we make our livings in an extractive economy governed by short-term thinking. “Regeneration,” as Hawken conceives it, is a project that restores every corner of the world to health. The process involves replanting overlogged forests, cleaning up the oceans, bringing sustainable power to consumers, and inculcating a new attitude of respect for all forms of life on the planet, among other goals. Hawken and a phalanx of contributors—including novelists Richard Powers and Jonathan Safran Foer and ecologists Carl Safina and Isabella Tree—examine carefully pinpointed strategies. One is to develop marine preserves around the world that are “absolute no-take zones,” forbidding fishing in large swaths of what is essentially a “lawless commons.” These marine preserves and other areas would be subject to “marine reforestation,” building kelp forests that have been depleted by chemical pollution and shifting oceanic currents. Another is to build sustainable food chains. A Japanese farmer, for instance, raises ducks that eat invasive snails and fertilize paddies of a plant called azolla, which, in maturity, becomes a wonderfully productive “green manure” for other plants. If you haven’t heard of azolla, you’re to be forgiven: As Hawken observes, we consume only a small fraction of the edible plants available to us, and we can be weaned from large-scale industrial agriculture in order to make use of the plants that “grow best where people live and help meet their nutritional needs.” The prescriptions are attainable and clearly stated, without jargon or hectoring.

Pie-in-the-sky visions meet gritty practicality in a book of interest to all environmentally minded readers.

Kirkus Reviews