Politics
Having a difficult time finding positive news about national and global politics? Search no further! From public policy to positive leadership to democracy efforts, find the latest good news stories in the world of politics at The Optimist Daily.
Affordable housing design uses plastic waste to build sustainable homes
There are hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste in the environment all over the globe, threatening both human health and natural ecosystems. What if we could take this problem and use it to solve another one? That’s the line of thinking behind a new ambitious project aiming to build Read More...
Upcycled shipping containers provide housing for LA’s homeless
Los Angeles County has an estimated 66,000 homeless individuals, but a new initiative is helping some find housing from an unexpected source: old shipping containers. Recycled shipping containers can be transformed into livable spaces surprisingly quickly. Each container in the seven-unit Read More...
Report: It would cost $330 billion to end global hunger by 2030
More than 10 percent of the total global population is expected to go hungry in 2020. By spending $330 billion on strategic interventions, the number of hungry people around the world could decrease down to zero by 2030, according to a series of recent reports which looked at available solutions to Read More...
Israel becomes the first country to ban the sale of furs and animal skins
While an increasing number of cities across the world have banned the selling of animal skins and furs in recent years, no government has enacted such a policy on a national level — that is, until now. Israel has recently become the first country in the world to ban the use of animal fur and Read More...
Europe’s top court upholds French ban on bee-harming pesticides
In 2018, the French government placed a ban on the use of certain pesticides that harm bees. These pesticides belong to the neonicotinoid group's family of chemicals and are based on the chemical structure of nicotine. They were introduced in the mid-1990s and work by attacking the central nervous Read More...
Nobel Peace Prize recognizes importance of food security in 2020
Some of the most influential humans in the world have won the Nobel Peace Prize including Malala Yousafzai, Barack Obama, and Nelson Mandela. This year, the prize goes to a much broader world actor: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity Read More...
Nearly a third of California land to be conserved by 2030 under new order
The year 2020 has seen millions of acres of California land ravaged due to unstoppable wildfires. To protect the state from further damage in the future, Governor Gavin Newsome has announced an executive order to reserve 30 percent of state land for conservation by 2030. The executive order will Read More...
Canada will soon say goodbye to single-use plastics
Like most other countries around the world, Canada has a toxic relationship with single-use plastic. It is estimated that Canadian households generate more than 3 million tons of plastic waste every year, only 9 percent of which gets recycled — while the rest ends up in landfills and polluting Read More...
Thought Leader Series: Jay Inslee on the power of optimistic climate action
The climate crisis is an increasingly present and visible threat to our world and few know this better than Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, who watched more than 600,000 acres burn in his state during just the beginning of the second-worst fire season on record. In this week’s Thought Read More...
Ban on straws, stirrers, and cotton buds comes into effect in England
A ban on single-use plastic straws, stirrers, and cotton buds was supposed to come into effect in England this past April, but that ban was put on delay during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, months later, the ban has come into force. Each year, people in England use an estimated 4.7 billion Read More...