Climate Action
What is Climate Action? Climate Action is humanity's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our planet's resilience against climate change. From adaptation to mitigation, at The Optimist Daily you will learn about the most recent positive news stories and solutions targeting climate change and other environmental issues.
7 Tips for making Thanksgiving more sustainable this year
The festive season is just around the corner, which makes for a lot of excuses to (safely) gather around the dinner table with friends and family to feast on favorite holiday dishes, starting with Thanksgiving at the end of November. Unfortunately, this also means that the issue of food waste Read More...
US to begin regulating methane emissions from oil and gas wells
Oil and gas wells, even abandoned ones, are a huge source of emissions. These sites are particularly known for their methane emissions, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. A recent NASA project identified particularly problematic emissions sites, and now, for the first time ever, Read More...
This is the most detailed map ever of US cancer-linked industrial pollution
Air pollution has been linked to numerous diseases including asthma, cancer, and heart disease, but while air pollution can negatively affect all of us, its damage is disproportionately felt by certain populations. Breaking down where air pollution is most potent and why is the first step to Read More...
4 Latin American countries join forces to form huge marine reserve
Four Latin American countries have agreed to merge their marine reserves to form one mega-reserve that will protect one of the world’s richest regions of ocean biodiversity. The pacific-facing countries of Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, and Costa Rica announced the creation of the Eastern Tropical Read More...
A few extraordinary ways ordinary people are responding to COP26
The long-awaited COP26 climate summit is garnering media coverage from across the globe, however, it’s not just the big names in politics and business that are sounding the alarm on the climate crisis. The global climate summit has inspired the public to think of innovative ways that they can Read More...
Meet the world's youngest philanthropic author and wildlife conservationist
Kate Gilman Williams was just seven years old when she went on her first safari in South Africa. The trip allowed young Kate to see incredible wildlife in their natural habitat and learn how these savannah-dwelling animals are constantly threatened by human activity. This sparked in her the passion Read More...
This algae-filled bounce house captures CO2 as children jump
We recently shared how an innovative playground in Poland uses algae to capture CO2 and create a safer play space for children. Now, that same concept has traveled to the COP26 climate conference where it is gaining international attention in the form of a children’s bounce house. At first Read More...
Looking to the past to predict the future of climate change
Contemporary climate modeling uses our understanding of physical, chemical, and biological processes to shape earth system models. However, as climate change presents our world with unprecedented climate events, these models are becoming flawed and cannot accurately simulate events from the past. Read More...
COP26: Over 100 countries pledge to stop deforestation
The COP26 climate conference is in full swing and is celebrating its first big achievement: A pledge from more than 100 countries to end deforestation. The participating countries, which represent more than 85 percent of the world’s forests, have committed to ending and reversing deforestation Read More...
Beach-dwelling sheep eat seaweed and reduce their methane emissions
Back in March, we shared the research findings from a University of California study on how feeding seaweed to cattle can reduce methane emissions from their burps and flatulence by up to 82 percent. Now, scientists in Scotland have found that the same effect holds true for sheep. The recently Read More...