The Problem

The document outlines the drivers of global warming, specifically the emission of climate pollutants from fossil fuels, land use, and industrial activities. It introduces Project Drawdown's approach to climate action, which prioritizes the deployment of existing, scalable, and economically feasible physical practices and technologies over theoretical future developments. The text distinguishes between 'solutions' (physical practices), 'levers' (policies and investments), and 'key actors' (the people implementing them), while detailing the transparent, open-source methodology used by the Drawdown Explorer to categorize and evaluate these solutions by their mode of action and sector.

• Human activity has caused the planet to warm by approximately 1.2 ˚C compared to preindustrial levels through the emission of climate pollutants, including CO₂, methane, and black carbon.
• Climate pollutants are released into the atmosphere via the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), deforestation, large-scale agriculture, cement production, refrigerant disposal, landfill operations, and wastewater treatment.
• Project Drawdown defines a climate solution specifically as a physical practice or technology that reduces the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases by cutting emissions, removing them from the atmosphere, or both.
• The framework distinguishes physical solutions from 'levers'—such as laws, regulations, and investments—and 'key actors'—such as policymakers and business leaders—who facilitate the scaling of those solutions.
• Project Drawdown's assessment methodology, updated in 2024, utilizes open-source data and transparent, step-by-step calculations to evaluate solutions based on their global and regional scale, effectiveness, and co-benefits for people and nature.

APA

Project Drawdown (n.d.). The Problem. https://drawdown.org/explorer/primer

Chicago

Project Drawdown. The Problem. n.d. https://drawdown.org/explorer/primer.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Project Drawdown |title=The Problem |url=https://drawdown.org/explorer/primer |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{projectdrawdownndproblem, author = {{Project Drawdown}}, title = {{The Problem}}, institution = {Project Drawdown}, url = {https://drawdown.org/explorer/primer}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }