September 21, 2026

Good News for Humankind 🌏
​The world's latest positive milestones for climate, justice, peace, health & more

Solar panel costs have plummeted from $6 to 12 cents per watt since 2000

A single number is quietly reshaping how electricity gets made and sold worldwide: solar panel costs have fallen more than 98% since the early 2000s, driven largely by Chinese manufacturing scale.

That collapse has made solar cheap enough for a Pakistani cement plant to cut its power bill by 40%, for Filipino homeowners to pay off rooftop systems in three years, and for over five million Indian households to install panels through a national subsidy program.

But the same shift is straining power grids and utility finances, and in places like Karachi, shifting costs onto those who can't afford solar.

​Read more​

Episcopal Church names Micah Cronin of Milwaukee its first out transgender dean

Micah Cronin's appointment as dean of All Saints' Cathedral in Milwaukee marks a meaningful milestone for LGBTQ+ inclusion inside one of America's major Christian denominations.

Cronin, who found the Episcopal Church after feeling unwelcome in the conservative Methodist tradition he grew up in, sees his presence at the altar as an act of witness during a difficult moment for transgender Americans. Real tensions remain within the broader church, and not every diocese has embraced the same degree of inclusion.

Still, his story shows how institutions long resistant to change can open doors that matter far beyond their walls.

​Read more​

Bison return to Mexican state of Coahuila for first time in 200 years

Cuatrociénegas is one of North America's strangest landscapes: 324 square miles of spring-fed pools, gypsum dunes, and diverse plant life.

What it lacked was a large grazer. Forty-eight bison, most transferred from the Rancho El Uno herd in Chihuahua's Janos Biosphere Reserve, now break up compacted soil, carry seeds in their coats, and carve shallow wallows — restarting processes that stopped generations ago. That herd descends from 23 bison the U.S. sent from Wind Cave National Park in 2009.

Mexico still lists bison as at risk, and with no predators here, managing the herd's growth is an open question.

​Read more​

Timor-Leste eliminates trachoma, world’s leading cause of blindness

Trachoma elimination has now reached every corner of WHO's South-East Asia Region, and Timor-Leste — one of Southeast Asia's youngest nations — pushed it over the finish line.

The disease spreads through poverty-linked conditions like poor sanitation and limited clean water, making elimination genuinely hard-won here. A 2025 survey across all 13 municipalities found zero transmission requiring public health action, though individual trichiasis cases will still need ongoing care and sustained funding.

This milestone shows that coordinated global health efforts can conquer diseases once seen as permanent features of poverty.

​Read more​

Black bear population rebounds across the American South after near collapse

Bears are not mountain animals — they thrive in swamps, pine stands, and farm-field margins, which is why the Mississippi floodplain was once their heartland.

Mississippi had an estimated 12 bears left when it protected them in 1932; Arkansas, down to 40 or 50 in the 1950s, restocked with bears trucked in from Minnesota and Manitoba, now holds roughly 5,000. Louisiana's bears left the federal threatened list in 2016.

Females breed slowly, and young males can wander far from where they were born, so the return is measured in decades. Conflict with farms and suburbs is the next problem to solve.

​Read more​

Remember Hunter-gatherers build Göbekli Tepe, perhaps the world's first temple, in Turkey (~9,600 B.C.E. ???) Göbekli Tepe, raised on a ridge in southeastern Turkey more than 11,000 years ago, is a ring of massive T-shaped limestone pillars built by hunter-gatherers — no farms, no villages, no pottery yet. Carvings of foxes, vultures, and lions hint at a rich ritual life. It suggests shared meaning may have come before settled society, not after. ​Read more​

Imagine Scientists achieve first functional cure for type 1 diabetes (2037 C.E. ???) Type 1 diabetes could effectively become curable for millions within the next decade, if a new stem cell and immune-tolerance therapy holds up at scale. In trials, most participants regained natural insulin production and stayed off external insulin for two years. If access follows, this could end a century-long era of managing a disease that was never truly tamed. ​Read more​

Take Action 💥

Donate to support the IRC's ongoing Gaza response

From International Rescue Committee: Six months after the October 2025 ceasefire, the IRC says Gaza's humanitarian crisis is being forgotten even as the need remains severe — more than 2 million people, half of them children, are still without reliable access to safe water, food, or healthcare, and over 1.7 million

Palestinians remain displaced. The IRC and local partners have supported more than 430,000 people in Gaza and the West Bank since October 2023, delivering health care, nutrition treatment, clean water, and psychosocial support.

The IRC consistently earns top marks from independent charity watchdogs for the efficiency of its aid delivery.

Updates from Peter 👋

Hi beautiful people,

This isn't necessarily a popular take, but I don't believe in miracles. Or rather, I believe everything that happens obeys the same universal laws of physics.

Some truly unlikely, serendipitous things happen for sure. And I don't believe we fully understand the laws of physics, and possibly never will. So reality still eludes us and is still fundamentally mysterious.

But no divine intervention directly breaks how things work so that some good thing can happen.

Here's what I consider to be the real miracle:

For billions of years, no life existed on Earth. Then somehow, the most basic single-cellular life sprang into existence. That life, over eons, continued to spread and become more complex, into multicellular life, plants, fungi, and eventually animals. Today, humans have incredibly deep experiences of selfhood, incredibly deep capacity for creativity, and ever-evolving values and ways of being.

That itself is a miracle, beyond anything else that we might possibly conceive of. Just the fact that life exists is, in a way, preposterous and profoundly precious.

And yet, nearly everyone I know (myself included) struggles with the big existential question of whether we are "good enough." We spend our lives striving trying to prove or validate our existence. At times, we even agonize over it.

It's understandable in a way. It's very human of us.

But it's also honestly such a ridiculously stupid question. Have we ever pondered whether eukaryotes, ferns, or orca whales are enough? Have we ever worried that life itself isn't enough? Of course not. The question doesn't even make sense.

The very fact that they exist and are here is enough. Just the same, the very fact that each and every one of us exists and is here is enough.

Genuine hardship is very real. For many, it is an everyday struggle just to survive or exercise basic freedoms. You do not need to put any additional hardship on yourself beyond that.

So stop worrying about it. Let it go. Spend your life knowing you are, always have been, and always will be enough. Spend your life reveling in the miraculous beauty of it all. Spend your energy creating more beauty wherever you can.

It really can be as simple as that. And you, and the world, will be better off for it.

Love,
Peter

Peter Schulte Burnout & purpose coach, recovering hustle hero. ​​​

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