Climate crisis

The climate crisis demands action — and action is happening. This archive tracks real progress: policy wins, clean-energy milestones, community resilience, and scientific advances that show meaningful change is possible. Stories here come from every corner of the world.

Forest, for article on Italy forest coverage, for article on Italian forest cover, for article on Italy forest cover

For the first time since the Middle Ages, forests cover more of Italy than farmland

By / / Good News For Humankind

Italy’s forests have quietly crossed a threshold that reshapes how we understand the country’s relationship with its land — woodland now covers more of the peninsula than farmland, a shift centuries in the making. Returning wolves, bears, and deer are gaining connected habitat across the Alps and Apennines, while the ecological services those trees provide — carbon storage, water filtration — carry striking economic value. The recovery is driven partly by rural depopulation, a real cultural loss even as nature wins. Still, it signals something hopeful: that land cleared over millennia can quietly, stubbornly come back.

Dhaka traffic at night, for article on Bangladesh EV taxes, for article on Bangladesh EV tax reform

Bangladesh cuts EV taxes and raises fossil-fuel car taxes in sweeping green push

By / / Good News For Humankind

Electric vehicle policy in the world’s eighth-most-populous nation has just shifted in a way that could reshape daily life for tens of millions of people. The government has zeroed out taxes on electric buses, trucks, and charging infrastructure while raising costs on diesel and petrol vehicles — making the price gap between old and new technology impossible to ignore. The goal is 25% electric buses and trucks on the road by 2035, in a country where air pollution claims more than 235,000 lives annually. It’s a meaningful signal that diesel’s unquestioned dominance on Asian roads may finally be ending.

Wind turbines, for article on SunZia wind project

Largest-ever U.S. renewable energy project comes online, supplying power to 1 million homes

By / / Good News For Humankind

SunZia is now the largest wind energy project in U.S. history, and its scale changes what Americans can imagine building. Its 916 turbines generate more power than the Hoover Dam, delivered through one of the first major long-distance HVDC transmission lines completed in the country in decades. Over 30 years, the project will send $1.3 billion directly to local governments, schools, and landowners in New Mexico and Arizona — communities that have long watched energy wealth flow elsewhere. It’s proof that transformational clean energy infrastructure can actually get built, and a model other regions will be watching closely.

EV charging stations at night, for article on public EV charging ports

U.S. now has 250,000 public EV charging ports, more than doubling since 2021

By / / Good News For Humankind

Public EV charging in America has doubled since 2021, and the milestone reveals just how fast the country’s clean transportation backbone is growing. The U.S. now has over 250,000 public charging ports — and thousands more are already in the pipeline. Fast chargers are spreading along major travel corridors, while libraries, restaurants, and retailers are quietly adding chargers that work while you live your life. Every country watching this buildout sees proof that large-scale EV infrastructure is achievable — and that momentum, once established, is hard to stop.

Floating solar panels, for article on floating solar park

Portugal is opening Europe’s biggest floating solar park this year

By / / Good News For Humankind

Floating solar on reservoirs is quietly rewriting what clean energy infrastructure can look like — and Portugal is leading the way. At Alqueva, Europe’s largest artificial lake, 12,000 solar panels work alongside an existing hydropower dam, producing 7.5 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year without requiring new land or new grid connections. Electricity from the park costs a third of what a gas-fired plant produces at current fuel prices, making the case that green power can be both practical and affordable. Models like this give the broader renewables transition something valuable: a proven, cost-competitive blueprint ready to scale.

Offshore wind farm, for article on offshore wind farm

Taiwan’s ‘biggest offshore wind farm’ generates its first power

By / / Good News For Humankind

Taiwan’s offshore wind sector just crossed a milestone that shows the island’s clean energy ambitions are becoming real. The Greater Changhua facility — 111 turbines spread across deep water off Taiwan’s west coast — will power around one million households once fully operational. Taiwan ranks second in Asia-Pacific for planned offshore wind installations, and projects like this one help build the track record that makes future investment easier to secure. Every turbine connected to the grid is proof that island nations with strong wind resources can lead the global shift away from fossil fuels.

School bus on the road, for article on electric school bus mandate

New York enacts first-in-nation plan to electrify all state school buses

By / / Good News For Humankind

New York’s commitment to electrifying all 50,000 of its school buses sets a new standard for what statewide climate and children’s health policy can look like together. More than two million students — disproportionately from low-income communities — currently ride to school in diesel buses linked to asthma, reduced lung development, and cognitive harm. At least $500 million in state funding, paired with federal support, gives districts a real financial path forward. For advocates working to make clean air a guarantee rather than a privilege, this is a proof of concept other states can follow.

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Colombia passes landmark law to track millions of cattle and fight deforestation

By / / Good News For Humankind

Colombia’s new cattle traceability law is a landmark shift in how one of the Amazon’s most deforestation-prone industries will be held accountable. For the first time, slaughterhouses, traders, and exporters must prove their beef isn’t linked to illegal deforestation — covering more than 29.7 million cattle across the country. The law also aligns Colombia’s beef sector with the EU’s incoming deforestation regulations, adding real trade incentives to the environmental ones. Conservation groups see it as a model for the region, proof that persistent advocacy can turn a long-documented problem into binding law.

Mangroves, for article on mangrove recovery

The world’s mangroves have been rebounding since 2010 after decades of decline

By / / Good News For Humankind

Mangrove forests are coming back — and the scale of the recovery is genuinely meaningful. Since 2010, the world has been gaining more mangrove coverage than it loses each year, reversing decades of rapid destruction. These forests do extraordinary work: they absorb carbon at rates that dwarf most land-based forests and shield more than 15 million people annually from storm flooding. Community-led restoration in countries like Senegal and the Philippines has been central to the turnaround. It’s a reminder that ecosystems under pressure can recover quickly when protection, funding, and local knowledge work together.

Solar panels, for article on Africa renewable energy capacity

Africa nearly tripled new renewable capacity in 2025

By / / Good News For Humankind

African countries added 11.3 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity in 2025, nearly triple the 4.2 GW added in 2024, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.The shift reaches deeper than capacity numbers. Of 322 energy projects announced across Africa last year, 253 were renewable — 173 of them solar — while only 22 were natural gas. The economics, as one Kenyan climate finance lead put it, have “decisively turned in favor of clean energy.”The biggest remaining obstacle isn’t technology. It’s financing — African countries face borrowing costs up to three times higher than wealthy nations, owing to political and economic risk premiums that no amount of falling solar prices can erase on their own. Closing that gap could determine whether this momentum reaches the communities who need power most.