Latest Positive News 🌞 Reasons to be Cheerful
As the Colorado River Shrinks, Southern California Is Embracing Water Recycling
During the hottest days of the year, sun glimmers off of an aqueduct as it moves water from the shrinking Colorado River to millions of residents in the sprawling cities of Southern California. In one of the nation’s most populous regions, many cities import a large portion of their drinking...
T...Why a Texas School Let Its Lawns Grow Wild
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. When Jefferson Early Learning Center first opened on the corner of a busy intersection in Houston’s west side in 2022, school officials started receiving calls from irritated residents. It ...What We’re Reading: The Sustainable Power of ‘Dispersed Tourism’
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at info@reasonstobecheerful.world. Travel light Here at RTBC, we’re often drawn to stories about making travel more sustainable. Contributing Editor Peter Yeung reported for us on t...How Heat Pumps Became America’s Hottest Home Energy System
Electric heat pumps, one of the most energy-efficient ways to heat and cool homes, perform a feat of seeming magic. In the winter, they extract heat from the outside air (even when it’s below zero), run it through a compressor, and then pump it indoors. During the balmy days of...
The post How He...For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower
One day last November, Luis Maldonado celebrated his 50th birthday with a cake and people he considered his family around the table. A pretty normal scene, except for the setting: the office of Guajira, the start-up that gave Maldonado a loan for an e-bike that has fueled his work as...
The post ...‘Let the Fire Teach Us’: How L.A. Is Building Back Better
When the 2018 Woolsey fire reduced Carla and Kevin Fern’s modest house in the Malibu hills to ash, they knew they wanted to rebuild. “Where else would we go?” Carla Fern asks, having grown up in Malibu. “Being in a place with deep personal history is irreplaceable. But everyone must...
The post &...What We’re Reading: Air Pollution Is Falling Worldwide
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at info@reasonstobecheerful.world. Clearing the air Global emissions of several harmful pollutants are falling — meaning, according to a story shared by RTBC Contributing Editor Mic...How Stockholm Is Sprouting Healthy Trees From Concrete
When Stockholm’s Traffic Office conducted a general assessment of street traffic in the Swedish capital in 2001, it came to the shocking conclusion that two-thirds of all trees in the city center were dead or dying. City authorities agreed that an urgent response was needed to nurse these leafy u...The Montana City Where Students Are on the Front Lines of Mental Health Support
This story was originally published by Montana Free Press at montanafreepress.org. This story contains discussions about suicide, anxiety and depression. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, the 988 hotline is available 24/7 by phone, text message, online chat or video pho...In Green Hydrogen, Experts See an Exit Ramp From Fossil Fuels
This is part two of a two-part series on ways that coal infrastructure is being repurposed to meet the needs of renewable energy. Read part one here. For four decades, the Oklaunion Power Plant has been a fixture on the landscape near rural Vernon, Texas, a town of about 11,000...
The post In Gre...