reasons for hope

Some positive news stories, courtesy of, of all places, Bored Panda:

Mauro Gatti is fed up with bad news.

One I would like to point to: the sea turtles. There are SEVERAL big success stories of endangered-species protection: bald eagles, which I was told as a child would very possibly be extinct before I was an adult, have greatly increased their numbers (thanks largely to the banning of DDT in the US). Similar story for peregrine falcons, to the point now where cities put out nesting ledges for them because they are good pigeon control. And manatees have come back. And the California condor is doing much better than it once was.

(Granted, these are all what ecologists sometimes call "Charismatic Megavertebrates" but I've also seen people rallying behind monarch butterflies and bumblebees, so maybe there's some hope yet).

I also like the story about the new woman-chief of an African tribe who has made child marriage illegal and pushed for girls to go to school. One way of alleviating poverty and overpopulation is education of girls and in general, valuing women more.

And I like the "Cuddle club," where older people get to hang out with "senior" dogs. I do wonder if one of the salvations of our society is going to be "official" social things - like this, and also like the South Korean disco parties - because it does seem very hard for some of us adults to find "fun" and companionship on our own, and the world seems to have become so fractured.

Also the ones about renewable energy give me hope. We could not easily go back to living without electricity, and in some cases (especially in medicine) access to electricity has saved many lives. But yes, coal is a very polluting fuel....I keep hoping that soon they will "crack" the code of some kind of safe, clean power (like: cold fusion, which may never happen. It was all in the news when I was in undergrad, but that was the story that turned out to be a hoax)

But yeah. Maybe we really are one big scientific breakthrough from safe, clean worldwide power. Or a cure for cancer. Or something that will save the bees...