One Earth

A Spotify original podcast called, “How to Save a Planet,” is hosted by journalist Alex Blumberg and scientist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The purpose of their episodes are to ultimately figure out how to build the future we want by addressing the climate crisis. Their episode from February 4th, “The Tribe That’s Moving Earth (and Water) to Solve the Climate Crisis,” focuses on the Yurok Tribe and how they have combined their indigious land management practices and modern Western economics. Frankie Myers is the Vice-Chairman of the Yurok Tribe. He received the Equator Prize, which was given out by the UN Development Program, recognizing sustainable development solutions. The tribe received this award in 2019 for their use of innovative solutions to tackle climate change and their work to undo some of the ecological damage that had been done to their land in the last two centuries. Myers was able to figure out how to use the tools of destruction for good. The Yurok Tribe is the largest...

     In Greenberg's TED Talk, he informs us that the way we fish shrimp, tuna, salmon and "white fish" is threatening our oceans. Since these four fish are the most popular, they are severely overfished and unsustainable. Shrimp is fuel inefficient to bring to the market and there is a mangrove deficit in raising them. Tuna is a global fish, which means we have to manage areas in our oceans globally. We cannot grow tuna because they are warm blooded and can swim up to 40 mph. These factors eliminate the advantages of farming fish. For salmon, the main issue is that there are too many dams across the nation. This is problematic because it stops salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. The last, or category of fish, Greenberg spoke about was "white fish." This fish started as the halibut, then cod, and now Alaska pollack.  The Alaska pollack was the largest fin fish fishery in the United States, taking in "2-3 billion pounds out of the sea every single ye...

               I have felt connected to nature my whole life. My earliest memories are being in the backyard of my childhood home in Connecticut, carefully searching through the dirt for bugs. I remember being so full of joy over the discovery of a rolly polly. I know now that they are called Pill bugs, but I will always call them rolly pollies. I’d spend days making little “homes” for them in the ground. I’ve always been so in awe of other forms of life on this planet. Watching the leaves blow in the wind as the sun shines through them or trying to get an ant to crawl on my finger so I could get a closer look; these small moments of my childhood are what stuck with me the most.  I am grateful to have been able to spend my entire summers in Martha’s Vineyard, an island off of Massachusetts, where I fell in love with the ocean. I’d spend hours in the water, diving for rocks to add to my collection. Every summer, nothing would change, yet ...

     The wolf and grizzly populations have been historically managed with policies that protect these animals in the state of Montana because they were on the endangered species list in the 1970s. The Endangered Species Act ended hunting, trash was carefully managed, and there was an "effective crackdown on poachers." There has been debate since then because people feel that the bears and wolves pose a threat to the livestock and humans in Montana. Currently, the new bills manage their population differently. Practices that were outlawed centuries ago are now being brought back because there are “too many predators,” according to new Republican governor, Greg Gianforte. Some of these proposed bills include the use of spotlights at night to hunt, which should be seen as “unethical because it temportaly blinds the animal,” and using bait to lure the animals to kill. Others state that they’d pay wolf hunters their expenses to kill the animals, including snaring, which strang...