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518 results for "carbon dioxide"
Elementic's MO6 is the building material claiming to lock away carbon for thousands of years
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Lignin is the part of wood that paper mills and timber companies tend to get rid of. It comes off as a byproduct when wood is processed, resists most conventional uses, and usually ends up burned for energy. A Finnish materials startup called Elementic Read More...
Climate attribution science just changed the rules for fossil fuel lawsuits
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Scientists can now draw a straight line from a single oil company's emissions to a specific disaster. Not a rough estimate of the industry's overall contribution, but a specific company, a specific event, a specific percentage. That's what a new Read More...
Rooftop rainwater could break cities' air conditioning trap
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Air conditioning is making cities hotter, and that's not incidental. It's the physics. Every AC unit pulls heat from inside a building and dumps it into the street, which raises outdoor temperatures, which makes more people reach for the thermostat. Read More...
The skin compound that makes some more delicious to mosquitoes than others
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Mosquitoes don’t pick targets randomly. They run a multi-stage sensory scan, and new research is beginning to explain what that scan detects and why it favors some people over others. “It’s not a misconception: mosquitoes are attracted to some people Read More...
Earth Day at 56: why the 2026 theme carries more weight than usual
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM On April 22, 1970, roughly 20 million Americans took to the streets, campuses, and parks to demand that the government treat the environment as something worth protecting. At the time, rivers in the United States were catching fire. Lead was still in Read More...
More movement, more energy burned: new study challenges metabolism myth
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The idea that your body works against you when you exercise has circulated in fitness and science communities for years. Work out more, the theory goes, and your metabolism quietly dials back somewhere else (suppressing immune function, trimming reproductive Read More...
Scotland legalizes water cremation, giving families a greener third option
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A quick note: this article walks through how water cremation works, including some detail about the process. If you'd prefer to jump straight to the environmental and policy context, feel free to scroll to the subheadings. Scotland is making history in Read More...
China’s Great Green Wall turns Taklamakan desert into a growing carbon sink
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM For decades, the Taklamakan Desert was described in stark terms: a “biological void,” a vast expanse of shifting sand where little could survive. Slightly larger than the state of Montana and ringed by mountains that block most incoming moisture, it Read More...
How to recycle batteries the right way (without starting a fire or trashing the planet)
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM If there is a modern rite of passage, it’s this: one day you realize you’ve got a “battery drawer.” Loose AAs. A few mystery coins. A rechargeable device you swear you’ll deal with later. Yes, batteries keep our lives humming, but when they die, Read More...
Stockholm’s ‘flying’ electric ferry cuts emissions by 94 percent and reimagines city travel
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a city built across 14 islands, water is not a backdrop but a major part of the infrastructure. Now Stockholm is proving that those waterways can be cleaner, quieter, and dramatically more efficient. In late 2024, the Swedish capital introduced a Read More...