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.
How an affluent neighborhood banished private cars for a month
Last week, Paris shooed cars from its downtown for a single photogenic day. Now a neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa is one-upping that car-free day with a celebration that kicks cars off the street for the entire month of October. As part of the EcoMobility World Festival, which started Read More...
Success story: In Tanzania, local communities own and manage forests themselves
Unsustainable logging and destructive mining practices: these are just two examples of threats to the abundant forests in the beautiful country of Tanzania. The government has found a simple but effective way to prevent deforestation: it lets the local forest communities take care of them. Local Read More...
Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical announce to clean up ocean trash
The Ocean Conservancy has teamed up with Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola to implement a large-scale, long-term plan to eliminate ocean trash by preventing it from getting into the oceans in the first place. The plan focuses on doing this in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, five Read More...
India pledges to source 40% of electricity from renewables by 2030
India, the world’s third biggest carbon emitter, has pledged to source 40% of its electricity from renewable and other low-carbon sources by 2030. It is the last major economy, following 140 other countries including China, the US and the EU, to submit a climate change plan to the UN before Read More...
More than 6 million companies vow to act on climate change
Not a handful, not a few hundred, not even thousands, but 6 million companies have made it very clear during the final business meeting of Climate Week in New York City that they want a strong climate deal at the UN Climate Convention in Paris this December. In just the past week alone we’ve seen Read More...
This zero-energy home is run by machines and costs a lot less than a regular house
Can the Axiom House create a new model for how we design houses—and how we build them? A net-zero house—one that creates as much energy as it uses—is usually a pricey custom design. The cost is one reason that there are only around 600 of the homes in the U.S. today. But a new Read More...
Forest conservation takes off
Tropical forest regeneration is ramping up in a bid to boost conservation globally. Monitoring regeneration can be labor intensive and expensive, making it difficult to know whether conservation efforts have been successful. However, manual monitoring isn’t the only option. Unmanned Read More...
This London underground farm grows salad in a WWII bomb shelter
Deep below the streets of London, something is growing in tunnels that once kept people safe from World War II bombs. One hint: It's leafy. Growing Underground is a company that makes "kilometer zero" eating possible in London, by growing salad in LED-lit, underground factories right beneath the Read More...
Could forests store more carbon as the climate warms?
Public lands are considered one of America’s best defenses against rising greenhouse gas emissions because the forests there pull vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere and store it in tree trunks and roots. As the climate warms, public lands may become even more valuable in America’s Read More...
To build a greener economy, Bhutan wants to go organic by 2020
Farmer Phub Zam, 55, is in a hurry. Monsoon rains have hit her farm in Bhutan's Paro valley and Zam is rushing to harvest her broccoli before crop is damaged. "Of all my vegetables, broccoli is the most sought after," she said. "Each kilogram sells for 90 rupees ($1.40)." That's 15 to 30 cents more Read More...