Good News! 2019's Been Full of it
2019’s been full of bad news. Unfortunate updates on climate change, untimely deaths, political uh-ohs and that terrible YouTube rewind. This year hasn’t treated us all well. However, just under 20 days to 2020, there’s hope left. Despite all of the bad news constantly circulating social media and news feeds, good news is still happening no matter how overshadowed it is by the aforementioned kerfuffles.
(Take the Vic Podcast as an example, that happened this year, and isn’t it incredible?)
So Without Further Adieu, the Good News Rewind of 2019.
Association for the Protection of Wild Animals and Natural Heritage is about to acquire 490 hectares of land in France to make into a natural reserve
Wife of former Nigerian vice president has worked with the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation to rescue and rehabilitate 11 600 victims of human trafficking
Ahlam Simsim (translating to Welcome Sesame in Arabic) was introduced as a new version of Sesame Street made to comfort and teach refugee kids and announced to air in February 2020
NASA made history in conducting the first all female space walk. 12 women have completed 43 spacewalks all with the partnership with men. NASA’s been promising this for a few months before October 18, 2019 when Dr. Jessica Meir and Ms. Christina Koch successfully completed the mission to replace a power controller
Guatemala announced the ban on plastic cups, bags and straws promised to be fully in effect by 2021
The Netherlands is the first country in the world to have rehabilitated all of the stray dogs in the country
Around the world, rice farmers have turned to using ducks rather than harmful pesticides seeing as those ducks will eat bugs and weeds that cause crop issues
With the all of the save the turtles comments and jokes being made, we haven’t even realized that sea turtles have made a huge comeback thanks to the Endangered Species Act
The Canadian government has made the use of whales, porpoises and dolphins as entertainment a criminal offence
South Korea recycled an all time high of 95% of food waste (compared to the usual 2%)
The UK has reduced their carbon emission levels to a lower amount than they have ever been since 1888
During this year of terrifying climate news, we’ve been introduced to the idea that the Galapagos tortoises went from extremely endangered to extinct. Over the course of the year, it’s been revealed that this isn’t true, they’re still kicking
Scientists in California made it a few steps closer to curing diabetes
Globally, terrorist attacks have dropped by a third, reaching levels lower than they have been since 2011 and deaths due to attack have reduced by a quarter
Research published in May released groundbreaking medical news as a treatment was found to keep from the spread of the HIV virus
Executions on a global scale dropped by 31% which is the lowest it’s been in over a decade
Science behind monitoring Alzheimer's disease before it causes obvious symptoms was discovered
Under new UK law, married couples seeking a divorce will be faced with a much less confrontational and complicated process
Angola and Botswana both legalized homosexuality and expression. Austria, Ecuador, Taiwan and Northern Ireland all legalized gay marriage
It was uncovered this year, that Costa Rica’s been increasing in forest cover for the past 30 years and has now doubled entirely
Twenty good things that happened leading up to 2020. Now, we can’t say that 2020 is going to be an incredible year despite any positive news that has happened. Political uh-ohs and drastic climate crisis are unfortunately, topics haunting us into the new year. However, if any New Year’s resolutions are to be made, searching something as simple as “good news” into a search engine once a week could be enough to remind ourselves that the world is not always bad.
From myself and all of us here from the Victoria Voice
