If the climate news hasn’t scared you, then you haven’t been paying attention. We’re watching the brutal reality of what scientists predicted would happen play out across the planet, in some cases at the furthest extremes, and it’s terrifying. “I told you so” is small comfort when confronted with so much bad news.
However, now more than ever, it’s crucial to resist the allure of despair. The narrative of climate doom, while grounded in harsh reality, leads to inaction. As Rebecca Solnit points out, this narrative is a strange mix of confidence and defeatism: confidence in positions that are increasingly based on outdated information, and defeatism about our ability to shape a liveable future.
Renewable energy is scaling exponentially and getting more efficient and cost-effective every year. Vested interests are doing everything in their power to obstruct its progress, but the ledge they’re standing on gets narrower by the month.
In the face of all of this, you’re allowed to be heartbroken and hopeful. Hope, not as a naive belief in a rosy future, but as a commitment to search for possibilities. In that spirit, we’re going to kick things off this week with all the climate stories you didn’t see in the news. There are tens of millions of people working to solve this thing now. Don’t forget that.
Humankind is experiencing dramatic improvements in well-being. HumanProgress.org will show you the evidence.
HumanProgress.org bridges the gap between mistaken perceptions and reality.
Empirical evidence from around the world shows dramatic improvements in human well-being. Yet the speed and extent of human progress is often underestimated, unacknowledged, or even disregarded. HumanProgress.org aims to become a valuable resource for the public, students, journalists and researchers. It allows users to compare many indicators of human well-being; to calculate absolute and relative changes over selected periods of time; to export the underlying data; and to create and export graphics.
This information comes from the website of Human Progress.
The small Himalayan country of Bhutan, mainly known for measuring national happiness instead of GDP, is the only carbon-negative country on the planet. Believe it or not, it has only had one single death from COVID-19. Is that a coincidence?
Madeline Drexler’s new article in the Atlantic, “The Unlikeliest Pandemic Success Story,” dives into the reasons that Bhutan has managed to fare so well against the novel coronavirus while rich countries and middle-income have struggled to keep it in check. The tiny developing country, landlocked between India and Tibet, wasn’t exactly set up for success. It began 2020 with exactly one PCR machine to test for the virus, according to Drexler’s reporting, and one doctor with advanced training in critical care.
Read the article by Kate Yoder on Feb 12, 2021 at Grist:
There’s been so much loss, grief and heartbreak in 2020 that it feels almost wrong to be compiling our traditional annual list of good news. Things can and do fall apart, and this year it felt like they really did. Amazing as it may seem however, there were also big wins for conservation, living standards, peace, safety and human rights, clean energy, and yes, even global health. The reason you didn’t hear about them is because good news doesn’t sell advertisements or generate clicks, and that was more true in 2020 than ever before.
Some examples:
Conservation
16. Attitudes in China towards the eating of wild animals changed drastically in 2020. Up to 90% of the public now supports strict bans on the trade and consumption of wildlife, and more than 15,000 people were prosecuted for wildlife crimes this year, a 66% increase from 2019. China also removed dogs from the list of animals that can be treated as livestock, signalling the beginning of the end of the sale of live dogs for food and fur across the country.
Global Health
35. The WHO revealed that malaria deaths have reached the lowest level ever recorded, a drop of almost 60% in the last two decades. Take a moment to let this sink in: between 2000 and 2019, 1.5 billion malaria cases and 7.6 million malaria deaths were averted globally.
Peace, Safety & Human Rights
44. A new report by the Global Peace Index showed that since 2007, the majority of the world’s countries – 113 countries – have reduced their armed forces, 100 have reduced military expenditure and both imports and exports of weapons have reached their lowest levels since 2009.
Living Standards
74. The IEA’s annual report contained a hidden nugget of very, very good news this year. The number of people without access to electricity dropped from 860 million to 770 million, a new record low. Africa has made particularly good progress; the number of people gaining access to electricity doubled from 9 million a year in 2013, to 20 million a year by 2019.
Clean Energy
82. 2020 saw an unprecedented acceleration in national climate pledges. South Korea became the first Asian country to set a 2050 net zero emissions goal, followed by Japan, and then most importantly, China, which committed to net zero by 2060 – perhaps the single most important development in climate policy since the Paris Agreement.
Read the article at Future Crunch:
https://futurecrun.ch/99-good-news-2020
World’s Best News is an independent news organization for constructive journalism and campaigns. We report on progress and sustainable solutions to challenges in global development.
Our work is based on the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, which address some of the world’s biggest challenges, such as extreme poverty, global inequality, and climate change.
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WeRiseUP brings together some of the most brilliant, accomplished & high-impact leaders of our day to redefine a new model of success.
WeRiseUP is a culture shifting documentary seeking to re-write the success narrative and hack the success code. Our current model of success is destroying the planet and driving billions of people to unfulfilled lives. At the same time a new model of success, Success 3.0 is emerging from around the world. Success 3.0, is giving rise to businesses that do good – and do well as a part of their DNA. With Success 3.0 people are Rising UP to radically fulfilled, purpose driven lives.
WeRiseUP The Movie follows the stories of these people who have woken up to their unique self purpose and have taken action and produced amazing results in the world.
We are wrapping these stories in a philosophical backdrop with thought leaders such as Tony Robbins, Ken Wilber, John Mackey, Blake Mycoskie, Michael Beckwith, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Tom Chi and Lynne Twist. Their voices will ground the film in transformational thinking and help the audience to look deeply into their own lives to identify their own unique self purpose.
The entire documentary team is fully committed to making this project a massively significant contribution to the millions of people who will see this film and be moved to step up and give their unique gifts and commit outrageous acts of love. It is our shared belief that an evolution of the success narrative is a key leverage point in culture which has an enormous ripple effect.
For the last 12 months, the global media has been focused on a lot of bad news. But there were other things happening out there too: conservation successes, huge wins for global health, more peace and tolerance, less war and violence, rising living standards, some big clean energy milestones, and a quiet turning of the tide in the fight against plastic. Stories of human progress, that didn’t make it into the evening broadcasts, or onto your social media feeds.
Goalcast is an inspiring community for achievers dedicated to helping you improve all aspects of your life. We provide you with practical advice, resources and the motivation to help you realize your full potential.
We believe that aspiring towards your true goals and eventually reaching them is the most important factor for living a better, happier and more meaningful life. Anyone has the potential to reach their goals no matter how ambitious and we hope to be a source of motivation for people on their journey towards success.
