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.

Salmon run, for article on Klamath dam removal, for article on Klamath River dam removal

Salmon return to Klamath River for first time in 112 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Wild Chinook salmon have returned to the upper Klamath River for the first time since 1912, with biologists confirming the fish about 230 miles inland from the Pacific. The sighting came just months after the last of four dams was removed in summer 2024, completing the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. Klamath tribal members, who fought for decades to free the river, describe the salmon’s return as the homecoming of relatives. Biologists hope steelhead, coho, Pacific lamprey, and bull trout will follow. For rivers everywhere still bound by aging dams, one fish swimming home is a reminder that ecosystems can begin healing the moment we let them.

Island off the shore of the Azores, for article on pre-Portuguese Azores settlement, for article on Azores marine protected area

The Azores creates largest marine protected area network in the North Atlantic

By / / Good News For Humankind

Marine protected area status now covers 287,000 square kilometers around Portugal’s Azores islands, creating the largest such network in Europe. Half of that expanse bans fishing and other harmful activities outright, giving deep-sea corals, whales, manta rays, and sharks real room to thrive. Scientists mapped the zones using underwater cameras and deep-sea surveys, working alongside local fishers and officials so the boundaries reflect both ecological richness and community life. The Azores sits at a crossroads of Atlantic currents, with hydrothermal vents and seamounts that support some of the region’s most diverse marine communities. With less than 3 percent of the global ocean currently fully protected, this decision offers the worldwide 30×30 movement something it badly needs — a credible, science-led example others can follow.

Chase Strangio to be the first openly trans lawyer to present to the Supreme Court

By / / Good News For Humankind

Chase Strangio made history on December 4, 2024, becoming the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors — and Strangio came prepared, having argued the core issues before federal appeals courts four times, more than any attorney in the country. His path here runs through Obergefell, Bostock, and a winning challenge to Arkansas’s youth healthcare ban, alongside grassroots work supporting LGBTQ+ immigrants. Whatever the Court decides, the moment itself matters: trans communities, so often the subject of legal disputes rather than participants in them, finally had one of their own at the lectern — a shift in who gets to shape the law that shapes their lives.

Blood cells under microscope, for article on smart insulin, for article on lab-grown blood cells

Danish scientists design new form of insulin that automatically switches itself on and off

By / / Good News For Humankind

Smart insulin that reads blood sugar in real time and adjusts its own activity has cleared a major hurdle in animal trials, according to Danish researchers publishing in Nature. The molecule switches on when glucose climbs and powers down as levels normalize, mimicking the feedback loop of a healthy pancreas. That matters because conventional insulin can overshoot and trigger dangerously low blood sugar, a side effect that endangers people living with diabetes every day. Scientists have chased this idea for more than 40 years, and earlier candidates kept stumbling in living bodies. For the more than 500 million people worldwide managing diabetes, an insulin that doses itself would be a quiet revolution — bringing daily care closer to how the body was meant to work.

Aerial view of a high voltage substation., for article on India grid investment

India unveils whopping $109 billion transmission plan for renewable energy

By / / Good News For Humankind

India’s power ministry just committed $109 billion to rebuild the country’s electricity grid — one of the largest single energy infrastructure investments any nation has ever made. The plan would triple India’s renewable capacity to 600 gigawatts by 2032, with long-distance high-voltage lines carrying solar power from Rajasthan’s plains and wind from Tamil Nadu’s coast to the cities and factories that need it. Grid bottlenecks have quietly become the biggest obstacle to clean energy worldwide, from the U.S. to Germany to Australia, so it matters that the world’s third-largest emitter is treating transmission as a top priority. If the wires get built, hundreds of millions gain cleaner, cheaper power — and other large economies gain a model worth copying.

Insulin pens, for article on duodenal mucosal resurfacing

New treatment eliminates insulin for 86% of patients in early trials

By / / Good News For Humankind

A one-hour outpatient procedure helped 12 of 14 Type 2 diabetes patients stop using insulin entirely and stay off it for a full year. Researchers at Amsterdam University Medical Center used a catheter to deliver gentle electrical pulses to the lining of the small intestine, prompting the tissue to regenerate and apparently restoring the body’s natural insulin response. By comparison, the widely used medication semaglutide alone helps only about one in five patients discontinue insulin. The team calls the approach “disease-modifying” because it targets the root cause rather than the symptoms, and a larger randomized trial is now in the works. If the results hold, it could reshape how a condition affecting hundreds of millions worldwide is treated.

Brazilian Indian Kaingang, for article on Brazil Indigenous representation

Brazil elects record-high number of Indigenous mayors, vice mayors, and councilors

By / / Good News For Humankind

Indigenous representation in Brazil hit a new high in October 2024, with 256 Indigenous candidates winning seats from city council to mayor — the most ever recorded. They were the only demographic group whose vote totals grew that election, drawn from a record 169 ethnic groups fielding candidates across the country. Among the firsts: Florianópolis, a city founded 351 years ago, elected its very first Indigenous councilor, while in Marcação, all nine newly elected councilors self-identified as Indigenous. With municipal governments running the schools, clinics, and services that shape daily life, these wins put Indigenous leaders where decisions actually land — and build a pipeline toward the 2026 state and federal races, where the movement hopes to climb another rung.

Ovarian and Cervical Cancer Awareness. a Teal Ribbon, for article on cervical cancer treatment

New cervical cancer treatment regime ‘cuts risk of dying from disease by 40%’

By / / Good News For Humankind

Cervical cancer treatment just took its biggest leap in 25 years, and the breakthrough comes from a surprisingly simple idea: changing the timing. In a trial spanning the U.K., Mexico, India, Italy, and Brazil, women who received a short course of chemotherapy before standard chemoradiation were 40% less likely to die from the disease. Even better, the drugs involved are already approved, affordable, and widely available — meaning hospitals could adopt this approach without waiting on a new wonder drug. For the hundreds of thousands of women diagnosed each year, especially in lower-income countries where cervical cancer hits hardest, it’s a rare kind of medical good news: a major gain that’s actually within reach.

Birds flying at the beach on a sunny day, for article on Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary

California gets final approval for nation’s third-largest marine sanctuary

By / / Good News For Humankind

Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary now protects 4,543 square miles of California coastline, making it the country’s third-largest marine sanctuary and the first anywhere in the U.S. shaped from the start by Indigenous tribes. The waters off San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties are so biologically rich that one Chumash leader compares them to the Galápagos, and they’re now off-limits to oil and gas exploration. The designation also safeguards ancient village sites resting on seafloor that was dry land thousands of years ago. After a decade of tribal-led advocacy, this sanctuary offers a new model for ocean conservation — one where the people with the longest relationship to a place help decide its future.

A worker replacing a corroded lead pipe in a residential street for an article about Flint lead pipe replacement, for article on lead pipe removal

U.S. announces 10-year deadline to remove all lead pipes nationwide

By / / Good News For Humankind

Lead pipes in roughly nine million American homes are now on a federal clock: the EPA’s new rule requires every utility to find and replace them within 10 years. Backed by $2.6 billion in fresh funding, the policy marks a dramatic shift from previous timelines that stretched 40 or even 50 years out. Nearly half the money is directed to disadvantaged communities, where decades of disinvestment left lead lines in place long after wealthier neighborhoods got upgrades. Milwaukee mother and advocate Deanna Branch, whose son was poisoned by lead, said the shorter timeline finally gives her hope she’ll live to see the pipes pulled from her city. For a country where clean water has long depended on your zip code, a hard deadline is itself a milestone.