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.

Golden Gate Bridge, for article on Golden Gate Bridge suicide prevention net

Suicide-prevention net beneath Golden Gate Bridge completed

By / / Good News For Humankind

The Golden Gate Bridge now has a continuous stainless steel safety net running the full 1.7-mile span, suspended 20 feet below the deck where drivers can’t see it. As the net neared completion in 2023, the number of people who jumped fell by more than half — a quiet but powerful early sign that it’s working. The project was driven by the Bridge Rail Foundation, a small group of parents who lost children at the bridge and refused to give up over more than 18 years of advocacy. Their win is a reminder that thoughtful design, backed by evidence and persistence, can turn even the most heartbreaking places into something safer for everyone who comes next.

Wind turbines, for article on offshore wind farm

Offshore wind sites are delivering power to the grid for the first time in U.S. history

By / / Good news links

In December 2023, Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced that their first turbine was sending electricity from what will be a 12-turbine wind farm, South Fork Wind, 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York. Now, the joint owners of the Vineyard Wind project have announced the first electricity from one turbine at what will be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.

Aerial view of London and the Thames, for article on U.K. renewable energy record

U.K. use of gas and coal for electricity at lowest since 1957

By / / Good News For Humankind

The UK’s electricity grid just hit a milestone unseen since 1957: gas and coal together produced less power than in any year of the last seven decades. Renewables — wind, solar, hydro, and biomass — supplied a record 42% of electricity in 2023, while coal alone has fallen 97% since 2008 and is set to disappear from the grid entirely when Britain’s last coal plant shuts in September 2024. Add nuclear, and more than half of the country’s electricity now comes from sources that emit no carbon. The deeper significance is simple: a major industrialized economy can run mostly on clean power not as a forecast, but as a lived, ordinary year — proof other countries can point to.

Front of totaled car

Road traffic deaths have fallen significantly across the globe since 2010

By / / Good news links

The new 2023 World Health Organization report on road safety shows that, since 2010, road traffic deaths have fallen by 5%—and that would translate into a 16% drop if the rise in global population was accounted for. 108 countries reported a drop in road traffic-related deaths between 2010 and 2021. Ten countries succeeded in reducing road traffic deaths by over 50%.

"Do not cross police barricade" tape, for article on U.S. homicide decline

Homicides in the U.S. see historic decline in 2023

By / / Good News For Humankind

Violent crime across America fell at one of the fastest rates ever recorded in 2023, offering a meaningful reversal after the pandemic years pushed homicides to historic highs. The drop touched cities of nearly every size — from large metros like Los Angeles and Chicago to suburban and rural counties alike. Analysts were surprised by both the speed and the breadth of the turnaround. Progress like this shows that even deeply entrenched crime surges can reverse, giving communities and policymakers reason to believe that coordinated, sustained effort genuinely moves the needle.

Biogas plant in agricultural landscape.

South Korea to require producers of organic waste resources to make biogas

By / / Good news links

According to the East Asian nation’s Environment Ministry’s new biogas law, public and private industries that generate organic waste such as livestock manure and food waste will now be required to produce them in the form of biogas. Biogas is a gaseous renewable energy source produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, plant material and manure and can be used in vehicles that operate on natural gas.

JAC Motors sodium-ion battery EV, for article on sodium-ion EV

China’s JAC Motors rolls out world’s first commercial lithium-free EV

By / / Good News For Humankind

Sodium-ion EVs just hit the road for the first time, with Chinese automaker JAC delivering its Yiwei hatchback to customers in January 2024 — the world’s first mass-produced electric car running on a battery made from one of Earth’s most abundant elements. The little urban hatchback offers about 157 miles per charge, plenty for daily commutes, and holds up better than lithium in cold weather. Because sodium is found in ordinary salt and spread across nearly every country, it sidesteps the supply bottlenecks and high costs that have kept EVs out of reach for many buyers. If the chemistry scales, it could open the door to affordable electric driving in places lithium has struggled to reach.

Industrial pipes and infrastructure at a coastal energy facility for an article about carbon capture and storage, for article on fusion plasma record, for article on fusion plasma record, for article on fusion endurance record, for article on nuclear fusion ignition

American scientists repeatedly produce nuclear fusion ignition for the first time in history

By / / Good News For Humankind

Nuclear fusion just cleared a crucial bar: scientists at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have now achieved ignition four separate times, with the best shot producing 89 percent more energy than the lasers delivered to the target. That repetition is what transforms a single 2022 breakthrough into real, replicable science — proof that the Sun-like reaction can be coaxed out of a frozen hydrogen pellet on Earth, again and again. Momentum is building beyond the lab, too, with more than $6 billion now invested in fusion worldwide and governments at COP28 agreeing to speed things along. The road from a boiled kettle’s worth of energy to a clean-powered grid is still long, but the hardest physics is finally behind us.