hylianengineer:

hylianengineer:

86 Stories of Progress from 2024

Would anyone like to join me in my New Year’s tradition of reading about good things that happened this year?

A couple highlights:

• There are now ZERO COAL POWER PLANTS in the UK. Zero! Also zero in Slovakia, which closed its last coal plant a full SIX YEARS ahead of schedule! This is great because coal is like, the dirtiest fuel source ever. It’s awful for the planet, it’s awful for our lungs, it’s just The Worst. Goodbye and good riddance!
• Last year, EU CO2 emissions fell by 8%, and the data’s not all in for this year yet but they’re on track to drop even more. Yeah, you read that right – the EU may have already passed peak carbon emissions. Excuse me while I do a happy dance over here in the corner – this is a BIG FUCKING DEAL!
• This may have been a bad year for abortion rights in the US, but we’re an outlier – over the past 30 years, we are only one of four countries to tighten abortion restrictions, while 60 countries have made it more available. This year, France became the first country in the whole world to make abortion a constitutional right. Seven US states did so too – Colorado, New York, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Arizona and Missouri. That’s right, Missouri! Shocking, huh?
• A drug to prevent HIV infections was 100% effective in trials. That. That’s insane. It’s not a vaccine, but it is the closest we’ve ever been to one.
• Deaths from tuberculosis, the deadliest infectious disease in the world, hit an all-time global low. Hooray for preventing a truly staggering amount of death!
• Egypt and Cabo-Verde both eliminated malaria, and 17 countries started distributing the new malaria vaccine – remember that? Remember how insanely exciting it is that was now have a vaccine for malaria? It is saving lives as we speak.
• Deforestation in the Amazon is half what it was two years ago.
• The largest dam removal project in history was completed – removing four dams from the Klamath River, thanks to decades of activism by the Karuk and Yurok tribes. A month later, there were salmon spawning in the river basin again – for the first time in a century. Nature’s pretty incredible at bouncing back, if we can just give it the chance. I repeat: Largest. Dam removal. In history!
• China finished the Great Green Wall
• Prewalski’s horses returned to their homeland in central Kazakhstan, where they’d been missing for 200 years!
• 22 species were removed from the endangered list – let’s hear it for the Saimaa ringed seal, Scimitar oryx, Red cockaded woodpecker, Siamese crocodile, Narwhal, Arapaima, Chipola slabshell and Fat threeridge mussels, Iberian lynx, Asiatic lions, Australian saltwater crocodile, Asian antelope,  Ulūlu, Southern bluefin tuna, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, Yellow-footed rock wallabies, Yangtze finless porpoise, Pookila mouse, Orange-bellied parrots, Putitor mahseer (this is a fish), Giant pandas, and Florida golden aster!

This year was deeply shitty in a lot of ways – but not all of them.