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.

Yara Eide clean ammonia-based ship, for article on ammonia-powered container ship

Yara announces world’s first clean ammonia-powered container ship

By / / Good News For Humankind

Clean ammonia shipping gets its first real-world test in 2026, when Norwegian chemicals company Yara launches the Yara Eyde — a container ship designed to run entirely on ammonia and cut about 11,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. The vessel will sail a regular route between Norway and Germany, proving the technology under genuine commercial conditions rather than in a lab. Shipping moves roughly 90% of global trade and has long been considered one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize, since batteries and hydrogen still fall short for ocean-going vessels. Every big industrial shift needs someone willing to go first, and this one ship could help chart a credible path toward a cleaner future for global trade.

Big trucks at a copper mine, for article on Rights of Nature law

Panama copper mine to close after Supreme Court rules concession unconstitutional

By / / Good News For Humankind

Rights of Nature law just did something it had never quite done before at this scale: Panama’s Supreme Court unanimously used it to shut down one of the hemisphere’s largest copper mines, finding the concession failed to meet nature’s legal right to protection and regeneration. The ruling sets real precedent — any future project in Panama that can’t clear that same constitutional standard faces the same risk. The Canadian operator is pursuing international arbitration, so the dispute is far from over. Case by case, courtrooms across the Americas are turning ecological rights from policy aspirations into enforceable law.

Small airplane, for article on sustainable aviation fuel

Gulfstream completes first-ever transatlantic flight with 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel

By / / Good News For Humankind

Sustainable aviation fuel just crossed the Atlantic on its own, with no fossil jet fuel in the tank. A Gulfstream G600 flew from Savannah, Georgia to Farnborough, England in under seven hours, becoming the first aircraft to make the transatlantic journey on 100% SAF. The engines weren’t modified for the trip, hinting that existing planes could one day run on cleaner fuel without expensive retrofits. Gulfstream now plans to share the flight data with U.S. regulators to help certify full SAF use beyond today’s blended limits. For an industry where battery and hydrogen flight remain distant, this single crossing offers something rare: a glimpse of long-haul aviation that could actually clean up before 2050.

Polished V8 gas engine in a classic car engine bay

New Jersey to ban sales of gas-powered cars by 2035

By / / Good news links

Under the state Department of Environmental Protection’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” rule, manufacturers must ensure that 43% of new light-duty vehicles they make in 2027 are electric, with the percentage rising annually to 100% by 2035. Most consumer cars and pickup trucks are considered light-duty.

Bales of compressed plastic waste bottles and packaging bound with wire

E.U. agrees to ban exports of waste plastic to poor countries

By / / Good news links

“The EU will finally assume responsibility for its plastic waste by banning its export to non-OECD countries,” said Pernille Weiss, a Danish member of the European parliament. “Once again, we follow our vision that waste is a resource when it is properly managed, but should not in any case be causing harm to the environment or human health.”

Solar farm in the desert, for article on Al Dhafra solar power plant, for article on $200 billion solar project

The United Arab Emirates opens the world’s largest single-site solar farm

By / / Good News For Humankind

The world’s largest single-site solar plant just came online in the UAE, and it’s powering nearly 200,000 homes from a stretch of desert outside Abu Dhabi. Al Dhafra generates 2 gigawatts of clean electricity and is expected to cut 2.4 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year — roughly the equivalent of taking 470,000 cars off the road. What makes it really remarkable, though, is the price: the project locked in one of the cheapest utility-scale solar tariffs ever recorded, around 1.32 US cents per kilowatt-hour. That number sends a signal far beyond the Gulf, showing sun-rich countries everywhere that large-scale clean power is now genuinely affordable — and that even oil-producing nations can help lead the transition.

Aerial view of facility, for article on direct air capture

Heirloom Carbon Technologies opens first carbon capture facility in the U.S.

By / / Good News For Humankind

Direct air capture has gone commercial in the United States for the first time, with Heirloom Carbon Technologies opening a plant in Tracy, California that can pull 1,000 metric tons of CO2 straight from the sky each year. The company speeds up a natural process: heating limestone, then letting the mineral soak up atmospheric carbon on open-air trays in days rather than years. The captured CO2 is locked into concrete and stored underground, with companies like Microsoft and Shopify buying removal credits to fund operations. Heirloom went from capturing one kilogram to one million kilograms in just over two years, and hopes to keep copying the design. Tackling legacy emissions, not just new ones, may be essential to stabilizing the climate worldwide.

Ocean Thermal Energy Generator Barge, for article on ocean thermal energy conversion

World’s first commercial-scale ocean thermal energy generator to be built off the coast of São Tomé and Príncipe

By / / Good News For Humankind

Ocean thermal energy conversion just crossed a threshold that has eluded engineers for nearly 140 years. UK-based Global OTEC Resources received independent certification for the cold-water riser pipe at the heart of its floating platform — the very component that has sunk previous attempts to turn ocean temperature gradients into electricity. The flagship vessel, Dominique, is a 1.5-MW system planned for deployment off São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation of about 220,000 people that currently leans on imported fossil fuels. Because deep ocean temperatures stay constant, a working OTEC plant generates power around the clock, offering tropical island communities something solar and wind cannot: steady, locally produced baseload clean energy on the front lines of climate change.