Today’s Top Good News Story

A new study found that a single bison herd can help store the CO2 equivalent of 2 million cars

The world’s soil, oceans, and forests are the biggest known carbon sinks, and scientists have long acknowledged the role that they play in slowing the effects of climate change.

But a new study shows how instrumental animals could be in tamping down on carbon emissions, too.

The study, backed by the Global Rewilding Alliance, calculated that a herd of 170 European bison — roaming on 30 square miles of grasslands — captured the yearly equivalent of carbon dioxide emissions from 1.88 million cars.

→ Read more

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​More good news about carbon sinks:

• ​Removing dams helps store carbon by restoring the natural flow of waterways, which transports organic material to the ocean floor and allows downstream landscapes to regrow.
• Tree-free paper is helping protect forests (and farmers) in Washington, saving one of the most efficient carbon-sequestration ecosystems in the world.​
• New carbon credit projects are helping small-scale forest landowners earn money for absorbing and storing carbon on their land.​

Together with Trashie

Spring cleaning made simple

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Here’s how it works: Order a Take Back Bag on trashie.io, clean out your closet, and send Trashie your filled bag. Each bag holds about 15 pounds, and they accept any unwanted clothing, shoes, bags, accessories and linens in any condition. This includes swimwear, underwear, socks, and more!

→ Get your Take Bag Bag today!​

More Good News

​Illinois just gave $1.6 million to “justice-focused” community solar projects. The funding will benefit three projects in traditionally under-resourced Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities in the greater Chicago area.

​Thanks to heavy rains, Los Angeles captured more than 96 billion gallons of stormwater from October to April. The amount of stormwater captured is enough to meet the water demands of about 2.4 million people, or one-quarter of the county.

​One in three Americans say they’ve reduced how much plastic they’re using. Women, people in households making more than $50,000 annually, and college graduates were more likely to report a decrease in how often they used single-use plastics.

Good Progress To Celebrate

A significant milestone in the clean energy transition, the U.S. just surpassed 5 million solar panel installations

According to new data, the U.S. has officially surpassed 5 million solar installations across the country — 4 million of them were installed in the last eight years.

Prior to that, it took four decades for the U.S. to cross the 1 million installation mark in 2016, with the first grid-connected solar project installed in 1973.

More than half of all solar installations in the country have come online since the start of 2020. Even more significantly, one-quarter of them have been installed in the last 20 months since the Inflation Reduction Act (the largest federal climate policy in U.S. history the country has ever seen) became law.

The data accounts for home, business, and utility-scale solar installations, with homes making up 97% of the total installed.

And this good progress is showing no signs of slowing down: the number of installations is projected to double to 10 million by 2030, and triple to 15 million by 2034.

→ Read more​

good thoughts

Did you know that our brains are evolutionarily hardwired with an internal negativity bias? As neuropsychologist Dr. Rick Hanson describes it, “Bad news sticks to the brain like velcro, and good news slides right off the brain like Teflon.”

Our brains are not naturally very good at seeking (or remembering!) the good. So, especially as people looking to make the world a better place, it’s so important to be intentional about consuming good news.

We have to actively seek it out, slow down while reading it to help it “stick,” and share it with others to help hope spread even further.

(Speaking of... forward this email to someone you think would love to read all the good news!)

More Good bits

🦉 The animals can’t wait for their new wildlife crossing to open either.

🦽 It just got easier to find wheelchair-accessible places and spaces (and steer clear of the inaccessible ones).

📱 Yesterday was Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and Apple celebrated it big.​

👩‍🏫 Curriculum isn’t the only thing changing in business education.​

*Some of these recommendations may include affiliate links, which means if you buy anything from this email, we may get something in return at no extra cost to you. (Thanks for your support!)

What’s good?

This week’s most-clicked story was the one about the new tricks that are helping protect migratory birds from wind turbines.

What good news story really encouraged you this week?

Hit “reply” and let me know!

— M​​egan