Environment
Need some good news about the environment? The Optimist Daily is your go-to herald of positive environmental news, highlighting eco-friendly solutions and scientific progress around climate action, circularity, conservation, and more. Learn about everything eco in our Environment section.
Can fig trees regrow lost rainforests?
“By themselves the figs could build a forest,” ecologist EJH Corner wrote almost a century ago. Now a fascinating book, Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers: the secret history and redemptive future of fig trees (titled Ladders to Heaven in the UK), delves anew into this tropical species’ Read More...
Small farms are just as important as big agriculture in the fight against climate change
Just four days before the US elections, the Paris Agreement officially became international law after receiving formal sign-off from 55 countries that contribute 55% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. This landmark deal marked a pivotal moment in the fight against climate change, particularly Read More...
California's Jerry Brown finds himself at forefront of climate-change battle
One strange effect of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency has been to vault California Gov. Jerry Brown, one of America’s most fervent climate warriors and a failed presidential candidate himself, to national leadership on what he calls “the existential threat of our time.” As Trump Read More...
Patagonia will donate 100% of its global Black Friday profits to the environment
While most businesses look towards Black Friday as a chance to maximize profits, Patagonia has pledged to give 100% of its global proceeds from stores to grassroots environmental organizations fighting every day to protect our air, water, and soil. Along with their massive donation, Patagonia will Read More...
Unleashing trees in the battle against climate change
In discussions around climate change and natural resources, one widely mentioned oversimplification is that "cutting trees is bad for the environment." While true that global forest loss has environmental implications, sustainably managed working forests can provide impressive climate benefits in Read More...
Degrowth? Economics focused on human and ecological wellbeing
Would it be possible to shift from an economy focused on the ever-growing use of material resources to an economy focused on the growth of human and ecological wellbeing? Around the globe there are inspiring initiatives to “re-localize” the economy and nurture grassroots cooperation. At the Read More...
Plants to the rescue, absorbing more CO2 in response to climate change
Humans and animals produce carbon dioxide; plants and trees absorb it. Climate change is the result of the fact that we have disturbed that delicate balance with an explosive growth in the use of fossil fuels. For decades, we’ve been pumping billions of tons of harmful greenhouse gases into the Read More...
"Restoration economy" strives to protect pollinators, create jobs
Gary Nabhan and I are bumping along in a rental car down a two-track dirt road that follows the edge of Sonoita Creek’s floodplain, some 29 kilometers north of the Arizona–Mexico border. Nabhan—an ethnobiologist, conservation biologist and agroecologist at the University of Read More...
Transforming carbon dioxide into rock could help save the environment
Just a few years ago, Iceland’s largest producer of geothermal energy injected 250 tons of carbon dioxide into an underground repository of volcanic rocks. To their surprise, the carbon they had injected underwent a quick chemical reaction and formed into a rock called carbonate in two years’ Read More...
100 solutions show how cities are blazing path towards climate action
The world's cities are growing rapidly and in 2050 two thirds of the global population is expected to reside in urban areas, compared to 50 percent today. That puts pressure on infrastructure, energy supply and housing capabilities in a global climate that is poised to become hotter and less Read More...