May 25, 2026

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

U.N. General Assembly backs landmark World Court ruling on nations’ climate obligations

Climate accountability took a historic leap forward when the UN General Assembly voted 141 to 8 to endorse a landmark International Court of Justice ruling that treats climate action as a legal obligation rather than a political choice.

The resolution, drafted by the Pacific island nation Vanuatu after years of patient advocacy, affirms that states breaching their climate duties may be required to halt the harm and offer reparation. Secretary-General António Guterres called it a victory for the planet, noting that the path to climate justice runs through a rapid, just, and equitable shift away from fossil fuels.

The ICJ's opinion is advisory rather than binding, and eight nations including the U.S. voted against the resolution. But its legal and moral weight is expected to shape climate cases worldwide for years to come.

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Tunisia eliminates trachoma as a public health problem

Trachoma is officially gone as a public health problem in Tunisia — a disease that once affected at least half the country's population.

The World Health Organization has now validated Tunisia as the 31st country to eliminate it, and the first neglected tropical disease ever crossed off the country's list. The win came from decades of patient work: nationwide screening, eye care woven into schools and clinics, hygiene outreach, and steady improvements in water and sanitation. Around the world, roughly 1.9 million people still live with trachoma-related blindness or visual impairment, and 136 million remain at risk.

Tunisia's story is proof that preventable blindness doesn't have to stay that way — and a hopeful nudge toward the WHO's 2030 goal of ending trachoma everywhere.

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Seabed life triples in Scottish marine zone a decade after trawling ban

Scotland's South Arran Marine Protected Area is teeming with life again, ten years after bottom trawling was restricted across much of the zone.

Scientists pulled up just 100 liters of sediment and counted more than 1,500 organisms representing over 150 species — spoon worms, tower snails, and tiny "gardeners of the seabed" that quietly cycle nutrients and lock carbon into the ocean floor. Researchers found three times more organisms and twice the species diversity compared to nearby unprotected waters, all without any active restoration. The lesson is beautifully simple: lift the nets, wait, and life returns.

For Europe's battered seafloors — and for marine recovery efforts worldwide — South Arran is a quiet, powerful proof of concept.

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Bowel cancer patients see zero relapses three years after new immunotherapy

Bowel cancer patients in a small U.K. trial saw zero relapses nearly three years after receiving immunotherapy before surgery — a striking result for all 32 participants, even those who still had traces of cancer after treatment.

By comparison, the standard path of surgery followed by chemotherapy sees roughly one in four patients relapse within three years. The trial focused on people with a specific genetic profile that makes tumors more visible to the immune system, sparing them months of post-surgery chemo. One participant described the cancer "melting away" before his operation.

If larger trials confirm the approach, it could reshape how a meaningful slice of bowel cancer cases are treated worldwide.

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Chile’s maternity leave reform lifted mothers’ employment without wage penalties

Chile's maternity leave reform delivered something policymakers rarely get to claim: a sustained employment boost for mothers, with no wage penalty in sight.

After the country doubled postnatal leave from 12 to 24 weeks in 2011, eligible mothers were 6.8 percentage points more likely to hold formal jobs in the three years after returning to work, according to a study in the Journal of Development Economics. The biggest gains went to women with shorter work histories — exactly the mothers the reform was meant to reach.

It's a hopeful signal for countries everywhere weighing family policy: designed with real conditions in mind, parental leave can lift women up rather than hold them back.

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Remember Prehistoric artists paint the Cave of Altamira in northern Spain (~20,000 B.C.E. ???) Altamira's bison were painted roughly 20,000 years ago, deep inside a limestone cave in what is now northern Spain. Ice Age artists mixed ochre, hematite, and charcoal, and worked the ceiling's natural bulges into the animals' shoulders and haunches. The cave is a reminder that symbolic thought and artistic care have been part of being human for a very long time. ​Read more​

Imagine Global ozone layer reaches 1980 levels for the first time in decades (2039 C.E. ???) Earth's ozone layer could return to 1980 levels by the 2030s, marking the first time a planet-scale atmospheric system damaged by industry has been measurably healed. Emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals have already fallen more than 99% from their peak, tracking the UN's 2023 recovery projection. If it holds, it's proof that coordinated global action really can mend what we've broken. ​Read more​

Take Action 💥

Reject Trump’s $1.5 trillion “war first, people last” budget

From Common Cause: Trump’s $1.5 trillion “war first, people last” budget must be dead on arrival in Congress. We urge Congress to reject this attempt to slash $83 billion from our healthcare, education, and clean energy while pouring $1.5 trillion into the military to fuel Trump’s illegal Iran war. Congress must protect our communities and put the American people first.

Antihero Project 🦹

You've read the good news. Now, start making your own.

Seeking out evidence

We often imagine that our brains work something like this: 1) we objectively gather data and information from the world around us, 2) we use that data to build rational conclusions about ourselves and the world, and 3) we behave according to those rational conclusions.

Instead, how our brains usually work is probably something more like this: 1) we have engrained conclusions or assumptions about ourselves and the world based on what we learned as children, often from traumatic experiences, 2) we actively seek out evidence from the world to confirm those assumptions (and filter out contradicting information), and 3) having inevitably found the evidence we were looking for, behave according to our existing belief system.

Rather than objectively observing the world, we often bend, filter, and distort what we observe to confirm what we already (consciously or unconsciously) believe to be true, like "I don't belong," "I can't do it," "people are idiots," "people are jerks," etc.

When we begin to grasp this, we may want to cultivate a more objective, rational mind free of biases and beliefs. But this is not really possible. There is so much information and stimuli out there in the world. We have to find a way to filter and simplify it.

Some of the most powerful and potentially transformative questions then become:

• What assumptions or beliefs about myself or the world have I been unconsciously gathering evidence for?
• What am I not allowing myself to see and experience because of that?
• What new assumptions and beliefs might better serve me and the world?

Peter Schulte Coach, writer, recovering hustle hero. ​​​

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