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.
A carbon-free city is being built from scratch
Can a city built from scratch be profitable to developers and enjoyable to residents as it tries to be carbon-free? That is the question facing owners and planners of a mostly vacant, sunburned 400-acre plot of land near this city's sprawling International Airport as they plan an energy system with Read More...
Tobacco-style California climate lawsuits can stimulate clean energy revolution
Twenty years ago lawyers brought tobacco manufacturers to their knees with billion-dollar claims for damages—thus making an important contribution to curtailing smoking and improving public health. Similarly, now lawyers see possibilities for a major contribution to the fight against global Read More...
Citizens begin reclaiming coal country after decades of corporate land grabs
Across central Appalachia, once-thriving mining communities have been ravaged by the collapse of the coal industry and the flight of jobs from the region. For a region that remains rich in natural resources, Appalachia’s local governments continue to struggle to fund basic services such as Read More...
'The idea is coming of age': Indigenous Australians take carbon farming to Canada
Australia’s world-leading Indigenous land management and carbon farming programs are spreading internationally, with a formal agreement signed to help build a similar program in Canada. A chance meeting between Rowen Foley from the Aboriginal Carbon Fund and a Candian carbon credit businessman at Read More...
Good morning: Watch this video of a whale jumping completely out of the water
Being in nature brings calmness and peace. Watching nature films or pictures is not the same but it helps to relax too. Here’s a shirt video of a jumping humpback whale. An astonishing sight and a great opportunity to take a short break from your busy Read More...
Fighting deforestation by paying people not to cut down trees works
When it comes to global warming and the regeneration of land, trees have enormous value. Yet, short-term challenges force many people in the developing world to cut down trees. Would it work to pay landowners to leave their land alone? Critics have argued that such a policy would simply make the Read More...
All of Tesla’s seat options are now vegan
Overnight, Tesla made some changes to their available options, making some options standard, and notably eliminating one thing: leather seats. As of now, Tesla only sells vegan seats. While this lack of leather is not made explicit on the Tesla configuration page, any mention of leather Read More...
Plastic-plucking robots are the future of recycling
We are living in the Age of Plastic. In 2015, the world's industries created 448 million tons of it -- twice as much as it did in 1998. -- and the rate of production is only accelerating. However, our recycling efforts have not matched pace. In fact, according to the EPA, barely 14 percent of Read More...
Caltech scientists speed up carbon sequestration process by 500 times
Carbon sequestration, or removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it long-term, could help us fight climate change. It’s a complex chemical reaction, but a team of six scientists led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) just made a breakthrough in speeding up a slow Read More...
Key to speeding up carbon sequestration discovered
Scientists at Caltech and USC have discovered a way to speed up the slow part of the chemical reaction that ultimately helps the earth to safely lock away, or sequester, carbon dioxide into the ocean. Simply adding a common enzyme to the mix, the researchers have found, can make that rate-limiting Read More...