Positive, uplifting stories on climate change. Yes, you heard right

Hello. My name is Douglas Glass and I’m an editor on the climate and environment team for The Associated Press . Are you tense about the U.S. presidential election? Wouldn’t this be a great time to look back at some of the positive things we’ve seen over the past year in the world’s struggle to halt climate change and to safeguard the natural world? Let’s get to it.

For all the negative news you hear about climate change, good things are happening. Let’s start on the technology front:

• The most frequent knock on renewable power like wind and solar is that it’s intermittent – when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, there’s no power. The industry certainly knows that, so it’s working hard to add batteries to store the power. The U.S. added 62% more power last year than in 2022. Here’s how it looks in the Arizona desert.?
• Making concrete adds a lot to global emissions – about 8%. A California startup has developed a technology that intercepts some of that carbon dioxide exhaust from the kilns where cement is made, turns it into a solid and eventually locks it up in concrete.
• Ocean shipping is another hard-to-decarbonize area – in fact, emissions are growing as ever-larger vessels consume huge amounts of fuel oil. A New York company this year tested a tugboat converted from diesel fuel to run on ammonia produced with renewable electricity.?
• Marine energy – the term for power generated from tides, currents or waves – is the world’s largest untapped energy resource. Off the coast of Oregon, scientists are exploring its potential to bring its clean energy to the grid.?

You’ve heard the phrase “think globally, act locally.” A couple of examples of people doing whatever they can:

• Some churches in New Orleans are adding rooftop solar panels to turn themselves into microgrids that their communities can tap for power in times of blackout. It’s part of a project organized by a nonprofit to respond to hurricanes.?
• Plastic pollution is a massive problem, so ubiquitous that it’s been detected in our bodies. It may seem a small step, but you can choose not to use it; this woman shows how she does her best to avoid it.?

The world’s massive clean energy transition has brought concern about the difficulty some workers may have in finding their place in it. But people are doing it:?

• This Dutch man’s only professional experience after college was in oil and gas, and he was good at it, regularly winning promotions. But after becoming a father of two young daughters, he grew concerned about them growing up in a warming world. He eventually steered his company toward a new focus on making clean hydrogen.?

• In one of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods, a former prison inmate now works for a nonprofit as a building trades instructor, training people in the community in skills including installing clean-energy technology. Jackie Robinson got his own initial training in the industry while behind bars.?
• Many young people are determined to be part of solutions to the world’s climate problem right now, even if they don’t know what that will eventually be. That includes this 16-year-old high school junior who’s already seen the ways wildfire and deadly heat waves affected her own life. Universities are responding by creating programs to meet that demand.?

Let’s close out with a story that’s simply a fun read. If you’d spent more than 50 years recording snow and weather data every day in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains – data key to tracking and understanding the progress of climate change – would you stop after getting a couple of hip replacements??

Nope.

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Here’s what else you need to know

?? At U.N. summit, historic agreement to give Indigenous groups voice on nature conservation decisions

?? Scientists say climate change is making extreme downpours in Spain heavier and more likely

? Climate Solutions

Mexico City’s chinampas are amazing things. The Aztecs built them hundreds of years ago with fertile mud from the bottom of a lake that, later drained, would one day become the modern city. And they’ve been feeding people for all that time.

But it’s not so easy to make a living growing produce on the islands – people can buy vegetables more cheaply that were grown elsewhere on much bigger farms. And so some people are turning their land to more profitable uses, such as tourism or for use as soccer fields.

But some of the farmers who remain are determined to preserve the old ways, and they’re banding together to preserve and promote the traditional practices – and doing things like marketing their produce under a special tagging system that alerts buyers to its origin. Experts say that matters because the chinampas are part of an ecosystem that benefits many different species of birds and fish as well as the wider city itself. Read the full story.

Thank you for reading this newsletter. We’ll be back next week. For questions, suggestions or ideas please email [email protected]

This newsletter was written by Doug Glass, news director for climate and environment, and produced by climate engagement manager Natalia Gutiérrez.

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