6 Environmental Good News Stories You Should Know About (2020 Edition)
Our brand experience agency has the planets’ interests as a top priority.
We are a brand experience agency, which means we want to provide the best experience possible for each and every one of our customers, partners and friends.
That said, we don’t want this to come at the cost of our planet. In fact, it is one of our six core values, with the target to operate as a carbon-neutral business which we are doing everything in our power to speed up.
As part of our actions toward carbon neutrality, we want to spread some of the good news surrounding the environmental movement and what positive steps are being taken to reverse the impact on the environment.
Renewable Energy
Supplies of renewable energy sources were increasing prior to the pandemic and held firm throughout 2020. Breakthroughs in green technology have rapidly lowered costs of wind and solar energy, levelling the scales of cost with the environment destroying fossil fuels which is excellent news for our planet and the many ecosystems that are affected by fossil fuel mining and fracking.
Renewable energy made up nearly half the supply of Britain’s electricity in the first quarter of 2020, due to a record-breaking energy surge in wind power.
Another big step in the right direction took place in April when Britain broke records for coal-free power generation for the most extended period since the Industrial Revolution.
Furthermore, the world’s chronic dependence on oil is finally and gladly reducing, with experts predicting global reliance peaked in 2019 and is now in terminal decline.
The report acknowledges that a combination of the pandemic and climate change policies aimed at reducing the impacts on our environment has sped up the decline of fossil fuels.
A major example of this step forward came when Europe’s biggest oil producer agreed to halt drilling.
This promoted Greenpeace to hail the move as a “watershed moment”, with Denmark announcing in December that it will terminate all contracts for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea going forward and will phase out existing production by 2050.
2. Driving Cars Out Of Cities
There was good news in the fight for cleaner air in cities across the globe. After the tragic news of Ella Kissi-Debrah who is the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death in a landmark coroner's ruling.
To prevent future instances of this, private vehicles are being designed out of urban areas with encouraging results for communities and businesses.
This is supported by UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s #buildbackbetter campaign announcing a ban on the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles from 2030.
This pins the future of personal mobility on electric vehicles; hybrid vehicles, meanwhile, will be phased out by 2035.
What’s more, announced in January the Birmingham Transport Plan illustrates a cleaner, greener city with car-less roads, improved public transport, plenty of cycle lanes, and a total ban on through traffic.
The plan will likely address two of the biggest current problems in the UK of air pollution and obesity, helping Birmingham hit its lofty target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030.
The downtime during the pandemic ensured numerous cities across the world saw dwindling numbers of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles on their roads, with a growing number of these cities planning on keeping it that way.
3. Rewilding In Action
We take a look at the benefits of letting wildlife run free.
As rewilding or wilding becomes more openly embraced by the public, there has been proof of the concept of working with numerous species reintroductions in 2020.
Bison haven’t been seen in Britain for at least 6000 years, so their reintroduction to English woodlands will be a huge step forward and is part of a £1m rewilding effort in, Kent.
Britain’s new Bison herd will be roaming the woodlands and fields of Kent by spring 2022, say, conservationists. The reason this news is so positive, is the Bison are attributed to engineering woodland habitats for butterflies, beetles and other species by felling trees and disrupting the earth.
This project is in line with and follows other reintroduction projects around the UK, including beaver, white-tailed eagles, red kites and rather huge Dalmation Pelicans made for promising headlines; volunteers stepped in to look after young trees as part of a rewilding project in the Highlands of Scotland; hen harriers enjoyed their most fruitful breeding season in England for almost 20 years.
Rewilding Britain published a reforesting roadmap. Further afield, the world’s most endangered feline, the Iberian lynx is recovering after support schemes to save it have been successful so far.
A wild Bison, soon to be introduced to woodlands in Kent.
4. Wildlife Gardening Was Embraced With Fresh Enthusiasm
Almost everyone in the UK was confined to their homes or in close vicinity to their homes local in 2020, for many, this allowed time to tend to their patch however big or small and highlight nature’s role in improving our mental health and general wellbeing.
One of the big positive trends of the lockdown was people’s tendency to get out into the garden and develop their green thumb.
This interest wasn’t just any old gardening, it was gardening that takes wildlife’s needs into account that grew in popularity in 2020. Taking inspiration from people like Kate Bradbury and her latest book, Wildlife Gardening.
Meadows and motorway verge’s across the UK have been left un-mown, wildflowers have been planted, ponds with new aqua ecosystems created, log piles left alone to accommodate the bugs and the bees and plants in window boxes, borders and community gardens used in terms of their value to insects.
‘Un-gardening’ will likely provide huge benefits for the environment, especially since the landmass of all UK gardens amounts to an area greater than the size of all our national nature reserves.
Let’s hope this un-gardening revolution continues.
5. Climate Pledges Gather Pace
In 2020, thankfully, a few more countries have added themselves to the net-zero pledge list.
Most notably China set a target of net zero by 2060 which is a massive step in the right direction. They are the largest carbon emitter in the world, which puts them at the top of the naughty list in our book, but this news is most welcome.
“Xi’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality before 2060 is a game-changer,”
Thom Woodroofe, a former climate diplomat and senior adviser at the Asia Society told the Guardian. Other Asian nations include South Korea which set its target 10 years earlier than China to 2050 net-zero emissions, followed by Japan.
Argentina matched South Korea and Japan with a 2050 net-zero target, while Finland, Austria and Sweden moved their net zero-dates forward.
The UK pledged to reduce emissions by 68 per cent in the next 10 years, and the EU set a new goal of reducing emissions by 55 per cent within a decade.
This, although not ‘job done, is a giant leap in the right direction.
6. Fossil Fuel Reduction
“No-one wants to save throughout their life to retire into a world devastated by climate change.”
These are the words of Mark Fawcett, CIO of the UK’s biggest pension fund, Nest, who announced in the summer of 2020 that they were going to divest from firms involved in coal extraction, tar sands and Arctic drilling.
This was one, of many moves by companies, to take the power away from fossil fuel manufacturing to stop the intensely damaging effects it has on the environment.
The UK was host to the Climate Action Summit in December 2020, where they pledged to stop such funding for this type of malpractice.
This came immediately after the government was accused of hypocrisy, having invested £21 billion of our taxes into fossil fuel programmes, while preparing to host the Cop26 climate summit.
Shortly after, Lloyds, the world’s largest insurance market, declared they would halt any new insurance cover for fossil fuel projects by 2022. Finally, the Bank of America announced, it was ruling out financing for oil and gas development in the Arctic, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
This follows similar moves by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Morgan Stanley. Now, all six major US banks have committed to not finance the destruction of one of our last truly wild places.
This hereby concludes the “Lyra Studios’ Environmental Good News Report”. We will keep you posted with updates to any of these stories and more environmental goodness soon.
For now, I will leave you with this action provoking statement:
“Ask not what your planet can do your you, ask what you can do for your planet.”