THE GOOD NEWS OF THIS YEAR

After a long series of adventures and misadventures, finally 2020 is going to an end.

Probably this year has been one of the worst ever. It will be very hard to forget it! Coronavirus, pandemic, dpcm, social distance, lockdown, are just some of the words that will remain forever imprinted in our memory, ready to resurface every time we hear about 2020!

But today we want to surprise you. As you know, we do not like looking at the glass half empty. So, in this article we tell you about 2020 as no one has done. It may seem strange, but this year there have been also good news. Don’t you believe it? Keep reading and you will see...

To start we want to share with you some important news about the environment. While public attention was focused on the pandemic, some positive events have occurred.

The first one is the return of animals and wild species to the brink of extinction. Blue whales have been sighted in Antarctica for a period of 23 days. What is strange? In 2019 there was only one sighting! In Tunisia, turtles have been able to reproduce and rapidly increase in number, despite global warming and pollution. The same happened with the Colorado wolves, almost extinct species. In Australia, for the first time in 3,000 years, the Tasmanian devil was successfully reintroduced into a protected area.

The other good news is that this year’s overshoot day, the symbolic day when humanity runs out of resources, was three weeks later than in 2019. Of course, this is not due to the virtuous behavior of man. It happened because of lockdowns. Anyway, passing from 29 July 2019 to 22 August 2020 is still a positive thing, but the best is yet to come!

2020 was a record year for the growth of renewable energy. The new plants installed this year produce about 200 thousand megawatts of electricity. Most likely from next year, the deployment of renewable energy plants will increase furtherly and it is expected that by 2025 they will replace coal worldwide. As evidence of the growing sensitivity to environmental issues, this year was characterized by the record issue of green bonds. What are they? They are bonds intended to finance sustainability-oriented projects, such as energy saving, pollution prevention, etc.

But the good news for the environment does not end here. In fact, this year, a group of researchers from the University of Portsmouth, in collaboration with the NREL, managed to create a "super-enzyme" able to degrade plastic in a very short time. Their project consisted in combining the Petase and Mhetase enzymes, discovered in 2018 in Japan, obtaining a much more efficient super-enzyme, which manages to degrade plastic in a few days, rather than in hundreds of years, as it would happen in nature. At this point everything suggests the imminent arrival of a future green!

Staying on the theme of scientific discoveries there is more good news coming up. This year, a group of researchers from Puglia from the De Bellis Institute in Castellana, discovered a protein that repairs the DNA of cancer cells. Thanks to their discovery, medicine could take a huge step forward in the treatment of cancer, and even replace chemotherapy with targeted and less invasive therapies.

The last good news in the scientific field comes from Pfizer Biontech, who has finally published data on the testing of the anti-covid vaccine. The tests were carried out on a sample of about 43 thousand people and showed that the vaccine is effective in 95% of cases. Fingers crossed!

As we await the arrival of the vaccine, hoping to be able to close once and for all this sad chapter of our lives, let’s move on to the next positive novelties of 2020.

October 24 was an historic date for world peace. What happened? Honduras has ratified the UN Treaty against Nuclear Weapons. There are now 50 ratifications, which means that from 22 January 2021, the production, use and threat of nuclear weapons will be banned! Peter Maurer, President of the Red Cross, commented on this news: "It is a victory for humanity..."

And speaking of victories for humanity here comes another good news, this time from the Sudan, where from this year has been banned female genital mutilation, providing for up to three years of imprisonment for offenders. This is a significant step forward, in a continent where unfortunately this practice continues to be widespread.

The other good news this year is about the LGBTQ community. The historic words of Pope Francis ended on the front pages of all the newspapers and shocked the Catholic Church: "homosexuals are children of God and have the right to have a family... What we must create is a law on civil unions". In addition to the opening by the Pope, the good news comes from Northern Ireland, where the first gay marriage was celebrated, from Costa Rica, where same-sex marriage was legalized, from Thailand, where a bill on civil unions was passed and from Croatia, where a gay couple adopted two children! The cherry on the cake is the abolition of conversion therapy in Germany, Mexico City and Albania. What is it and why is it? Why is good news? It is a practice of re-sexual orientation that considers non-eterosexuality a disease to be cured! Can you believe it?!

Would you have thought that in this terrible year good things have happened too!? To be honest, neither we believed in it very much and writing this article was no picnic! In the end, however, we succeeded and judging the final result we can say that it was worth it.

Do you agree?! Do you know any other good news that deserve to be shared?! Write us to report them and we will be happy to spread them. Finally, we remind you that you can subscribe to our newsletter to know all the updates before everyone!