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.
Plants may literally light the way to sustainable energy sources
Scientists at MIT are in the process of developing a new source of passive lighting that could one day light up our streets. The surprising source? Glow-in-the-dark plants. The relatively new field of “plant nanobionics” involves embedding nanoparticles into plants to enhance the natural Read More...
New Illinois bill leads the nation in climate equality
Illinois has thrown a stake in the ground on climate change and equality and established a path towards a 100 percent clean energy future by 2050 with a new law. The bill, SB2408, received bipartisan support in both the Illinois House and Senate and takes on mitigating climate change, creating Read More...
Emory University School of Medicine now includes climate risk in curriculum
Climate change exacerbates the risk of many health conditions including heatstroke, asthma, lung disease, and more, but despite this, most medical school curriculums do not discuss climate change when studying potential disease risk factors. In an effort to address this issue and support Read More...
NYC to build one of the country's biggest EV charging networks
Electric vehicles aren’t a common sight on the streets of New York City. In fact, this fast-paced city seems to have finally slept on EV adoption. It lags behind Los Angeles, a city that boasts four times as many registered EVs and around eight times more chargers—but NYC plans to turn this Read More...
Study unveils effective way to address marine dead zones
Marine dead zones refer to areas of the ocean which are too low in oxygen to support life. In the Gulf of Mexico, runoff from agricultural operations, mostly nitrogen and phosphorus, travels down the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, contributing to an overgrowth of algae and a widening dead zone Read More...
100 solar EVs will soon feed the Dutch energy grid with renewable power
The Dutch city of Utrecht has just become the first region in the world with a bidirectional charging ecosystem, where energy harnessed by electric vehicles is fed back into a home or into the grid. As part of the initiative, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands will use vehicle-to-grid Read More...
Los Angeles County votes to phase out oil extraction
The Los Angeles County board of supervisors unanimously voted to prohibit new oil wells and evaluate existing ones, taking a big step towards ending oil extraction in the US’ largest county. Currently, oil wells cannot be shuttered in the county until companies recoup the costs of drilling. Read More...
Ojai school rebuilds from Thomas Fire using resilient architecture
The Thomas Fire was one of the most destructive in California history and burned a total of 281,000 acres. Among the over 1,000 structures burned by the blaze was the Upper Campus of the Ojai Valley School. In one night, the fire blazed through most of the 195-acre campus. Architect Frederick Read More...
Fusion energy could soon be commercially available thanks to MIT scientists
As shown by the most recent IPCC report, moving away from fossil fuels as fast as possible is key to preventing catastrophic consequences from climate change. According to scientists, fusion power has a huge potential to transition the world towards a cleaner and safer energy future, but so far it Read More...
In a world-first, England will require all new homes to have EV chargers
With people’s garages increasingly housing electric cars rather than gas-powered ones, there is also a growing need for adequate charging infrastructure for these vehicles. Well aware of that, the British government has decided to introduce legislation that will require all new homes and offices Read More...