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COLUMN: You’ve got to accentuate the positive

Deb feels bleak so she goes looking for some pick-me-up good news stories
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Daresay - Deb Meissner

After watching the boob tube for the past week or two, I was depressed and in need of some good news. If traditional media is to be believed, we live in a frightening, scary, and dangerous world.

It can be exhausting to turn on the news each day and be presented with upsetting and negative news stories. I needed some news to uplift my mood and outlook, as I was feeling as bleak as the weather lately, and didn’t want to go into the new year on a sour note.

After watching funny retriever puppy videos for a while, I went on a web search of Positive News, The Good News Network, The Optimist Daily, and a few other sites that have interesting, and positive news.

I found that a couple donated $100 million to preserve 30 million hectares of biodiversity in Africa. They are heavily involved in an organization called African Parks.

I find it incredible they have had such success and applaud the donation.

It also blew my mind that they have that much money to give away, but hey, good for them.

Another good news bit was after recording the lowest return of Monarch butterflies in California’s history last year, this year, they are making a comeback, in a big way. There were hundreds of thousands recorded this year, as opposed to 48,000 last year. These little critters tell us about the health of our biodiverse areas, and for them to come roaring back is a very hopeful sign.

Something I always keep an eye on is the airline industry, as their carbon footprint is huge, so when I read that British Airways is to introduce sustainable aviation fuel in 2022, I was very happy.

The fuel will be made of sustainable waste sources such as waste vegetable oils, fats, and greases and can be blended with traditional jet fuel or co-processed alongside traditional refinery feedstocks. I do have to say the first thing I thought of was “will the skies start smelling like fries,” but the thought definitely made me smile.

Good for the UK in their quest to ban single-use plastic plates, cutlery, and cups in 2023, including styrofoam cups. It’s a tough one to accomplish in this take-out, throw-away world, but there are alternatives, so good on them for making a change.

In this recent cold spell of weather and the constantly challenging road conditions in the north, I found it interesting to find out more and more cities in the U.S. are making the switch from pouring salt all over their snow-covered roads, and are using sugar beet mixtures to beat (pardon the pun) the icy roads.

All I know is Canada would need a lot of beet mixture, and it could be kinda pretty too. Give a bit of colour to the winter white canvas.

Along with several stories about animal species going extinct, were several stories of many species coming back from the brink, so along with the dismal is hope.

And finally, one story that really made me smile was: “Northern Reindeer relax contemplating the northern lights,” with pictures of reindeer looking up at the beautiful skies of colour bands. If only they could talk.

They sure looked peaceful standing there looking up, which made me want to join them.

So there is definitely good out there, sometimes you just have to look for it. When I did, it made my day.

Deb Meissner writes for The Interior News in Smithers, B.C.