GOOD NEWS from 2021 by FUTURE CRUNCH!

Let's end 2021 with some good news! The past year has been full of bad news, so focusing on positive stories that we may not have heard about as we move into 2022 may help us appreciate the progress the world has made! And give us hope for the new year!

I've shared good news stories from FUTURE CRUNCH in previous issues, and I am including a few in this issue. The link to all 99 good news stories from around the world is below--in case you need a super dose of positivity!

"If you were asked to list the top global news stories of 2021, off the top of your head, what would they be? Chances are you’d come up with some combination of COVID-19, economic woes, political conflict, Afghanistan, natural disasters, and maybe some space billionaires and Free Britney thrown in for good measure. Oh, and don’t forget the Suez Canal!

For the past several years, we’ve been putting that idea to the test, seeing whether it’s possible to carve out a tiny little corner of the internet dedicated exclusively to stories of progress. Not fluffy, feel good stories, but big stories of real, lasting change for people and the planet. Over time, we’ve gotten better at digging them up and this year, managed to find hundreds. Boiling them down to just 99 was a struggle, but we got there in the end, with only a tiny bit of cheating."

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"Let’s kick off with by far the biggest good news story of the year: the COVID-19 vaccines. Nine billion doses were administered across 184 countries, and almost 60% of the planet has received at least one dose (in four months it’ll be 75%). This is by far the most successful global health initiative ever undertaken. In less than two years not only did we come up with a way to overcome a brand new disease, but rolled it out to more than half of humanity.

"China successfully eliminated malaria this year (it used to have 30 million cases a year in the 1940s), as did El Salvador, the first country in Central America. Globally, 40 countries have now achieved this milestone. Côte d’Ivoire became the second African country to eliminate sleeping sickness, and The Gambia became the third African country to eliminate trachoma, an amazing achievement given that in the 1980s it was responsible for almost 1 in 5 of the country’s cases of blindness."

"Lots of good news on cancer this year. The American Cancer Society said there was a 2.4% decline between 2017 to 2018 — the largest one-year drop ever — and that between 1991 and 2018, cancer mortality has fallen by 31%. Similar declines have happened in Europe. A new study showed that 4.9 million cancer deaths have been averted on the continent in the last three decades.

A lot of that is down to less smoking. In November, the WHO released its Global Tobacco Trends report, showing that at the turn of the century, around a third of the world’s adults were tobacco users. By 2020, this had declined to under a quarter, and is projected to fall even further to one fifth by 2025. Also, both Japan and New Zealand announced this year they would be completely smoke-free within the next decade."

"Two conservation stories in particular should really have received more coverage this year. September saw the creation of the North-Atlantic Current and Evlanov Sea Basin, a vast, protected area off the south west coast of Ireland, and then in October we got news of the new Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor, a mega-MPA linking the waters of Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica, and containing some of the richest pockets of ocean biodiversity on the planet, including the Galapagos Islands. Together, these two protected areas cover more than a million km² of ocean."

"In 2021 the US government trebled the size of the Gulf of Mexico’s largest coral sanctuary, created the country’s 63rd national park: New River Gorge, in West Virginia, finally banned the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food crops, suspended all drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and restored full protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest."

"Ecologists reported that the Mississippi River is the cleanest it’s been in more than a century, with pollution down to 1% of what it was in the 1980s, while the most comprehensive survey of the Thames in 60 years found that the river, once declared biologically dead, is now “home to myriad wildlife as diverse as London itself.” The biggest river success story however, came from China, which passed a landmark environmental law protecting the Yangtze, one of the country’s two ‘mother rivers,’ banning all industrial projects, sand mining and all fishing, including in tributaries and the estuary (more than 400 million people live in the Yangtze basin)."

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About Future Crunch: "We are a team of science communicators based in Melbourne, Australia. We curate stories of good news, mind-blowing science, human progress, and we support small charities using science and technology to make the world a better place. More than 40,000 people subscribe to our free, fortnightly email newsletter. (https://futurecrun.ch/)

The Power of Our Thoughts 

Abraham Says...

"You’re always getting a perfect vibrational match to what you predominantly give your attention to. But you’ve got to make the best of it. You’ve got to vibrate slightly different from where you are if you are going to improve where you are. You can’t keep taking score of where your business is or your relationship is or your body is without continuing to create it as it is. To make improvement, you’ve got to reach for a different thought."

"Whenever you are feeling less than good, if you will stop and say, Nothing is more important than that I feel good—I want to find a reason now to feel good, you will find an improved thought.

Anytime you feel negative emotion, you are in the mode of resisting something that you want, and that resistance takes its toll on you. It takes its toll on your physical body, and it takes its toll on the amount of wonderful things that you are allowing to come into your experience."

Shari Harris

"Just Who Do We Think We Are?"

Shari's website under the "My Two Cents" tab.

1-28-2021: Just Who Do We Think We Are? Vol. 2, #1/Bob Olson-Afterlife

2-23-21: Just Who Do We Think We Are? Vol. 2, #2/Natalie Sudman-NDE

3-30-21: Just Who Do We Think We Are? Vol. 2, #3/ Lessons from the Other Side

4-26-21: Just Who Do We Think We Are? Vol. 2, #4/Past Life Perspective-Ann C. Barham

5-31-21: Just Who Do We Think We Are? Vol. 2, #5/ Surviving Death--Leslie Kean