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.
Study shows reforestation helps prevent flooding
Native woodlands in uplands reduce the effects of flooding. This is proven by recent scientific research such as the Pontbren Project, by Bangor University in Wales. They examined the management of upland sites by a group of farmers. It established that soil under mixed native trees absorbs water Read More...
Canada strikes historic deal to protect rainforest from logging
Deforestation is a plague to the Earth, damaging the quality of land, eliminating wildlife and destroying the trees that absorb much of the world’s carbon emissions. That’s why British Columbia is going an extra step to protect the Great Bear Rainforest with a historic deal made between the Read More...
Not recycling is more immoral than watching porn, say teens in study
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. One person's morality is the next person's source of humor. We all try to make sense of the world, and as we're growing up, we realize that the way our elders made sense of the world was often quite Read More...
Tourism can help protect natural landscapes, study shows
Environmentalists often fear that tourists will trample all over sensitive natural resource areas, but tourism may bring the needed and only economic incentives to help drive conservation. According to a University of Georgia study published in the Journal of Ecotourism, environmentalists should Read More...
Oslo trash incinerator starts experiment to slow climate change
Oslo's main waste incinerator began the world's first experiment to capture carbon dioxide from the fumes of burning rubbish on Monday, hoping to develop technology to enlist the world's trash in slowing global warming. The test at the Klemetsrud incinerator, which burns household and industrial Read More...
Vietnam to phase out coal, invest in gas and renewables
Vietnam’s prime minister says the country will stop building coal power plants and look to gas and renewables to power its electricity grid. In a statement on the government website, Nguyen Tan Dung said new energy plans should protect the environment and strictly follow “international Read More...
Genetic engineering could save an iconic American tree from extinction
American chestnut trees were once among the most majestic hardwood trees in the eastern deciduous forests, many reaching 80 to 120 feet in height and eight feet or more in diameter. The “then boundless chestnut woods” Thoreau wrote about in Walden once grew throughout the Appalachian Read More...
Leonardo DiCaprio is giving away $15 million to environmental causes
Leonardo DiCaprio announced that his foundation will be give more than $15 million to fast-track cutting edge sustainability and conservation projects around the world, during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dicaprio, giving an acceptance speech for the Crystal Award, Read More...
In a corner of the Himalayas, India now has its first organic state
Sikkim, the northeastern Indian state snuggled between Bhutan and Nepal, has now rid its agricultural land of pesticides and fertilizers making it the country’s first organic state. The 75,000-hectare area was transformed as per the policies of the Indian government’s National Programme Read More...
Vitamin D is a boon to the fertility of wild animals
Vitamin D is called the sunshine vitamin because its most efficiently absorbed by taking in the sun's rays. A new study suggests wild sheep who get a sufficient dose of the vitamin boast a healthier reproductive system. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland tracked levels of a Read More...