A Handful of Reasons to Be Hopeful. (Yes, We Found Some!)
Wars, wildfires and felonious world leaders are dominating the news cycle. But also: Diseases are being treated, solar power is booming and some animals are back from the brink of extinction.
It’s easy to look at the world and despair.
Instances of instability, conflict and war are splattered across the globe. The numbers of displaced people in crisis are steadily ticking upward—their situations exacerbated by climate, poverty and persecution. Online violence is tearing apart our digital spaces. And stories of physical violence are a constant reminder of how shockingly low humans will stoop to achieve their ends in an extraordinary dissolution of morals, ethics, and humanity.
It’s hard to be hopeful when one woman (or girl) is killed every 10 minutes by an intimate partner or family member, when the Taliban is actively trying to prevent women from talking at all, while Iran insists on mental health help for women who protest the hijab.
Weather events feel akin to a dystopian horror film. Wildfires engulfing Los Angeles serve as a reminder that even the wealthy are not immune from terrible things. An earthquake in Tibet once again underscores the fragility of the region. Another earthquake in Japan, has left in its wake talk of an impending megaquake. Nobody wants to sit around and wait for that.
And in the U.S., about half the country’s voters just got a president they didn’t choose who, whichever way you slice it, doesn’t look good for women’s rights.
In a 2022 column (enthusiastically titled, “Cheer Up! The World Is Better Off Than You Think”) Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, pointed out that “human beings have a cognitive bias toward bad news.” The problem? “A constant gush of despairing news can be paralyzing,” writes Kristof.
That’s dangerous. It forces us back into our beds. It makes us despair. We may even give up.
Hans Rosling, the late Swedish professor, told us over and over in his book, “Factfulness,” that the world is not as bad as we think. So while it’s true that even though roads are melting and microplastics are proliferating and cancer is on the rise, our overall quality of life has gotten considerably better. That includes things like reduced poverty, increased literacy, increased access to healthcare and better life expectancy.
Here are some other things that have gotten better: plane crash deaths have decreased, oil spills have decreased, and smallpox cases have decreased. In his book, Rosling wasn’t trying to be nice, he was just trying to present the facts. Make of them what you will.
“Tell me one thing you’re optimistic about this year,” we recently asked friends and family. And even though we were inundated with a barrage of messages along the lines of “sorry, I can’t think of anything, but let me know what you come up with,” there were some meaningful rays of light.
Many mentioned friends and friendship. Some were optimistic about starting a new chapter in their career; quitting a job, embarking on graduate school or finally mustering up the courage to pitch that novel they’ve been working on. Others said their hopes were fueled by imminent weddings, babies, planned moves to exciting new places.
This made us feel better. Moreover it inspired us to find more things that might soften the daily drumbeat of bad news; things that might make it a tiny bit easier to step out, day after day, and face the challenges ahead.
Here’s what we came up with.
Health Milestones
Amid terrifying headlines in 2024 documenting threats to women’s health, it was easy to miss some positive news in the healthcare space.
Despite recent research showing that cancer rates are rising for women and younger adults in the U.S, researchers made significant headway in their quest to treat and cure cancers in 2024.
In the U.K., doctors started trialling the world's first "personalized" mRNA vaccine against melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Elsewhere, scientists reported they’d developed a simple blood test that could offer early diagnosis for a type of brain tumor.
According to the World Health Organization, global immunization efforts have now saved an estimated 154 million lives, and in January last year Cameroon became the first country to start routine vaccinations against malaria—a major milestone and “a significant step in the prevention and control of the disease,” said Dr. Phanuel Habimana, the World Health Organization representative in Cameroon.
For women, a new swab test for cervical cancer screening became available in the U.S. to replace the traditional pap smear, which many women find painful, uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing. It was approved by the Federal Drug Administration in May.
The new technique—which allows women to test themselves in a doctor’s office—had already been rolled out successfully in countries including Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. According to The New York Times, two decades of research suggest that this method is as effective at preventing cervical cancer as traditional pap tests for women 25 and older.
Saving the Planet?
Even though 2024 was officially the hottest year on record—a searing reminder of the devastating impact of climate change—there are some environmental reasons to feel hopeful, too.
The solar power boom is showing no signs of abating. “In a single year, in a single technology, we’re providing as much new electricity as the entirety of global growth the year before,” Kingsmill Bond, a senior energy strategist at RMI, a clean-energy nonprofit, told The Atlantic. A decade or two ago, analysts “did not imagine in their wildest dreams that solar by the middle of the 2020s would already be supplying all of the growth of global electricity demand,” he added.
And while a significant number of wildlife species are still facing extinction, there are some that have made seemingly miraculous comebacks. "The Iberian lynx was very, very close to extinction," Rodrigo Serra, who runs a lynx reproduction program across Spain and Portugal, recently told the BBC. At one point, he said, there were fewer than a hundred lynxes left in two populations that didn't interact. Only 25 of those were females of reproductive age, he added. But now, more than 2,000 are living in the wild across Spain and Portugal.
Some Progress in Politics
It might feel particularly challenging to muster up optimism against a backdrop of strongmen thriving and masculinity being celebrated. But look closely and even in the arena of politics, policy and business, silver linings exist.
Around the world, women are leading more central banks than ever before. And, while it may seem forever ago now, even the very presence of Kamala Harris on the presidential ballot was a big deal—the result of decades of hard work by women and decades of progress toward creating a world in which race and gender are no barrier to personal and professional success.
Last year, the number of Black women ever elected to the U.S. Senate doubled—from two to four (we know, we know, but it’s a start...), while two men chalked up firsts, too: Andy Kim became the first Asian American elected to represent New Jersey in the Senate (Kim is also the first Korean American elected to the Senate) while Republican Bernie Moreno became the first Latino to represent Ohio. And then, of course, there was Sarah McBride, who became the country’s first openly transgender person elevated to Congress.
In December, Namibia elected its first woman president; in Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum achieved that feat over the summer. And while a person’s gender or race don’t automatically make them a good leader, a trend toward diversity in leadership is reflective of an openness to change and that in itself should be celebrated.
Fighting Fake News and Five-Day Workweeks
Finally, a moment to recognize some of the social changes underway that hold plenty of promise. A global movement to protect children from the risks of smartphones and social media gained traction in 2024 and is continuing to thrive this year. Yes, we still have much work to do, but any progress in this regard is worthy of acknowledgement.
Not unrelated, efforts are also ramping up, both on local and national levels, to combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
In this regard, we’ve recently endured some major setbacks (thank you, Mr. Zuckerberg) but many individuals, organizations and even countries (Hi, Finland!) are leveraging new technologies to do good.
Finally, despite ongoing calls from large corporations to mandate workers to come back into the office full-time, there’s evidence of a degree of appetite for challenging the established parameters of the working world. Four-day-workweek trials have shown some promising results, both in terms of employee productivity and in terms of worker satisfaction. Conversations about right-to-disconnect legislation are—at the very least—helping us to truly accept what we all already know: Sometimes everyone needs to unplug and take a break from everything.
We’ve also seen some incremental—though admittedly not quite game-changing—improvements in benefits for working parents, as well as new pay transparency laws designed to make the workplace fairer for all.
So yes, while the world feels heavy—while certain days can feel dark—there is some respite from the gloom. We’ll take what we can get.
Holly Baxter
Josie Cox
Josie Cox
