The last few months have felt dark, dreary, and depressing, and not just because of the weather. The front pages of the papers have been filled with mass protests, incompentent world leaders, and the growing effects of climate change, and some media outlets are predicting another year of political turmoil as the U.S. pokes the beast of war and the effects of climate change begin to affect everyday life.
Many students and professors come to a university setting with the hope of making change, even in small ways, and it can be frustrating to watch governments and those in power fail to take action where action is needed.
Many Canadians have just celebrated the start of the new year, and many see the first weeks of January as a time of reflection, to look back on the previous year and analyze the positives and negatives of both our own lives and the world around us. The current political landscape is full of frustration, which may lead some to a growing sense of pessimism.
Whether you celebrate the start of a new year on Jan. 1 or not, the start of a new semester is always a good time to do some solid reflecting. Positivity and hope sometimes need to be cultivated, and a number of good things did happen in the last year that may help to jumpstart your constructive contemplation.
The first major cache of plastics gathered from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch were deposited in Vancouver this October, providing proof of concept for a passive, wave-powered ocean cleanup device. The company The Ocean Cleanup calculates they can clean up 50 per cent of the patch within five years, and has plans to deploy similar devices to clean up rivers around the world as well.
There were a number of positive steps forward in the medical field. Notably, Algeria and Argentina were declared malaria free, joining 36 other countries and territories worldwide that have stopped transmission of the disease. The World Health Organization said that the mosquito-borne virus can be eliminated through vaccinations, quick response time, and accessible treatment for those infected.
Women showed their strength in 2019. A record number of women are serving as politicians in the U.S., with 101 women with seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 25 in the Senate. In Canada, 98 women were elected as members of Parliament (MPs), the most in Canadian history. This is only about 25 per cent of MPs in Canada and is not nearly enough, but it is a start.
Finally, in a remarkable and shocking moment of clarity, Congress voted to pass articles of impeachment against the president of the United States. The two articles of impeachment will now, eventually, move to Senate where the American people will get to watch a poorly-reasoned and completely incomprehensible trial. If nothing else, at least the audio will be more clear than in Trump’s usual helicopter-accompanied confessions of guilt.
Smaller, positive stories often get buried in the media landscape. Newspapers are meant to inform, and often the news that informs is not the happy stories. But when our news sites are a jungle of natural disasters, political turmoil, and unprecedented biodiversity loss it’s important to remember that there are good people working to change the world, and change is possible, even just a little at a time.
