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.
Boring: Elon Musk wants to dig a tunnel under Los Angeles to solve traffic mess
Stuck in notoriously bad Los Angeles traffic in December last year, Elon Musk tweeted that it was time to start digging tunnels under the city. What began as a joke, is now becoming a serious plan. Musk even has a name for his new tunnel company: Boring. Musk is a big fan of tunnels and even Read More...
Detroit saves emissions and money with change to LED street lights
Just three years ago, Detroit’s 139 square miles were lit only sporadically; around half of the 88,000 old streetlights were dysfunctional, their wiring decades old. In 2014 the city started a $185 million project to switch on 65,000 new LED street lights. The project was completed a month ago. Read More...
Become a citizen scientist and help preserve California's biodiversity
Would you like to become a volunteer citizen scientist helping to document and analyze California's rich biodiversity? If so, you can be among 1,000 volunteers who will collect 18,000 samples of soil and aquatic sediment from across the state through a new University of California program called Read More...
Shampoo bottle made from oceans plastics hailed as ‘technological breakthrough’
Beaches strewn with plastic waste have become a graphic illustration of just how much plastic we use in everything from food packaging to cosmetics, and how much of it gets thrown away. Consumer goods giant P&G has become the latest company to attempt to show it is tackling the problem, Read More...
France issues record $7.5 billion in green bonds
France has issued a record 7 billion euros ($7.5 billion) in so-called green treasury bonds, a boost to efforts to generate investment in clean energy. The 22-year bonds that will go exclusively toward green energy spending. The French government celebrated the success and president Francois Read More...
Chemical that gives pine trees their smell could be used to make renewable plastic
Plastic is an incredibly useful and versatile material, but it's also become a plague to the earth because of the large amount of disposable plastics thrown away every day that wind up in landfills and our oceans. On top of that, it's made from petroleum, a fossil fuel, which adds to its Read More...
Recycling 2.0: Scientists discover a plastic-eating bacteria
Plastic pollution is a big problem. The good news is that a research team has finally found a microbe that eats plastic. Unlike natural polymers (such as cellulose in plants) plastics aren’t biodegradable. Bacteria and fungi co-evolved with natural materials, coming up with new biochemical Read More...
California sets the most ambitious climate goal in the U.S.
California doesn’t care what the new federal global warming policies in Washington D.C. may be and has set the most ambitious goal to cut carbon emissions in the U.S. According to the newly released plan emissions will be cut 40 percent over 1990 levels by 2030. “We’ve got the scientists, Read More...
Bringing a breath of fresh air to the UK’s polluted cities
Featuring a sturdy leather head-strap and mask, two large tubes and a transparent backpack containing a small potted plant, designer Chih Chiu’s response to crowded, polluted cities is stark. “My initial idea was to separate an individual from the public space,” he says. Read More...
As Trump enters office, China claims Paris climate deal leadership
After all, it’s the country of yin and jang. So, it makes sense that China begins profiling itself as the leader in the fight against global warming at the very moment that Donald Trump takes office. In an address to the United Nations in Geneva president Xi Jinping said that the Paris climate Read More...