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.
During future tests, developer IHI Corp is hoping to generate two megawatts, with the hopes of kicking off commercial operations in the 2030s, Bloomberg reports.
Finland’s parliament recently passed a new Climate Change Act which legally binds it to its commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2035 and negative emissions by 2040.
Indigenous and environmental groups led a campaign against drilling in the refuge, and 29 banks and 14 insurers now say they won’t fund drilling in the refuge.
British Columbia’s decision to decriminalize personal drug possession is one of the most significant public health pivots in Canadian history — replacing arrest with a referral to care for adults carrying small amounts of certain substances. Fear of police kept people from calling for help during overdoses, pushing drug use away from life-saving services. Evidence from Portugal and other jurisdictions suggests decriminalization paired with strong health supports can reduce overdose deaths — and a major province choosing this path adds real momentum to treating addiction as a health issue, not a crime.
The Tokyo Metropolitan University team’s new technology promises unprecedented performance and robustness in direct air capture systems.
A simple blood test that could catch Parkinson’s disease before symptoms take hold is now closer to reality. Researchers at Kobe University developed an assay that reads changes in enzyme activity in a blood sample, achieving 85 to 88 percent accuracy in both human and rat models. Because treatments like levodopa and exercise work better early in the disease’s progression, earlier detection could meaningfully change what’s possible for patients. With Parkinson’s cases more than doubling globally over the past 25 years, affordable, scalable screening tools like this one could reshape how the world responds to the fastest-growing neurological disorder.
A group of quality-assurance testers in Activision Blizzard’s Raven Software division, which developed the popular Call of Duty Game, voted 19-3 in favor of unionizing.
The decision is part of reparations for a period of colonial rule during which Germany committed a genocide against the Namibian people.
Lincoln Crowley QC has become the first Indigenous person ever appointed to an Australian superior court, taking his seat on the Supreme Court of Queensland. A Warramunga man who grew up in Charters Towers, Crowley was once told by a school deputy principal that his Aboriginal family were “the type that end up in jail.” His reply, as he later recalled: “You wait and see, mate.” He began his career representing Indigenous clients before rising to crown prosecutor and senior counsel on Australia’s disability royal commission. For every First Nations child watching, the message of his appointment is quietly powerful: the justice system can include them, not just process them — a small but meaningful shift in a country still reckoning with who its laws have served.
“Implementation of legalized non-medical cannabis coincided with decreases in alcohol and cigarette use and pain reliever misuse,” the University of Washington researchers reported.
