You probably already heard the good news about the end of Keystone XL with Obama killing the proposal. This is a good symbolic step in ending the exploitation of the tar sands in Alberta, plus this comes just a few weeks before COP21. COP21 is the upcoming United Nations climate
Continue readingAuthor: Adam Clare
Things Are Good: Cuba Shows Off Its Biotech Industry
Cuba has an amazing farming system which is impressive from farm to fork. The way they grow crops to how they ensure that food distribution is effective is impressive to say the least. The island nation was hit hard with the collapse of the USSR and the embargo from the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Detroit to Have the Largest Urban Farm in the USA
Detroit was once a great city, then the economic collapse of car-dominated industry in the city happened. Because of the prescence of Ford and GM in Detroit the city’s urban planning focused on cars; this led to poverty and neglect of needed infrastructure. The collapse of Detroit occurred, and now
Continue readingThings Are Good: Human Waste as an Energy Source
Human waste is a problem for every place humans live and throughout history it has been dealt with in various ways. Instead of treating human waste as a problem that needs to be removed from our towns we may want to think about it as an energy source. That’s right:
Continue readingThings Are Good: Improve Your Soil to Fight Climate Change
Suburbanization and poor land policy have done incredible damage to soil and food systems. It turns out that the damage down to the soil itself is a contributing factor to the increased speed in human-created climate change. So to slow down the rate of climate change we can improve our
Continue readingThings Are Good: Cut Out Sugar and Improve Everything
Some new research points out by simply cutting out sugar one can improve basically all that ails them. In a recent research study children gave up sugar for nine days and found that much about their health improved. This implies that it might be more important to monitor one’s sugar
Continue readingThings Are Good: Europe Meets 2020 Emissions Targets Early
Europe has already beat its 202 gas emissions target and it’s only 2015! This is good news because we need to reduce our energy consumption and our global output of greenhouse gas emissions. This demonstrates to the rest of the world that not only is it economically feasible to reduce
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Optimistic Environmentalist
David Boyd is sick of hearing doom and gloom when we talk about the climate and the environment. Sure, we’ve basically ruined this planet but there’s still good news out there and we can talk about the solutions. Indeed, we have the knowledge to save the planet and all we
Continue readingThings Are Good: More Cities Ditching Cars to Increase Transportation Speed
Cities that are designed for cars now have the problem of switching from the traffic-causing polluting machines. Most places can’t build more roads so they need to use what they have more effiencetly. This means repurposing some roads or only having roads used for efficient transit solutions instead of old-school
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Refrigerator That Doesn’t Need Energy
Refrigerators are a massive drain on our power grids because our modern world needs them to function. Without refrigeration our food networks wouldn’t be viable nor would we be able to stay cool indoors during heatwaves. Thanks to some very bright people we now have a fridge that won’t need
Continue readingThings Are Good: Groovy Bike Helmet Lights Up
The Lumos helmet is designed to make riding a bicycle even safer. In the majority of collisions between automobile drivers and cyclists the car driver is at fault, so to make riding safer the helmet projects bright lights. This means that people who aren’t paying attention to the road as
Continue readingThings Are Good: Stephen Harper No Longer Prime Minister of Canada
Finally Canadians have vote out the Conservative party led by Stephen Harper. Their nine year rule saw Canada lose respect from around the world. Canada has earned a reputation of blocking climate change related international agreements and being a country that is swayed by horrible political manoeuvres. The country transformed
Continue readingThings Are Good: Canada: Go Vote!
Today is election day in Canada and it’s a chance for Canadians to bring change to who runs the country. The hopefully soon to be ousted government has based laws which the courts say “constitutes cruel and unusual treatment“. The Conservative party has got to go. Here’s John Oliver’s take
Continue readingThings Are Good: Rick Mercer Wants Canada to Vote
If you can vote in the Canadian election, you should. Rick Mercer, who has a great reputation of mocking Canadian politicians, has called every Canadian to vote this coming election on Monday October 19th. For too long this country has suffered under climate change deniers and people’s who only care
Continue readingThings Are Good: Vote on Canada’s Digital Future
On Monday the 19th Canadians will cast their ballots for who they think should run the nation. Open Media has released a report card on where the political parties stand on digital issues impacting Canadians. It’s with no surprise that the conservatives get a failing grade. The good news is
Continue readingThings Are Good: Canadians: Support the Science Integrity Project
Polling opens for the Canadian election on October 9th with the final day to vote on the 19th. This election, the organization Evidence for Democracy (and many more!) are asking you to vote with science in mind. The Canadian Conservative party blatantly ignores scientific facts in their policies and this
Continue readingThings Are Good: Solar and Wind Continue to Succeed, Coal Keeps Failing
Coal continues its downward trend to obsolescence thanks to the rise of installed solar and wind capacity. In many places around the world coal is more expensive than renewable energy and as a result it has driven costs down elsewhere. The future is clearly one that won’t use coal as
Continue readingThings Are Good: Be Healthy by Getting Dirty
Hygiene is harming us. The overuse of antibacterial everything and the kill-all solution of antibiotics seems to be doing harm to us. Don’t get me wrong – we need antibiotics and antibacterial solutions. The thing is that we’ve used them too much. The good news is you don’t have to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Be a Part of the Future: Sign the Leap Manifesto
Canada has been destroying it’s own environment (and trashing international environmental policy) for way too long. As a result of this ignorant neglect a bunch of prominent Canadians have produced the Leap Manifesto. And it’s good. Really good. Here’s just a snippet of the Leap Manifesto: A leap to a
Continue readingThings Are Good: Economic Discussion of Climate Change Gets Real
We’ve already seen climate refugees and climate wars, yet the business world has been rather slow to react. Many businesses operate with the denial of the economic effects of climate change. Today the head of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned the financial world that climate change is
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