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Global Good News Round Up

  • Editor OGN Daily
  • Oct 22, 2023
  • 4 min read

Summary of last week's most important good news from around the world.


Man punching the air for joy at hearing good news

Renewed Hope: A new climate change report offers something unique: hope. The International Energy Agency says that thanks to the extraordinary uptake of wind and solar in the last few years, there is still a path to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and limiting global warming to 1.5°C, reports NPR. What's changed? One of the answers is that almost all previous climate models have failed to account for the exponential growth of renewables.


Colourful Parthenon Sculptures: Classical Greek marble sculptures today appear crisp and white. But they weren’t always that way, according to a new study, which found the famous 2,500-year-old Parthenon sculptures were originally painted.


School Appoints AI Chatbot as Principal Headteacher: A boarding school in England for boys and girls aged 7 to 13, has appointed a robot called Abigail Bailey to support the school’s headmaster and to free up more time for teachers to spend with the children. But that's not all...


Path of The Jaguar: Ecuador has officially established the Camino del Jaguar Conserve which protects 528,207 acres (213,758 hectares) of some of Ecuador’s most biodiverse and threatened forests. The new conserve represents a sign of hope not only for the region’s ecosystems but also for an improved quality of life for the over 12,000 families living within the new conservation area, reports Andes Amazon Fund.


All The World’s a Stage: Researchers at a theatre in Norfolk, England - that dates back to 1445 - claim they’ve found the only surviving stage where William Shakespeare once performed.


The Vesuvius Challenge: Using AI, a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Nebraska discovered the word πορϕυρας, ancient Greek for purple, from a scroll carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, which destroyed Pompeii and the town of Herculaneum. The breakthrough could open up hundreds of texts from the only intact library to survive from Greco-Roman antiquity.


Monarch Boost: North America’s monarch butterfly has been upgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable,” reports Science.The surprising reversal follows a researcher’s challenge to existing population models, concluding that although the insect’s population had fallen in Mexico, it had increased in other places and overall is in fact “doing really well.”


New Monarch Discovered: An ancient coin found by an amateur detectorist that revealed an unknown king has sold for more than $24,000. A new name has been added to the list of British monarchs after experts examined the coin. Dating from around 50BC, the small gold coin (smaller than a fingernail) is stamped with the name Esunertos, a previously unrecorded Iron Age ruler, reported The Telegraph.


Conservation Success: Since the island was declared rat-free in 2006, there are now more seabirds nesting on the English island of Lundy than at any time since the 1930s. The island in the Bristol Channel is a globally famous location for Britain’s seabirds. This summer, the total number of seabirds on Lundy stood at 40,000 - a massive turnaround after just 7,351 remained in 2000.


US Trees on Track: In 2022 the National Forest Foundation planted 8,061,125 trees in the United States, replanting an area larger than 18,500 football fields. It’s the most trees the foundation has planted in a single year, putting it on track to reach its goal of 50 million trees by the end of 2025.


CO2-Sucking Home: After trading his NBA career for acting, Rick Fox has moved on again and is now playing in the world of sustainable construction. His company, Partanna, has recently finished building its first home using a cement-less and carbon-negative alternative concrete.


Giant Tortoises: A decades-long breeding project to restore giant tortoises on Española in the Galapagos Islands has transformed the barren ecosystem into a savanna, reports Hakai. In 2020, nearly 2,000 captive-bred tortoises were released, and the population blossomed to 3,000. Giant tortoises, like beavers, are ecological architects. 'As few as one or two tortoises per hectare is enough to trigger a shift in the landscape.'

Man on a Mission: Michael Bloomberg has committed an extra $500 million to shut down every coal plant in the US and cut fossil gas capacity in half by 2030, says Reuters. The funding for the Beyond Carbon initiative aims to 'finish the job on coal' by working with state and local organisations to force the closure of the 150 coal plants that have not yet retired.



Germany's Renewables: Renewables have covered more than half of Germany’s electricity consumption this year. From January through September, the amount of renewables in the electricity mix rose to around 52 percent - almost five percentage points higher than the same period last year, reports ZSW. This is a big deal. Germany is the sixth-largest carbon emitter in the world.


EVs Taking Off in US: This year is shaping up to be the take-off year for electric vehicles in the United States. Sales just passed 1 million for 2023, and projections put the end-of-year total at around 1.6 million. In 2024, more EVs will be sold than in all the years between 2010 and 2022. We're off to the races now, particularly as (finally!) electric cars are now cheaper than cars powered by dinosaur juice in tin cans (and that's before the money you save on the dinosaur juice), says Inside EVs.


New Framework: The UN has agreed to new rules to protect people and planet from hazardous chemicals and waste, reports Deutsche Welle. The Global Framework on Chemicals sets out 28 concrete guidelines including: phasing out highly dangerous pesticides in agriculture by 2035, better access to information about potential risks and a system for classifying and labelling chemicals.


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