A recent episode of Gimlet Media's How To Save A Planet podcast focuses on the Yurok Tribe of northern California, who embraced the Western economics game to buy back the land that was stolen from them. The Yurok took an indigenous approach to land management that revitalized the forests and salmon populations in their ancestral home. This work got them paid in carbon credits, which in turn they sold to other companies who wanted to offset their carbon output—money they used to invest further in the land, and their community, by doing things like building 100 miles of fiber optic line. It's a pretty inspiring story, that offers an interesting economic approach to environmental protection.
The general idea of carbon credits to offset emissions is not without its criticisms, and I do wish the episode would've delved more into that. But, they are certainly a solution to mass pollution, and as long as they count as currency in a capitalist world, then I'm glad to know that someone's using them to do some good for the planet.
The Tribe that's Moving Earth (and Water) to Solve the Climate Crisis [How To Save A Planet / Gimlet Media]
Image: LittleT889 / Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
