Capitalism in aid of restoration

To address the doom and gloom I feel from being trapped in a capitalist system I sought out examples of solutions to the climate crisis that could be putting the skills that come with being a professional capitalist to some good use.

I found the case of Yishan Wong, ex-CEO of Reddit who has launched a company called Terraformation. Yishan and co have set out to solve climate change by aiding large scale restoration of native forest restoration around the world with the belief that forests are the cheapest, most efficient way of sequestering carbon.

They are partnering with local organisations to identify desertified and drought prone lands, using solar plants to desalinate water and setting up scalable seed banks to speed up the forest restoration. To their credit they have had remarkable results at their pilot project in Hawaii by restoring forests at 5 times the speed of other forest restoration projects.

The founder is using the language and the tools of business to address the climate crisis. The company story is centered around the founder, the lone capitalist out to address one of the world’s greatest challenges. He speaks of solving the most complex of problems with technology that is tried and tested rather than relying on new solutions that come with inherent risks and delays. Instead he is using technology to address the challenges in the way of fast and scalable restoration. And they have just checked off the first major milestone of a promising tech startup with their first round of funding.

What I appreciate about Terraformation is that they are taking their business and technology know-how and putting it entirely in service of the problem they are looking to solve: the approach they have taken in aiding local orgs to grow native forests, the fact that they are led by a forestry team and the fact that they are letting proven technology that is millions of years old do its work. A collaborative partnership with nature sounds promising. Whether that changes with investors on board remains to be seen.