Slovenia legalizes LGBTQ marriage and adoptions
The move makes Slovenia the first country in Eastern Europe to ensure equal rights for same-sex couples.
Today (2017 C.E. - 2025 C.E.)
This archive spans the years 2017 through 2025, a period marked by rapid advances in clean energy, medicine, technology, and social equity. It collects documented breakthroughs, policy wins, and scientific achievements from the present era. If you want evidence that progress is real and ongoing, this is where to look.
Australia’s most-polluting coal plant to shut decade earlier than planned
The coal-fired Loy Yang A power station near Melbourne – responsible for more than three percent of the country’s emissions – will shut down in 2035, a decade earlier than planned.
Meat consumption is falling significantly across Western Europe
A French research company interviewed more than 4,000 adults across France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. More than 50% reported having reduced their meat consumption in the last five years largely for environmental, animal welfare, and personal health reasons.
Youth crime in the U.S. has plummeted 78% since 1994
Law enforcement agencies made an estimated 424,300 arrests of youth in 2020, a 38% drop from the previous year and half the number from five years earlier.
India’s top court legalizes abortion regardless of marital status
A law dating from 1971 had limited the procedure to married women, divorcees, widows, minors, “disabled and mentally ill women” and survivors of sexual assault or rape.
Māori tribe secures landmark apology and compensation over colonial atrocities
Ngāti Maniapoto won a landmark settlement on September 23, 2022, when New Zealand’s parliament unanimously returned 36 culturally significant sites and pledged NZ$177 million in redress to the Waikato-based iwi. Hundreds of members rode a charter train nine hours to Wellington to witness it, filling the public gallery with waiata and haka as the vote passed. The crown formally apologized for indiscriminate killings during the Waikato Wars and generations of deprivation that followed. For the nearly 46,000 iwi members, it was recognition that 30 years of negotiation had been worth sustaining. As Indigenous communities from Jamaica to the United States press for accountability, New Zealand’s framework shows that binding reparations are possible when political will meets sustained advocacy.
Chinese company gets airworthiness certificate for groundbreaking bio jet fuel made of cooking oil
Compared to traditional petroleum-based aviation kerosene, bio jet fuel can reduce carbon emissions by up to 50% throughout the entire lifecycle.
Wild mammals are making a comeback in Europe thanks to conservation efforts
By the first half of the 20th century, many of Europe’s mammals had been reduced to just a fraction of historical levels. But many mammal populations have seen a dramatic increase over the last 50 years.
Indian company develops country’s first HPV vaccine
CERVAVAC, India’s first homegrown cervical cancer vaccine, is priced at just $2.50 to $5.00 per dose — a fraction of what HPV vaccines have cost in wealthy countries for nearly two decades. Developed by the Serum Institute of India, it protects against the HPV strains responsible for the majority of cervical cancers worldwide, and the company aims to produce around 200 million doses in its first two years. Cervical cancer is almost entirely preventable, yet it still kills hundreds of thousands of women each year, mostly in lower-income countries where vaccines have been priced out of reach. An affordable, locally made option doesn’t just change the math for India — it points toward a future where health tools belong to the people who need them most.
U.S. Senate ratifies Kigali Amendment, joining more than 130 countries in treaty to eliminate HFCs
HFCs were widely adopted in the 1980s and 1990s to replace CFCs, which damage the Earth’s ozone layer. But then HFCs emerged as some of the most potent greenhouse gases, far more potent than carbon dioxide.