The constant drumbeat of especially bad news in recent days and weeks has been so depressing that it’s easy to think nothing good is happening in the world. But that would be a terrible mistake.
Despite all the bad news, especially those stories from Minneapolis, good people continue to do good things, although their stories rarely make the front pages. So it’s good to step back occasionally and realize the positive things that people are doing. Here are just a few examples:
+ Because farming has become more efficient in recent years, and because science has replaced some land-hungry crops with near-landless alternatives (think synthetic fibers, synthetic nicotine, synthetic flavorings), farmland around the world is being replaced by grasslands and forests. One result is that wild animals are returning to abandoned pasturelands that they once dominated.
+ The oat milk brand Oatly has published an updated climate protection plan that has made it the first food and drink brand ever to qualify as a Climate Solutions Company.
+ A program in Flint, Mich., offers women $1,500 as soon as their pregnancies are confirmed, and another $500 a month after their babies are born. The result has been lowered rates of maternal postpartum depression, stabilized families’ housing, improved infant outcomes, and savings of millions of dollars in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit spending.
+ Americans view capitalism more favorably than they do socialism, but the gap is narrowing. Capitalism’s popularity is shrinking rapidly while socialism’s is holding steady.
+ Ikaria, an island in the Aegean Sea about seven hours east of Athens, operates on a barter economy, but it’s not just about avoiding money. It’s about resisting the kind of detachment that money can create.
+ Scotland is experiencing a housing crisis, so thousands of garages that were built years ago and are no longer in use are being converted into homes, and Scots are grabbing them up as soon as they become available.
+ Officials across Atlantic Canada are closely watching a pilot program in Nova Scotia that is designed to protect Mahone Bay from hurricanes. Instead of building concrete seawalls or the like, which can worsen erosion, the project involves creating a salt marsh of tidal plants that absorb and diffuse storm surges naturally.
+ South African scientists have begun injecting radioactive isotopes into rhino horns, not to hurt the animals but to protect them from poachers. The isotopes are harmless to the rhinos, but if smugglers try to transport the horns, radiation detectors at airports and borders will pick up the signal and alert authorities.
+ Turbines are great for creating energy from wind, but their costs are high, their operations are loud, their maintenance is complex, and they kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year. Now, however, a new wind turbine called the “Skybrator” skips the blades, oils and gears entirely by converting wind into power through “vortex shedding,” a well-known but rarely used concept.
+ Growing rice requires huge amounts of water, but scientists in drought-plagued Chile have invented a planting technique that only needs intermittent watering – and it yields nearly 10 times more rice than conventional rice fields do.
+ New research shows that when people are evicted from their homes, it can cause their friends and neighbors to suffer long-term mental health problems. New eviction prevention programs are helping solve the problem.
+ When the town of Rock Port, Mo., found itself with soaring energy costs and increasing environmental concerns because of its reliance on fossil fuels, the local government decided to harness the wind. Today the town gets 100 percent of its energy from the wind, and the welcome results range from reduced carbon emissions to slashed energy bills.
+ Solar panels are usually mounted on roofs or in gigantic solar parks, but Canada’s Thompson Rivers University found what it considers a far better way: implant solar modules in sidewalks.
+ At least half of the fertilizer that farmers use runs off into drainage ditches and streams and concentrates with disastrous effects in lakes and oceans. A renegade soil scientist is transforming American agriculture by showing farmers how to use less fertilizer without reducing yields, thus saving both money and landscapes.
+ Atlanta has begun requiring that all new roofs reflect sunlight, which not only reduces summer temperatures in the buildings but even in their surrounding neighborhoods. Several other cities require them on new flat roofs, but Atlanta requires them on all new roofs.
+ A new school of medicine in Bentonville, Ark., is training future doctors in a radically different way than the method used by most medical schools. Instead of teaching students to look for symptoms and perform tests, this school teaches them to keep their patients healthy by practicing preventive medicine.
+ Countless millions of tons of disposable diapers have been dumped in landfills over the years, and since they take hundreds of years to naturally break down, every one of those diapers is still there. However, a start-up in Austin, Tex., may have solved the problem. The company sells disposable diapers paired with fungi that break down the plastic.
+ Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, who campaigned on making Philadelphia “the safest, cleanest, and greenest big city in the nation,” is focusing on environmental initiatives to make it happen. She says the initiatives can improve quality of life issues, even slowing gun violence, and emerging statistics back her up.
+ Researchers have developed a way to replace the costly chemicals crucial to desalination plants. The system can cut costs by up to 15 percent, or around 20 cents per cubic meter of treated water.
+ Seven parched states and Indigenous tribes that rely on the Colorado River constantly fight one another over access to the river, but they are only recycling a quarter of their wastewater. However, new technology is available that can safely recycle even the filthiest household wastewater, and that could go a long way toward solving the problem.
+ Singapore’s project to operate the world’s largest automated port is coming along so well that plans are to dramatically increase business and automate further.
+ For the last quarter century, New York City has been sinking its worn-out subway cars in the Atlantic Ocean between New Jersey and Georgia to serve as artificial reefs and provide food, shelter and a safe place for young sea life to grow. So far, 2,500 cars have been deposited, the plan is working, and more cars are coming.
+ Scientists have discovered that reducing climate data into a binary — a stark this or that — can help break through apathy about climate change..
+ Decades of degradation, fragmentation and neglect have all contributed to the poor state in which the world-famous Greater Thames Estuary finds itself today. But that is ending. A wildlife coalition has launched a $5 million mission to reverse the estuary’s decline and protect its wildlife, benefit the millions of people who live in the area, and restore the Thames to the glory of decades passed.
+ The Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor, which connects the Mojave Desert to the Colorado Plateau and is the largest connected and protected landscape in the contiguous United States, is important to people, but it’s an absolute necessity to a wide variety of wildlife.
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