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.
Scientists learn to listen when it comes to assessing rainforest health
In the fight to protect the extraordinary biodiversity of Papua New Guinea’s rainforests, some conservationists are collecting a unique set of data: the sounds of the forest. Scientists with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Princeton University are using acoustic sampling recorders in the Read More...
France wants to fight climate change by increasing carbon levels in soil
Scientists are searching high and low for ways to reduce the amount of carbon in the air to halt the onset of climate change. The French believe the answer lies in the soil beneath our feet. The carbon cycle is a fundamental part of life on earth. Soil has the natural ability to store more carbon Read More...
Business on the front lines in the fight against deforestation
Forests are an indispensable piece of the climate puzzle, which is why they’re prominent in the U.N.’s new Sustainable Development Goals, and why they will also loom large at the COP21 Paris climate talks. The land sector — agriculture, forestry and other land use — is the Read More...
The case for optimism about the future of the planet
A sustainable future is not only possible, but will be better to live in. But it's going to require some radical change. It's easy to look at the long list of problems facing the environment—mass extinction, dying oceans, climate change—and wonder whether things might have gone a little Read More...
Chile to create one of world's largest marine parks around Easter Island
Chile will create one of the world’s biggest marine parks around the Pacific waters of Easter Island, president Michelle Bachelet said on Monday. If the island’s indigenous Rapa Nui people approve the plan after a consultation by the mainland government, fishing will be banned from a Read More...
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...