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1,000 Bits of Good News You May Have Missed in 2023

Blog Post | Human Development

1,000 Bits of Good News You May Have Missed in 2023

A necessary balance to the torrent of negativity.

Malcolm Cochran —

Reading the news can leave you depressed and misinformed. It’s partisan, shallow, and, above all, hopelessly negative. As Steven Pinker from Harvard University quipped, “The news is a nonrandom sample of the worst events happening on the planet on a given day.”

So, why does Human Progress feature so many news items? And why did I compile them in this giant list? Here are a few reasons:

  • Negative headlines get more clicks. Promoting positive stories provides a necessary balance to the torrent of negativity.
  • Statistics are vital to a proper understanding of the world, but many find anecdotes more compelling.
  • Many people acknowledge humanity’s progress compared to the past but remain unreasonably pessimistic about the present—not to mention the future. Positive news can help improve their state of mind.
  • We have agency to make the world better. It is appropriate to recognize and be grateful for those who do.

Below is a nonrandom sample (n = ~1000) of positive news we collected this year, separated by topic area. Please scroll, skim, and click. Or—to be even more enlightened—read this blog post and then look through our collection of long-term trends and datasets.

Agriculture

Aquaculture

Farming robots and drones

Food abundance

Genetic modification

Indoor farming

Lab-grown produce

Pollination

Other innovations

Conservation and Biodiversity

Big cats

Birds

Turtles

Whales

Other comebacks

Forests

Reefs

Rivers and lakes

Surveillance and discovery

Rewilding and conservation

De-extinction

Culture and tolerance

Gender equality

General wellbeing

LGBT

Treatment of animals

Energy and natural Resources

Fission

Fusion

Fossil fuels

Other energy

Recycling and resource efficiency

Resource abundance

Environment and pollution

Climate change

Disaster resilience

Air pollution

Water pollution

Growth and development

Education

Economic growth

Housing and urbanization

Labor and employment

Health

Cancer

Disability and assistive technology

Dementia and Alzheimer’s

Diabetes

Heart disease and stroke

Other non-communicable diseases

HIV/AIDS

Malaria

Other communicable diseases

Maternal care

Fertility and birth control

Mental health and addiction

Weight and nutrition

Longevity and mortality 

Surgery and emergency medicine

Measurement and imaging

Health systems

Other innovations

Freedom

    Technology 

    Artificial intelligence

    Communications

    Computing

    Construction and manufacturing

    Drones

    Robotics and automation

    Autonomous vehicles

    Transportation

    Other innovations

    Science

    AI in science

    Biology

    Chemistry and materials

      Physics

      Space

      Violence

      Crime

      War

      Our World in Data | Pollution

      China Reduced SO2 Emissions by More than Two-Thirds in 15 Years

      “Annual emissions of SO2 in China … rose steeply during the 1980s and 1990s. But they peaked in the mid-2000s, and over the last 15 years, they have fallen by more than two-thirds.

      Putting emissions limits on coal plants and introducing desulphurization technologies that remove SO2 from smokestacks were critical drivers of this decline.”

      From Our World in Data.

      IEEE Spectrum | Environment & Pollution

      Startups Begin Geoengineering the Sea

      “Captura is one of a cadre of startups eyeing Earth’s oceans as a carbon sink ready to be harnessed. The bioengineering strategies it’s deploying aim to accelerate what the oceans already do: absorb carbon emissions on a massive scale. This natural process has helped keep atmospheric CO2 levels in check for millions of years, but it can’t keep up with present-day industrial emissions. Dozens of field trials and pilot projects have begun, and in 2025, Captura and several other companies will begin scaling up their facilities.

      Their approaches are as diverse as they are bold. Some groups are growing kelp forests or microalgae in the sea. Others propose pumping seawater between shallow and deep layers to move carbon around. Two strategies caught IEEE Spectrum’s gaze—Captura’s ocean carbon dioxide removal approach, which sucks carbon out of the sea, and ocean alkalinity enhancement, which stores carbon in the sea. Both have inspired the engineering of novel, highly efficient electrochemical systems to treat copious amounts of seawater.

      Big funding entities support these ideas. The finalists for both the US $100 million XPrize for Carbon Removal and the $35 million Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize from the U.S. Department of Energy include marine-based strategies, alongside atmospheric ones.”

      From IEEE Spectrum.

      Our World in Data | Pollution

      Per Capita CO2 Emissions Have Peaked Globally

      “Globally, total CO2 emissions are still slowly increasing. The Global Carbon Project just released its preliminary estimates for 2024, which suggest another 0.8% increase.

      However, while total emissions have not yet peaked, emissions per person have. Globally, per capita CO2 emissions from fossil fuels peaked in 2012. When land use emissions — which are more uncertain and noisier — are included, they peaked in the 1970s.”

      From Our World in Data.

      Nature | Pollution

      “Forever” Chemicals Can Be Destroyed with Clever Chemistry

      “The carbon–fluorine (C–F) bond is one of the strongest in organic chemistry, requiring huge amounts of energy to break down, at huge expense. But now two papers in Nature describe two low-energy ways to overcome the C–F bond.

      Both methods combine a catalyst with some relatively simple chemistry driven by the energy of visible light. In each case, the catalyst absorbs light that then triggers a reaction.

      Chemist Garret Miyake at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and his colleagues use this absorbed energy to reduce the C–F bond to carbon–hydrogen — albeit not in Teflon. Yan-Biao Kang, a chemist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, and his colleagues uses this energy to break the bond and the overall molecule down to smaller constituent parts, in temperatures as low as 40 °C. Both papers, without doubt, mark a major step forward.

      Important next steps include using these ideas in real-world settings, for example to develop catalysts that work in waste water or that can be used to clean up PFAS in contaminated soils. If a method can be adapted so that it is powered by sunlight, that would be of huge benefit.”

      From Nature.